What attracted you to a good food job?

I love working with books and I love working with food. I trace my love of cooking to my mother, a hard-working lawyer with a terror of spending time in the kitchen. My sisters and I were allowed free range in there from a very young age. I made (inedible) green cakes when I was eight, moved on to London Broil (probably also inedible) at eleven, and was hosting reasonably elaborate dinner parties by the time I was in high school. My cookbook collection started early too. From Mr. Bingle's Kitchen, a Christmas gift from one of my mother's friends, was the source of many hours of entertainment and a recipe for fruit pizza that I still occasionally use.

Fast forward a few years. I graduated from college with a degree in English and American literature and no clear idea of what I wanted to do. I ended up working in kitchens for a few years, mostly doing baking and pastry. I loved food, but I didn't love the stress (or the hours) that came with it. I decided I would, for once, make a practical decision and go to library school, which had always been my secret back-up plan. I thought I was headed for a career in a private school library. I always held out hope, though, that I would be able to work with food again. In the meantime, I consoled myself by spending lots of time at Bonnie Slotnick and hosting countless brunches. In the summer of 2006, though, everything changed. I saw a posting on Craigslist (of all places!) for a job as the librarian at The French Culinary Institute. And here I am!

How did your previous work or life experience prepare you for a good food job?

I've spent most of my working life in kitchens and libraries. My cooking experience includes a high-school job scooping ice cream at the now-defunct Lost River Ice Cream Company in Boise, Idaho; a year-long stint as a student prep cook at the Harvard Faculty Club; two years at Burdick Chocolate, where I boxed up bonbons and first made pastry cream; six months at the worker-owned collective Black Bear Bakery in St. Louis, where I learned that working with anarchists is more fun in theory than in practice; and a brief stint as a pastry cook at Mesa Grill and Bolo, two of Bobby Flay's restaurants in New York City. I have worked at a total of five libraries: Widener and Houghton at Harvard; the Special Collections department at Boise State University; the lower and middle school library at Sacred Heart (an all-girls school in New York); and now at The French Culinary Institute.  Clearly, I was destined to become a cookbook librarian. Or at least that's what I tell myself.

What advice do you have for others in search of a good food job?

My family (and I, at least a little bit) wondered what I was doing when I decided to work in a chocolate shop after graduating from college. My classmates were off to glamorous (read: well-compensated) jobs, and I was making fruit tarts. But I loved it. In the end, those years I spent cooking turned out to be invaluable. I wouldn't have the job I have now (which I love!) if I hadn't invested the time back then.

So, my advice (in part) is: Go for it! If you love food, give it a chance. Take a job in a kitchen or work in a cheese shop or go to culinary school. Get some experience. And if you find, like I did, that you love food but not cooking (or at least not cooking professionally), figure out what else you have to offer. Here at the FCI, I work with chefs, but I also work with people who have backgrounds in editing, finance, French, and even fashion.

If you could be compensated for your work with something other than money, what would it be?

Chocolate. Or cheese. Or maybe chocolate AND cheese.

I would also accept payment in the form of trips to any one of the places on my long wish list of food-centric destinations: Bangkok, Tokyo, Hong Kong, Istanbul, Dakar, Buenos Aires. The list goes on and on and on.