CULINARY - Key Persons
Job Titles:
- Associate Dean
- Interim Associate Dean for Seattle Culinary Academy
Aimee LePage is the Interim Associate Dean for Seattle Culinary Academy. She's passionate about helping students access life-changing education that transforms our industry while honoring the rich cultural history of cuisine. Prior to this position, she was the Outreach Coordinator for six years, working with future students to learn about our programs and navigate the admissions process.
Aimee's interest in food began in 2002 when she fell into the cook position on a tall ship schooner in Maine. After later pursuing a corporate career in business development, she realized that she wanted her life to impact the culinary industry. She went back into cooking, completing culinary school and working in several Seattle area restaurants including Rover's, Spinasse, Vif, and Hot Stove Society. Aimee is currently the Culinary Producer for NYC Wine & Food Festival, Aspen Food & Wine Classic, and South Beach Wine & Food Festival, producing live demonstrations with celebrity and restaurant chefs. She and her husband operate a small private chef business focusing on fine dining in-home service, parties and events, and prepared meals for home and travel. In her free time, Aimee enjoys camping, cooking (of course!), and vegetable gardening.
Baylor Paschall was born and raised in central Washington and instilled with a love of cooking from his parents. The hospitality industry was his home throughout his youth and school years until a short stint as an accountant. Deciding that life is too short to count beans, he decided to follow his heart and bake bread. He attended the Specialty Deserts & Breads program at SCA in Seattle and developed a passion for bread and all things fermented. Following school, he spent time in France working in a small boulangerie servicing a Michelin-starred restaurant. Back in Seattle Baylor spent several years baking in production, serving as sous chef, and pastry chef in local bakeries. He designed the menu for and opened an éclair shop in Pike Place Market. And at last, began teaching bread and viennoiserie at SCA. He brings his passion for baking and fermentation, and his enthusiasm for instilling that passion and knowledge in others to the students here.
Chef Christopher Harris has been working in the professional pastry and baking field since the age of 14. His first food service-related job of greasing cake pans and washing dishes turned into a lifelong embrace of all things pastry and confectionery. Twenty-plus years of professional experience (bakeries, private clubs, hotels, and restaurants) and a formal culinary education helped prepare him for his teaching career of twenty-three years.
Chef Christopher has won multiple awards for his decorative and sugar work and in 2018 he was recognized by the Washington State Chef's Association as Culinary Educator of the Year.
Cindy is a graduate of Seattle Culinary Academy and is proud to be a member of the team. She has been instrumental in helping the program achieve its goals of becoming more sustainable by sourcing and connecting with local and organic vendors. Cindy is responsible for ordering all food, supplies and equipment for SCA as well as coordinating facilities maintenance and being the general "go to person" for various questions and problems. She assists students working on their Chef of the Day projects with product questions and ordering and also manages culinary students on their 4th quarter purchasing rotations. Cindy also holds a B.A. in economics from the State University of New York at Purchase.
Becoming a tenured Chef Instructor at the Seattle Culinary Academy is the culmination of a life of cooking and teaching. Craig grew up cooking at his mom's and grandma's side, learning how food has a natural tendency to bring people together to talk and enjoy each other's company. He currently teaches third quarter in the Square One Bistro where students learn techniques on hand crafted pastas, international cuisines, as well as making foods in our Woodstone pizza oven.
Before teaching at SCA, Craig was the Executive chef at TASTE Restaurant and Catering at the Seattle Art Museum where he oversaw the operations at SAM Downtown, the Olympic Sculpture Park, and the Asian Art Museum at Volunteer Park. During his time at SAM, he focused on using local farmers, ranchers, fishers, and many of the other purveyors we are blessed with in the Puget Sound. Craig also worked with winemakers to organize dinners pairing their wines with seasonal dishes quarterly in the restaurant. One of his highlights during that time was being a featured chef at A-Z Winery, Adelsheim Winery, and at the Grand Luncheon at the International Pinot Noir Celebration in Oregon from 2008-2010.
Never wanting to miss out on a fun time, he has volunteered as a guest chef at fundraising events for American Cancer Society, Eat-Run-Hope, Farestart guest chef night, Seattle Humane Society, Tilth Alliance, Pike Place Market Foundation, and the Neighborhood Farmer's Market Alliance. Chef Craig's recipes have been featured in Sunset Magazine, Seattle Edible, Celebrated Chefs, Cocktails and food pairings, and the Soup Kitchen Cookbook raising money for the Seattle Women's Shelter.
