Her Story
About Nicole
Nicole Vildosola is an operations manager with over 15 years of experience in the food and restaurant industry and beverage industry. She currently serves as operations manager at Odyssey Dining in South Florida, where she oversees catering for private aviation and yachts, collaborating with chefs, culinary teams, customer service, and drivers to source and deliver client-requested dishes. Nicole earned an associate's degree in Culinary Arts from Cordon Bleu in San Francisco, which she pursued after growing up in a big Latin family where food was central. Her career path includes working in restaurants and fine dining before transitioning into managerial and operations roles, as well as owning a catering company serving Baja-style Mexican food in California. During that time, she received awards from the San Francisco Chronicle for best restaurants, best food, and dishes. Nicole attributes her success to hard work and trusting that the right people will notice, and she values respect, teamwork, and creating a positive environment in the kitchen. She has also volunteered with World Central Kitchen's operations team in Northern California, managing their food program during the pandemic and helping serve over 2 million meals while partnering with over 100 local restaurants.
Her Interview
Ten minutes with Nicole
01What do you attribute your success to?
I attribute my success to keeping my head down and putting in the hard work. At the end of the day, the correct people always notice you. I've been really grateful to meet incredible people who have helped me get to the next step every time I look for a job.
02What’s the best career advice you’ve ever received?
The best career advice I've received is to trust yourself and to know that your work speaks more than everything else. Sometimes people get set up with wanting that big title or knowing that you have to work all these hours, but eventually all those great things will come to you.
03What advice would you give to young women entering your industry?
My advice to young women entering the industry is to work hard. Work work work hard. It's still thankfully nowadays I feel like when I started 15 years ago as a woman I did have my challenges and I know the industry has definitely changed but working hard and trusting yourself and knowing that you'll get there and it just takes one step at a time for you to get to the top.
04What are the biggest challenges or opportunities in your field right now?
The biggest challenge right now is finding loyal people who are going to be there for the job and do the job because they care not just for money. It's hard to find reliable people that show up on time and do the tasks as requested. Having a great team makes everything easier.
05What values are most important to you in your work and personal life?
Respect would be kind of like the first in understanding and kind of being a team player and working together. It's really important for me. And just having a huge care not only for the food you're preparing but for the people that you work around because I believe especially working in anything regarding food you know for many times a lot of us spend more time in those kitchens than we do with our families so it's really important to create a great environment so that all of us can enjoy putting all those long hours when they're needed.
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