As a chef, stress is part of the knife kit, part of the uniform.
Stress can motivate or stress can paralyze. To operate successfully through challenging situations, a creative needs Skill, Personality, Character, Flexibility, and, most importantly, mise en place. With everything in its place, progress is possible in the kitchen and beyond.
About the speaker
Alexa Wajed is a Buffalo-born creative entrepreneur and an Alumnus of City Honors High School. She is a visual artist, trained chef, jewelry designer, and project manager. Alexa, along with her husband Edreys Wajed, owned a greeting card and stationery design company for almost 20 years which enabled them to open a brick a mortar gallery, Gallery 51 on Elmwood avenue in the early 2000s, one of the few Black-owned businesses on the strip at the time.
Alexa received her bachelors degree in hospitality management from Canisius College and participated in a semester abroad in Bulle, Switzerland. After many years in the corporate sector, Alexa returned back to school to earn an additional degree in culinary arts and had the unique opportunity to have an externship on the Amalfi Coast in Positano, Italy for 10 weeks.
Currently, Alexa is an adjunct professor at a local college, a mother of two young boys, and makes time to serve a faithful and growing clientele as a personal chef. She enjoys helping people understand and adopt healthy eating habits, mentoring the youth, and creating abstract art along with unique hand painted jewelry which is sold online and in a few local gift shops and galleries.
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