You hear a lot about students who come to New England Culinary Institute who are career changers. Well, I was a school changer. I was studying anthropology but found I was filling up all my notebooks with recipes. Next, I convinced my parents that I really wanted to come to cooking school. I chose NECI because it offered real world training in working restaurants.

I graduated from New England Culinary Institute in 2001 and went directly into a sous chef position at a great restaurant. I would not have been able to be successful in a position of this much responsibility without the skills I learned at NECI. The small classes, hands-on experience and the support of my amazing chef-instructors were the best preparation I could have had.

When I decided to enter an international competition, all of my former chef instructors were available to help me, even though I had graduated six months earlier. When I went to Paris for the competition, NECI connected me with another graduate, Eric Johnson, who was the executive chef of Jean-George Vongerichten's Market restaurant in Paris. With Eric's help I was able to prepare for the competition in Market's kitchen. The connections I made through NECI will support me for a lifetime. It really is like a family.

Sometimes it pays to be good at everything. Sue had finished her degree in English and when she told her father she wanted to go to culinary school, he thought she was out of her mind. Only after she had moved to Tokyo to teach English three years later, did she make up her mind once and for all. “I guess the distance between me and the things that influenced my decisions helped me take the culinary school plunge.” When she came to NECI, Sue knew she wanted to be a food writer, but she had no idea she would find a job that included developing recipes, as well. Her degrees in English and culinary arts, and her incredible attention to detail have set her writing apart from other food magazines. Yet she says, “It’s a hard career for most people to understand. They think recipes just grow on trees or something!” Sue thrives on the balance between kitchen and computer work. Just when she cannot imagine coming up with another recipe, she says, it’s time to do writing for the magazine. “And just when I’ve had it with that, it’s time to go back into the kitchen and be creative that way.”

Watch Alton talk about his days at NECI.

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