If not us, then who? If not now, then when?
As your journey takes you further into leadership, you will reach a point in your career when money and job titles provide only so much satisfaction. That’s when you’ll understand that real satisfaction comes from the fuel underneath it all. Your purpose.
All the daily work you engage in over the years, whether you know it yet or not, is adding up to your “reason for being.” I’ve already told you about my personal career mission: executing fresh, responsibly and transparently sourced food that I would be proud to serve my grandmother. Beautiful, nutritious, real food at enormous volume. Millions and millions of meals. Impact.
Over the course of my career, access, affordability, and job creation became my “reach” goals. I wanted to drive positive change for the industry by helping others find their way and challenging folks to stay the course and not let anyone or anything get in the way of their dreams. These aims became the treasured, heartening thread woven through it all.
So, with all that in mind, I want to ask you an important question: What is your personal career mission? How are you going to make your mark on the world once you reach a place where you can really move the needle? As poet Mary Oliver famously said, we only have one wild and precious life. What big things will you do?
I mean, what’s it all for—the blood, sweat, tears, learnings, angst, failures, triumphs—if not to do all the things we are capable of?
That process of discovery starts now, at whatever point you’re at in your career. Because by the time you reach executive leadership, you will be able to enact the change you want to see.
Your job now is to uncover what you care about and what those changes look like. Step one in finding your purpose? Opening your eyes and truly grasping the knowledge that, whether you’re a line cook in a diner, a social media manager for an energy bar company, or a determined food entrepreneur selling your homemade jams at the farmers market, you are part of a global industry that has the single most profound impact on the lives of every person on the planet.
Did you know this about the food world and its crazy opportunity for deep, world-changing impact? It’s absolutely true.
This is the real reason I love this industry: The taste of opportunity is not just about me and it’s not just about you. It’s about the whole damn world. The food world has the unparalleled capacity to lead the way in taking care of each other and the planet—making the world healthier and more equitable and habitable—and together, we need to do a much better job of harnessing that incredible opportunity.
I mean, food is squarely at the center of some of the biggest issues of our time, and if you stay in this industry, make it your career home, and get to the top, you—yes, you—can make a meaty, life-altering, global impact on issues that are urgent and significant.
Excerpted from A Taste of Opportunity: An Insider’s Guide to Boosting Your Career, Making Your Mark, & Changing the Food Industry from Within by Renee Guilbault. Published by Page Two Press. © 2023.
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Renee Guilbault is a veteran food-industry consultant with expertise in large-scale, global, multi-unit food and beverage operations. Before launching her consulting firm, Essayer Food Consulting, she held leadership roles at Pret A Manger, Bon Appetit Management Company at Google, Compass Group, and Le Pain Quotidien where she was instrumental in developing revolutionary menus and executing high-volume strategies all over the world.
