Giving Compass' Take:

• Rohini Dey founded the Women in Culinary Leadership program in 2012 in partnership with the James Beard Foundation in order to empower women chefs to be entrepreneurs in the culinary industry. 

• Why is it important for the female chefs not to become part of the "pink cage" of pastry chefs and line cooks? 

• Read more about how women can help fight gender bias in all types of workplaces. 

In the end, it doesn’t matter if your food is prepared by a male or female chef, as long as it is the best meal you have ever had. But it does matter if women in the culinary business are not let out of what Rohini Dey calls the “pink cage” of pastry chefs and line cooks in order to be innovators, entrepreneurs and leaders in the culinary industry.

Dey, who founded the Women in Culinary Leadership program in 2012 through the James Beard Foundation, has a career in finance and restaurant entrepreneurship, and explains, “Unless you break out of that you will not leave the kitchen. You need to be in the thick of it, you need to know food costs, labor costs, inventory. And if women are not exposed, women are shut out.”

Empowering women on a grassroots level to create tangible progress is more vital now than ever before; especially given the glacial change in women’s leadership across all arenas, whether political or the boardroom or culinary.

Dey, who is a James Beard Foundation trustee, and Susan Ungaro, president of the James Beard Foundation, aim to help women build in-depth skills in the kitchen, restaurant management, and hospitality fields. “Our Foundation has made promoting diversity and women in leadership in the food and restaurant business a priority.  Although women make up 50 percent of culinary school graduates, only 19 percent of executive chefs are female, and even fewer own their restaurants,” says Ungaro.

The JBF’s Women in Entrepreneurial Leadership Program also engages a group of mentors who agree to provide expertise and career development support to the participants on an ongoing basis once they leave the program.

Read the full article about training women entrepreneurs to be chefs by Michele Weldon on Huffington Post