Chef Dan graduated from Seattle Central Community College in June of 2001 with a certificate in Baking and Specialty Desserts. For the next 5 years, he worked for Parisian Star Desserts (a Seattle wholesale baker) in every facet of the business: production, finishing, customer service, and deliveries.
In 2007, he started his own custom and wedding cake business in Seattle, Decadence Custom Cakes, which was under contract with the W Hotel to provide all of their special occasion cakes.
He began teaching at Le Cordon Bleu Culinary School in Seattle in 2012. It was during this time that he was certified as an Executive Pastry Chef by the American Culinary Federation.
In 2016, he helped start a small French Bakery on Camano Island with his first boss, Pierre Fauvet. After 5 months, he was in charge of running all of the production of the bakery.
In 2018, he moved back to Seattle to take a position as Pastry Sous Chef for the Sheraton Grand Hotel. Now he is teaching first quarter students in Baking and Pastry at Seattle Culinary Academy, Seattle Central College.
Dr. Courtney C. Johnson is an American Cheese Society Certified Cheese Professional and Certified Cheese Sensory Evaluator. She has worked in the cheese industry since 2015, running the specialty cheese counters at several Seattle-area grocery stores and teaching cheese education courses around the Puget Sound region. Courtney has competed three times in the Cheesemonger Invitational, a national cheesemonger competition; she placed in the top 10 in 2019, and she placed second in 2020 and in 2022. In addition to her training as a cheesemonger, Courtney holds a PhD in German with a Designated Emphasis in Film & Media from UC Berkeley. She joined the faculty at Seattle Culinary Academy in 2022 but is no stranger to Seattle Central College, as she was a tutor in the Writing Center from 2014 to 2017. Outside of her teaching duties, she is the Executive Director of the Washington State Cheesemakers Association and co-owns a Burien-based mobile cheese shop, Street Cheese. Beyond work, she enjoys baking gluten-free treats, organic gardening, chasing after her dogs, Stella and Odin, and cooking with her husband, Joe.
Drew grew up surrounded by family farms in the heart of Oregon wine country. He started cooking and catering in his uncle's restaurant in high school and never looked back. He worked in various kitchens and a wine shop while attending the University of Oregon. After college, he moved to New Orleans where he worked jobs in restaurants while volunteering full-time following Hurricane Katrina. In Seattle, he attended culinary school at SCA and spent many years as at FareStart where he taught, coached, developed curriculum, and, most importantly, witnessed the positive impact that food and cooking can make in people's lives. He studied with traditional butchers and charcutiers in France and Italy and helped develop recipes and launch a successful farmstead charcuterie business in Guernsey. Drew loves to teach and share his passion for cooking, community building through food, nose-to-tail butchery, artisan charcuterie, sustainability, and fermentation & preservation.
Jennifer spent her early years in the kitchen with her grandmother making homemade pasta, foraging for blackberries, and using up every leftover available. Her food is heavily influenced by her Italian family, the seasonal bounty of the Pacific Northwest, and preserving foods, recipes, and techniques from past generations. Jennifer graduated from The Seattle Culinary Academy and began her career working in restaurants under Jonathan Sundstrom at Lark Seattle. From there she branched out to be a private chef and caterer with time spent at Beecher's Handmade Cheese as a Cheese Analyst. One of two analysts responsible for overseeing and grading each lot of cheese for release. Jennifer's teaching philosophy is to engage, mentor, and share her passion for food and hospitality and connecting to culture and tradition.
After receiving her Bachelor of Fine Arts from the University of Dayton in 1992, Chef Kim found her way to the world of glass blowing, working as an assistant and instructor at Seattle's renowned Pilchuck Glass School and Pratt Fine Arts Center. Her journey to the culinary arts was facilitated by a curiosity about the similarities between blown glass and blown sugar, a fascination and obsession that led Kim to enroll at the Seattle Culinary Academy where she earned an Associates degree in Pastry in 2006.
Upon graduation Chef Kim partnered with culinary visionaries such as Leslie Mackey of the esteemed Macrina Bakery, as a wedding cake designer, and Michael Mina as the pastry chef of the fine dining restaurant RN74. After honing her sugar showpiece skills at the prestigious Notter School of Pastry Arts in 2010, she moved on to create wedding cakes and desserts for Seattle's Four Seasons Hotel. Chef Kim has been teaching at the Seattle Culinary Academy every year since 2011, while she continues to enthusiastically work in the Seattle food industry.
