Jessamyn Rodriguez

Jessamyn Waldman Rodriguez is an accomplished social entrepreneur, educator, and hospitality executive with a deep passion for innovation and community-building. She is the Managing Director of the Jim Joseph Foundation, an organization dedicated to advancing Jewish education across North America. Jessamyn collaborates with visionary partners to develop, support, and incubate initiatives that promote growth and inclusivity.

Career and accomplishments
Prior to her role at The Jim Joseph Foundation, Waldman Rodriguez held the position of Managing Director at Daily Provisions, a chain of cafes owned by Danny Meyer's Union Square Hospitality Group. She transformed a beloved neighborhood cafe into a successful chain during her tenure.

Before joining Union Square Hospitality Group, Waldman Rodriguez founded and served as the CEO of Hot Bread Kitchen, a social enterprise and business incubator based in New York City. The organization trains immigrant women for success in the culinary industry and has been widely recognized for its innovative model and positive community impact. Waldman Rodriguez authored The Hot Bread Kitchen Cookbook: Artisanal Baking from Around the World, which earned critical acclaim and further solidified her position as a respected leader in the nonprofit world. She has also been named to a variety of lists of industry leaders, including InStyle's "50 Badass Women", Crain's "40 Under 40", and Food & Wine's "Most Innovative Women" and a "Woman of Influence" by NY Business Journal in 2016.

Early life and education
Born in Kingston, Ontario, Canada, and raised in Toronto, Jessamyn Waldman was born into a family of educators. Her parents were teachers and her great-grandfather was an immigrant from Russia. She spent her childhood in rural Ontario, where it was hard to find challah for Sabbath dinner, so her mother would braid their own.

She studied Latin American Studies and Fine Arts at the University of British Columbia, where she spent a year abroad in Santiago, Chile, and worked on an international development project, teaching human rights and health education in Guatemala. After graduating, she pursued a degree in public administration at Columbia University, where she specialized in immigration policy and human rights before earning her degree in 2004.

Early career
Waldman Rodriguez began her career in public service as the Youth Landmine Ambassador for the Canadian Department of Foreign Affairs. She then took her first of many positions at the United Nations with the United Nations Development Program before becoming a researcher in the Population Division of its Department of Economic and Social Affairs. Her work with the UN brought her to various locations, including Costa Rica, Mexico City, and New York, where she completed her Master of Public Administration. She later transitioned to education, working as a teacher at a bilingual elementary school in Sunset Park, Brooklyn. In 2005, she was appointed Director of Human Rights Programming for the School for Human Rights in Brooklyn, where she combined her education and human rights expertise.

Jim Joseph Foundation
Waldman Rodriguez joined Jim Joseph Foundation in September of 2022 as Managing Director. She is responsible for developing initiatives that foster education, community-building, and innovation in support of the constantly evolving Jewish community in North America. Founded in 2006, the Foundation supports Jewish education of youth and young adults in the United States.

Hot Bread Kitchen
In 2000, Waldman Rodriguez applied for a job at the microfinance organization Women's World Banking. A friend fortuitously misheard it as "Women's World Baking", which served as the genesis of her entrepreneurial vision, and her social enterprise based around bread making was born. She earned her Master Baker Certificate from The New School before apprenticing in the bread kitchen of Daniel, the restaurant owned and operated by French culinary icon Daniel Boulud. She was the restaurant's first female bread baker and worked there for two years.

In 2007, levied by her experiences in public policy and baking, she founded Hot Bread Kitchen, a non-profit social enterprise teaching immigrant and low-income minority women the necessary skills to bake and succeed in the culinary and hospitality industries. Calling food "the highest vestige of culture" and bread "so evocative that one bite can transport you back to another place and time," Waldman Rodriguez founded Hot Bread Kitchen as a place for women to train and work to find better jobs and improve their families' financial situations.

Dubbed "The United Nations of Bread", Hot Bread Kitchen leaned on the cultural background of its trainees to bake many types of bread - including Moroccan msemen, Persian nan-e barbari, and Jewish challah - which were in retail outlets including Whole Foods. In just three short years, the operation moved from Waldman Rodriguez's home kitchen to a part-time space in the Long Island Artisan Baking Center to the city-owned La Marqueta market in East Harlem.

Under her leadership from 2007 to 2018, Hot Bread Kitchen trained 250 women from 42 different countries. Waldman Rodriguez calls its 100-hour culinary training course a "crash course in how to be a good employee and all the wraparound skills that come through experience," including classes in "English, kitchen math, bakery science, professional skills, and management." All graduates are then placed with culinary employment partners. Graduates earn an average of 70% more than they did before entering the program.

In 2015, she authored The Hot Bread Kitchen Cookbook, an award-winning bread-making book for home bakers featuring recipes made at the bakery and photographs of the women at work. Clarkson Potter published the book, which was translated into both German and Portuguese. In 2015, Yahoo! Food named it the Cookbook of the Year, and The Washington Post called it one of the ten best cookbooks of the year.

Hot Bread Kitchen Incubates
In 2010, Waldman Rodriguez opened HBK Incubates, a small-business incubator assisting entrepreneurs in opening culinary start-ups. In her eight years spearheading the venture, it incubated and helped launch 172 businesses.

In 2022, HBK Incubates held its first PROOF Pitch Showcase, where five food entrepreneurs pitched their businesses to a panel of culinary experts, including Top Chef judge Gail Simmons. The inaugural PROOF Best in Show award went to 2 Girls & A Cookshop, a mother-daughter-operated business that sells Jamaican tacos and street food.

Daily Provisions
Beginning in 2018, Waldman Rodriguez brought her proven success in incubating and growing food businesses to a new venture, Daily Provisions, a chain of upscale, all-day cafes from Danny Meyer's Union Square Hospitality Group.

As Managing Director, she led the beloved local coffee shop to a larger footprint in New York City. She grew the brand into a multi-unit chain, overseeing all operations including real estate, technology integrations, marketing strategy, community engagement, and leading a team of 120 people.

Under her leadership, Daily Provisions launched a dine-away category (delivery, catering, and pick-up), allowing the business to thrive during the pandemic and comprising nearly 60% of total sales.

In March 2022, Nation's Restaurant News published a Breakout Brands profile of Daily Provisions, speculating it might be Danny Meyer's "next Shake Shack".

Honors and awards
Waldman Rodriguez is the recipient of several awards and accolades, including the Neighborhood Achievement Award from Mayor Michael Bloomberg, the Clinton Foundation's Global Citizen Award, and the New York Women's Foundation's Celebrating Women Award. She has appeared on multiple industry lists, including Crain's "40 Under 40", Food & Wine's "Most Innovative Women", and InStyle Magazine's "50 Badass Women". In 2015, she placed 18th on Fortune magazine's list of the 20 Most Innovative Women in Food and Drink.

She is honored to use her expertise to help the next generation of leaders. She sits on the PS144 School Leadership Team and the boards of The Museum of Food and Drink and The James Beard Foundation Awards Advisory Committee. She advises small businesses, including Everytable and StealthCo Undies, a pre-revenue children's apparel company.

With deep experience in fundraising and earned revenue strategies, Jessamyn analyzes critically, acts strategically, and builds ideas into for-profit businesses, high-impact nonprofits, and social enterprises.

Personal life
She and her husband, former Sotheby's Vice President and wine expert Eli Rodriguez, have two children.

When she started Hot Bread Kitchen, she commissioned a mill-equipped stationary bike built to grind corn while pedaling. She would call up Eli Rodriguez when there was too much corn and ask him to come over and man the bike to keep up with demand.