In recognition of Women’s History Month, IFMA The Food Away from Home Association is looking back at six women whose pioneering work earned them the association’s coveted Gold Plate Award, an honor synonymous with foodservice operator of the year.
We present them chronologically beginning with our first female Gold Plate honoree who received the award in 1961.
 

 

 

Her career path has focused on food safety and celebrating diverse dining traditions in an often-underestimated foodservice segment: elementary and secondary schools. Her efforts give the “scholars” she serves a heads’ up to getting ahead.  

Jessica Shelly understands the deep connections between getting the rights foods to students and their learning success. Meals help prepare future generations in mind and body. Read all about it.

 

Jessica Shelly challenges the same old same ol' in student dining

 

If Jessica Shelly hadn’t become the foodservice director for Cincinnati’s 67 public schools, she might have made a spot-on menu planner for the city’s zoo—not for the humans who visit, but for the residing animals. Serving an internship there while pursuing an undergraduate degree in zoology, she and her team would sample what they fed the beasts, whose tastes ran to mealworms and crickets.  

 

She hasn’t gone that far afield in introducing new options at the district, which produces about 60,000 meals a day for “the scholars,” as Shelly calls them. But she’s broken new ground in a host of other ways, from offering vended meals that qualify for government reimbursement to setting up stations where students can sample the spices of other cultures. She’s also initiated a program to buy from local minority-owned businesses and pushed hard for clean labels.  

 

Coupled with a solid business orientation, Shelly’s knack for innovation has made her one of the most respected K-12 foodservice professionals in the nation. It also earned her a coveted Gold Plate award from IFMA The Food Away from Home Association in 2023. Only four school foodservice professionals have been selected for that honor in the program’s 70-year history, but Shelly was enthusiastically nominated by Nestlé Professional Solutions for her remarkable efforts and the judges agreed.  

 

Shelly came to the job more than two decades ago via a decidedly nontraditional route. For 10 years beforehand, she had worked for local health department jurisdictions, training foodservice facilities on the principles of food safety. One of her responsibilities was providing food-safety training for foodservice facilities, including the student dining operations of the city’s public schools. She learned of an opening in the district for a training and compliance supervisor and made the switch.  

 

 

Today, as director of student dining services, she sees her role as feeding America’s future. It’s not a responsibility she takes lightly. “She has an unwavering focus on improving outcomes for students in and out of the classroom. Period,” her mentor, district Chief Operating Officer Chris Burkhardt said of Shelly, an acknowledged protege, on the night she won the Gold Plate.  

 

That mission has extended beyond Cincinnati’s schools. Shelly is a participant in the Healthy Kids Collaborative, an initiative launched by The Culinary Institute of America to bring healthful, flavor school meal options to more children.  

 

She’s now been in the field for nearly 35 years and remains active in such industry groups as the Association of Healthcare Food Service (AHF) and the Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics.  

 

Shelly knows firsthand the importance of children eating well: She’s the mother of triplet boys.  

 

  

Special thanks to our sponsor Nestlé Professional Solutions and P & G Professional.