Job Titles:
- Instructor
- Leader
- Chef - Instructor
Kären was the founding president of FORKS, the Seattle chapter of Chefs Collaborative and was honored with the Chefs Collaborative National "Sustainer 2012" Award. This award recognizes her as a chef and mentor; creating awareness of sustainable food issues and making delicious food. Alice Water's Edible Schoolyard named her an "edible education hero" in October 2012.
Kären is a leader in the both the local and national food community supporting many organizations: Slow Food where she worked with Gary Nabhan on the RAFT project, was selected twice as a US Terra Madre Delegate, and is now on the national board helping to direct the Chef's Alliance initiatives. She is a member of Women Chef's and Restaurateurs, Southern Foodways Alliance, and Les Dames de Escoffier in which she facilitates the "Global Initiatives" programming. Kären sits on the board of The Good Meat Project. You will find her honing her skills; with students at community events around the city, traveling to international food conferences like the MAD symposium in Copenhagen or Salone De Gusto in Italy, and speaking about sustainability issues in our food system.
Linnet has been working in the restaurant/food service industry since she was a teenager. Early on she recognized that service is not just about the quality of the food (though a very important element) but that creating an environment where guests feel both welcomed and valued is essential to a positive experience. Seattle is rich in talented chefs and cooks; excellent service can be what sets one restaurant apart from another.
In teaching the front of house courses to future culinarians, Linnet hopes to impress upon her students the value of a sincere desire to add grace and genuineness to the dining experience. Doing so also provides her students with an understanding of the vital link between the front of house (dining area) and the back of house (kitchen) and their relationship to the success of food service businesses. Having a foundational knowledge of the "whole picture" sets students up for success in whatever aspect of the industry they aspire to.
In addition to her many years in the restaurant world, Linnet has earned a Bachelor of Arts from Arizona state University and a Masters in Library and Information Science from the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee.
Born in Portland, Maine and raised in Portland, Oregon, Michelle Nguyen is no stranger to a daily feast at an oversized dinner table. Her household, headed by immigrants from Vietnam, numbered up to thirteen members under one roof, which meant everyone's help was always needed in the kitchen. A lifelong cook, she came to us with professional experience in some of our favorite local restaurants, from Spring Hill to Mistral Kitchen to Joule.
But like the rest of us, she took the long way around into a culinary career, studying urban planning at the University of Oregon and working in retail before opening a coffee shop in downtown Seattle. It was at the Seattle Culinary Academy, however, that she discovered a newfound intensity.
Polina is one of the first points of contact for the Seattle Culinary Academy. She directly assists the Associate Dean, instructors, and support staff to ensure daily processes run smoothly. Working with students in the Culinary Arts and Specialty Desserts & Breads programs, she is able to support them in achieving their educational goals. If you have questions or need information Polina is a good place to start.
Shannon's culinary journey started at the side of her grandmother in her kitchen where she first learned the importance and connection of food and family. That connection is a lesson that she carries with her always as a chef and a teacher.
Shannon started culinary school at 18 at the California Culinary Academy in San Francisco. Shannon went on to do her externship at a pastry school in Denmark, and then right into industry.
Shannon has had pleasure and opportunity to work running cafes, restaurants, catering, and in global corporations. Her positions have ranged from line cook to executive chef, corporate training leader to Chef Instructor. As the International Training Lead at Starbucks, Shannon created and implemented the international training program for the inaugural global partnership with Princi restaurants on Starbucks Roastery Reserve locations around the world. This included supporting the opening of five Roastery Reserves, both domestically and internationally in Seattle, Shanghai China, Milan Italy, and Tokyo Japan. As the Culinary Program Manager at Sur La Table, Shannon developed and created all culinary content for their cooking schools nationwide, working to develop culinary programs appropriate to targeted markets, food trends and regional cuisines. During her time as a Culinary Instructor at Le Cordon Bleu, Whole Foods Market and Seattle Culinary Academy she had the opportunity to teach culinary topics ranging from baking and pastry, introduction to culinary arts through the more advanced topics of contemporary and global cuisine.
Currently Shannon teaches the first quarter kitchen, sharing her passion and experience while remaining firmly rooted in that first lesson on the importance of food and connection in our lives.