Meriel Bautista

Meriel Bautista is a pastry chef, culinary mentor, and restaurant consultant with over a decade of experience in the restaurant industry. She currently serves as Pastry Chef at Cafe Momentum, a non-profit restaurant program in Carrollton, Texas, where she teaches justice-served youth restaurant skills through an 8-station rotation that includes the pastry station. In this role, she focuses on mentoring and coaching the youth to help them build resumes and prepare for the workforce. Meriel earned her Baking and Pastry Certification from Le Cordon Bleu Dallas between 2012 and 2013 after graduating culinary school in 2013, marking the start of her 13-year career. She also holds a Google Project Management Certification, which she pursued to leverage her organizational and efficiency skills from kitchen operations into corporate project management. Prior to her current position, she worked as a restaurant consultant helping bakeries and restaurants with openings and menu management, and she gained extensive leadership, mentoring, and coaching experience during her time at JCPenney Corporate Headquarters. Meriel attributes her success to her strong sense of leadership, preferring to lead, coach, and mentor team members rather than manage them directly, and she values being solution-focused and helpful to others in both her professional and personal life.