Eunice Gwanmesia

I want to bring my success first to God, because he's the one that helps me, because sometimes I don't even know how I do it. All my inspiration comes from him, solely, like, a hundred, like, I would say 95% my inspiration, and then I would say my drive, the hard work for myself as well. And then I'll also say my family and friends, who have always been there to encourage me. I remember how I had to fight with my dad for years to go to culinary school, and my dad was like, what culinary school? It wasn't seen as a thing back then in Cameroon. No one knew it, so I was like, I need to go to culinary school. I dropped out of the university, and then worked, saved up some money, and was able to pay for my application to go to Bulgaria in the culinary school, and my dad later then supported me, and now he's my number one supporter. Himself and my mom, yeah.

The best career advice I've ever received is to never stop. Keep going. No matter how hard it gets, it's gonna be hard to start again. It might be hard to start again. So, no matter how hard, keep putting in whatever strength you have.

The advice I'm gonna give them is, apart from your talent, get trained professionally. And find someone that can mentor you. And don't rush. Don't rush. Start from the bottom, and learn everything as you go up.

I would say, right now, the biggest challenges in the field is, which is gradually changing, a lot of the system was usually for men in the kitchen, and stuff like that. I remember one of my chef instructors told me one day in school that men are the one who run the world. Men are the ones who run this business of hospitality. Women don't. So I shouldn't think of doing anything good. It's different now. You have women that are becoming head chefs, and yeah, it's gradually changing. And then one other thing and challenge in the industry is, especially for pastry chefs, we are not being paid actually what we are worth, because they think we make just pastries, and there's that great disparity in pay. Like, they will pay an executive chef up to $120,000, and then the pastry chef, they might be offering $70,000 or not even something, but at the same time, they're putting in the same work, they're there for the same hours, putting in the same work even more than the executive chef.

In my work and personal life, I would say there's one scripture in the Bible that I always live by: whatever you do, do it as unto the Lord, and not unto man. And that's something that I live by, and whatever I'm doing, I do it as if I'm doing it to God, and that helps me to be able to do it for man as well. So I keep imagining myself, the pastries I'm making, what if God was to sit here with me and eat them, will I, how will I want it to be, or whatever. So those are some of the values that influenced me, my personal and work life. And another thing, too, is consistency. Making sure that everything I'm doing has to be the same every day. Like, you keep putting in the effort, keep putting in the same effort. Today can't be bad because you had a bad day. Yes, and I believe that for work, like, when you get to work, you should be able to strike that balance. We all have stuff that we go through, life happens every day, but you shouldn't let something weigh you down so much that you are not being productive at work. And I also believe in hard work, and I believe in the spirit of excellence. And respect and honor for your leaders and elders, yeah.