Justin leads the consulting arm of Catalyst Kitchens' services, helping to deliver consulting to clients, work with national partners, and lead his team in innovating new ways to develop resources and supports for the Catalyst Kitchens network and workforce development field overall.

Selected into a Global Professional Fellowship program for experienced professionals working to further develop global leadership, design thinking, shared-value, and social enterprise know-how. This global community of Fellows works together to learn and share best-practices through case-based learning, exposure to thought-leaders, coaching & mentoring, and through highly skilled service project.

I work in a dual role to support and lead students through the Inspiration Kitchen program and assist them in achieving ideal outcomes. My job duties begin with training individuals struggling with homelessness in the culinary arts. Along with other Chef Trainers and restaurant staff, we teach students to find joy in cooking and train them to become excellent culinary professionals. I design and teach both hands-on lessons in the kitchen and curriculum-based classroom lessons on a wide variety of topics. In my business services role, I get the privilege of selling the idea of our program and graduates to a multitude of Chicago-area restaurants, chefs, catering companies, and hospitality organizations. I seek to find the perfect position for each Inspiration Kitchen graduate, and provide restaurants with dedicated, motivated, and skilled employees. During my time with the organization, clients have consistently exceeded program goals for graduation rates, rates of hire, and retention rates with outside employers.Additionally, I assist with grants, tracking outcomes for reports to funders, and administering government funds to allow graduates access to the Transitional Job Program.

One-year teaching fellowship through Chicago Teaching Fellows. Taught summer school in small classroom for students with autism; complete academic year at an urban middle school. Worked in both dedicated special education classrooms and as a co-teacher, with 5th through 8th grade students. Caseload fluctuated between 17 and 24 students. Specific duties outside of teacher included co-planning lessons, developing curriculum, writing Individual Education Plans, and communicating with parents. Coached the 5th-6th grade basketball teams.

I took part in the Chicago Teaching Fellows (the Chicago chapter of The New Teacher Project) summer training program to procure my license in Special Education to work with Chicago Public Schools. See the listing for my special education position for a longer description of my skills and responsibilities in this role.

Oversaw 20+ programs happening each semester at CPS schools, private schools, and community centers. Managed a team of chef instructors: trained them on curriculum I helped to design, established policies surrounding spending, payroll and reimbursements, coordinated all schedules, managed quality of programming at all sites, managed expenses and payroll for all instructors. I also actively sought out and evaluated new partner schools and sites, and coordinated field trips for all of our students. Also planned and executed many outreach events to schools, parents and communities, as well as PR and marketing related events.

Was trained in and taught a 10 course afterschool program to 8-12 year old children at multiple schools in the Chicago area. Programming focused on movement, culture and nutrition. Classes were two hours long, and contained lecture as well as active cooking with a class of 20 students and team of 4 volunteers. Each week the class would learn about a new country and nutritional topic, then cook a meal consisting of 3-5 recipes related to the culture and nutritional topic at hand. With lesson planning, preparation, and cleanup, each class was a 7 hour per week time commitment. I also helped to pilot and teach a new program which involved 6 families per week in a 2.5 hour class.

Designed and aided in the implementation of new curriculum and programming, including graphic design and formatting, as well as nutritional evaluation and pricing of ingredients and lessons. Aided in the management and execution of programming at all sites around the city, especially equipment management and inventory, as well as supply distribution to all chef instructors. Acted as organizational spokesperson at a number of events around the city, ranging from in-school student recruitment to PR-related events at farmers markets and health/wellness fairs. Also helped with execution of large fundraising events as needed.