Jessamyn Waldman Rodriguez

Founder, Hot Bread Kitchen
New York, New York

Jessamyn Waldman Rodriguez did not enter the food world to

get rich. She came to food by way of a graduate degree in public

policy from Columbia University, a stint at the United Nations,

and a year as program director of a human rights-focused high

school in Crown Heights. It was from there that she found herself

in the bread kitchen of one of New York’s most storied

restaurants, Daniel.

“I got there by pure benevolence and good luck,” she tells me

from the workroom of the nonprofit she started, Hot Bread

Kitchen.

“I told the head baker there, Mark Fiorentino, about this idea I

had and he took me under his wing.”

The idea that she had is one she’d spent years developing: she

wanted to create a place where low-income immigrant women,

many of whom are excellent bakers, could learn to bake in a

professional setting. “I wanted to help women gain capital so they

can get hired,” she tells me.

Since starting in 2008, Rodriguez has trained twenty-one

bakers. Many of the women who come through Hot Bread

Kitchen bring recipes of their own from their home countries—