As founder and coach of his school’s competition team, Yancey trains Le Cordon Bleu-Chicago students to compete individually and in groups, using these opportunities to teach teamwork, organization and excelling in a high-pressure environment, as well as proper foodservice sanitation and safety.

“I’m living proof of what a background in high-level competition can do for an aspiring culinarian’s career,” says Yancey, who, before joining Le Cordon Bleu’s faculty in 2009, cooked in the kitchens of such Chicago celebrities as Grant Achatz and Rick Gresh. “As the coach and mentor to many Le Cordon Bleu students, I feel it is important to not only train through lecture and kitchen practice, but also—through demonstration of my ability to compete—to inspire my students, showing them what is possible and obtainable.”

Katherine Walsh, a culinary-arts instructor at Richards Career Academy, was honored in the high-school division of the grant program. Walsh will apply her $1,500 grant toward research on social entrepreneurship as a means of sustaining culinary-training programs like hers across the country in an era of deep budget cuts.

Having spent most of her career in the hospitality and education arenas, Walsh discovered that many nonprofit organizations embrace culinary themes for events that not only raise funds to meet budget goals, but do so while creating value for citizens of the community, resulting in a sustainable relationship.

“Working in Chicago Public Schools under the Office of College and Career Preparation, our program has been well funded, and we have been very fortunate financially,” Walsh says. “I believe, however, that the proverbial hand-writing is on the wall, and it is important to start planning for our future sustainability. With a grant from Olson Communications, I want to apply my research, one, to teaching students entrepreneurship and everything that running a business entails, and two, to growing our program at Richards Career Academy to become a hub of positive community activity using the ideas of social entrepreneurship.”

Olson Communications committed in 2008 to offering up to $20,000 in grants to the City of Chicago’s high-school and college-level culinary educators over five years through the Chefs of Tomorrow program in recognition of the agency’s then-20th anniversary. In all cases, the professional-development award must ultimately benefit student learning. Additional grants have been made to Chicago community-based programs that endeavor to improve education on food and nutrition.

In this, the grant commitment’s fifth and final year, Olson Communications awarded an additional grant of $500 to Della Gossett, a pastry chef-instructor at The French Pastry School. Gossett is also a founder of and volunteer instructor at Pilot Light, a grass-roots organization of Chicago-area chefs that uses food to engage and connect students of Chicago’s public schools to their community, culture, studies and the environment. “The Chefs of Tomorrow grant will help fund ingredients, equipment and course materials to make lesson planning and demonstrations at Pilot Light more effective,” Gossett says.

Past Chefs of Tomorrow grant recipients include chef-instructors Dana Cox of the Kendall College School of Culinary Arts and Tai Sellers of George Washington High School (2011), Laurette Stefani of Robert Morris University (2010), and Laura Vaughn (2009) and Lee Jamison (2008), both of Washburne Culinary Institute.

Olson Communications, since 1988, has specialized in offering personalized, uniquely crafted marketing communication strategies for food-business clients based in the United States and abroad.  The agency’s business strategy of remaining small while exceeding the range and depth of service typical of larger food-marketing agencies has earned Olson Communications international recognition.

Photo (l. to r.): Walsh, Rachel Tracy of Olson Communications, Gossett, Yancey and Sharon Olson of Olson Communications.