Chef Therese Nelson
Private Chef
Culinary Director, The Lifestyle Collective
Founder - Culinary Curator, Black Culinary History.com
Chef Nelson is a proud product of Newark, NJ where she was born and raised in its historic Weequaic section and attended University High School. She is a suma cume laude graduate of Johnson and Wales University where she holds degrees in Hospitality Management and Culinary Arts. Her culinary career began in 2000 and spans the east coast where she trained and worked her way through the kitchens of major hotel groups from Hilton and Marriott to Orient Express and Four Seasons. In 2006 Chef Nelson joined the all female team of Get Em' Girl Inc. brands where her culinary talents were used as recipe consultant for the company's 2 branded cookbooks The Get Em' Girl's Guide to the Power of Cuisine and The Get Em Girl's Guide to the Perfect Get Together, as food editor for the brand's lifestyle website Get Em' Girls.com, and acted as the executive chef for the company's in house boutique catering company where her food graced the tables of global brands such as Black Enterprise, Carol's Daughter, BET, MTV, WEEN, Verizon and RocNation. Her most recent venture, Culinary Director of The Lifestyle Collective, puts her in direct connection with clients with services ranging from culinary consulting and menu development to personal chef service and recreational cooking classes.
In addition to her professional cooking Chef Nelson is the founder and culinary curator of Black Culinary History, an organization she founded in 2008 as a way to connect chefs of color in order to preserve black heritage throughout the African culinary diaspora, to promote and share the work of her colleagues, and to preserve the legacy being constructed by black chefs for this next generation.
Among her professional affiliations Chef Nelson is a proud member of Eta Sigma Delta, Women Chefs and Restauranteurs, Southern Foodways Alliance, Chef's Collaborative, National Association of Professional Women, and the Culinary Historians of New York. She currently resided in East Harlem, NY where she enjoys being a part of that community's rich and diverse culinary landscape both personally and professionally.