So the best part of Food and Finance is the opportunities they give you.
The hands-on experience you get with the food.
The feeling I get when I'm in the kitchen with my chefs.
We are the only culinary arts school in New York City.
We train students in commercial kitchens.
And students are exposed to a lot of the industry equipment
better preparing them for postsecondary and industry.
First year, freshman year, it's the basic basic basic training
which is basic knife skills, knife cuts, measurements.
By the time they get to sophomore year,
then they start to learn about recipes.
How to do recipe conversions, how to mise en place a recipe.
I look back and I see how much I've grown in every aspect.
My knife cuts got better, more organization, sanitation skills—it's all improved over the course of the years.
By their junior year, they get to explore
a world of culinary skills and food and technique.
And then they start gearing towards going
on to senior year
where they can start getting ready for scholarships like C-CAP and Monroe.
The industry partners are critical for our success.
At each term, we can place up to
32…36 sometimes, students in restaurants.
To work with the professionals, it shows like
what my future is going to look like and the
accomplishments that I'm going to achieve
and that one day that could be me.
We have visiting chefs that come throughout
the year. You get to taste the real thing.
You get to hear from the real chefs out there
in the world and again it's that connection,
that exposure, and that relationship building
that we are able to provide for the school.
So Cornell University came about in 2007-2008.
When we started our partnership, we started
with a hydroponics lab where they grow lettuce
and different types of greens.
So we reduce the carbon footprint by actually
teaching youngsters that you can grow food
in the marketplace, in this case, the urbanized setting.
So it doesn't have to travel 1,500 miles to come to 
New York City to end up on your plate.
We don't only teach cooking. How to speak,
how to present yourself, how to market yourself.
All those soft skills—make you become so organized
that it prepares you for anything in life.
When I graduate, I'm actually gonna be going
to CIA because I won a two-year scholarship there.
And over the summer I'm going to have a job.
I plan to go on to culinary college and then find a job in a high-end restaurant or own my own as well.
I'm trying to aim for CIA and I plan after the CIA or during my time there
I would like to at least work at a Michelin-star restaurant.
All the students who graduated out of the
Food and Finance program, those students are
not only ready for college, but they are ready
for the real world.
