Along my journey, I have encountered many purpose-driven people. I am not easily impressed, but among those people, Peter Ivey impressed me. I have invited him to join me on a number of virtual platforms and he always adds tremendous value. Peter Ivey is the CEO of The Reggae Chefs®, a culinary services company offering private (personal chef) and organised events that uniquely fuse Jamaican food with the country’s robust culture. He is also a trained Chef and Food Safety Instructor, a serial entrepreneur, a highly coveted speaker, a well-known thought leader and writer and a philanthropist.

Originally from Jamaica, he has been living in New York for the past 20 years. Ivey’s love for his homeland is the main catalyst behind his work. His brainchild, The Reggae Chefs®, has been featured in Forbes, the New York Daily News, Caribbean Life, Television Jamaica and has been archived in The National Library of Jamaica. Ivey is the producer of ScatteredJamaica®, a video series highlighting the interesting and unexpected culinary and cultural links between Jamaica and places like Ghana, New Orleans, the United Kingdom and Panama, as identified in his global quest to discover the origins of the food and culture of his island home. Ivey is the Founder and President of The League of International Chefs Association (TLICA) whose mission is to support and mobilise a global network of food industry professionals to sustain communities by using food and culture to end hunger and poverty. He was also invited to present at the United Nations’ 2018 International Education Week training. Mission: FoodPossible was featured in Forbes Magazine as the possible answer to the world’s hunger problem. There are so many more accomplishments from this very humble mentor and role model.   I must admit that I never paid attention to the term food security activist before meeting Peter, and I am sure many will read about it for the first time. Here is a Q&A between him and I:

SN: What is a food security activist and what inspires you to chart this course?

PI: A Food Security Activist is someone who understands that when it comes to access to affordable, nutritious food, the playing field is not levelled. A food security activist understands that for one reason or another, there are people who exist in communities and cities and countries around the world that don’t have access to adequate nutritious food for a sustained period of time. As an activist, you campaign relentlessly. You shout from the mountain tops for change to come into effect to change. As an activist, you do what you can within your power, so the people who actually have the power are inspired by your passion or to cause change. I was inspired to chart this course because of the great contradiction  I learned while training to be a chef. I learnt that while the culinary field was exploding, global hunger and food insecurity numbers were als skyrocketing. In other words, there were more people going hungry at a time when more people were learning the skills of the culinary arts. This simply did not make sense to me. I decided I wanted to use my skills to feed people who really needed nourishment.

SN: What changes will you like to see in the culinary arts sector?

PI: This is why I decided to do something about it and launch my latest venture, PIII Culinary Kits to activate social purpose in the next generation of chefs.

The culinary arts sector isn’t just for glamour. Some would make it seem like you are just as good as the gourmet dish or the most exciting one you can make. The people skilled in culinary arts have more than just skills to make flashy presentations and work in the world’s finest restaurants. The people who are involved in that sector are people who are trained to understand and see food from a different perspective and when you say food, food is something that we all eat and need to survive. And if this is something we ALL need to survive from a nutritional perspective, from an access perspective and we’re ALL not getting what we need to survive, then the people who are trained in the arts of culinary really have a social purpose handed to them on a platter. We have to be responsible to people. So I would love for that sector together as a unit to become much more socially responsible by watching what we waste as food, being mindful about replenishing our resources, and understanding our impact on the environment when we eat certain foods and harvest certain foods and how we harvest our food. I would love to see that sector become much more thinking about a regenerative perspective, thinking circular and thinking about sustainability.

SN: I know how passionate you are about your craft and your desire for more people to be more aware of food security. Who is your dream partner to make that possible?

PI: My dream partner in the fight against hunger and food insecurity would be the people, the citizens of this world. As you know I have a t-shirt line called Food SecuriTEE and if you look at our slogan ” Apparel for the global warriors in the fight against hunger and food insecurity” is really to create a brand, regular apparel that food warriors, where regular people like myself can show and wear as a badge of honor where people can see us and recognise us. So my dream partner is not some big conglomerate or even other great people and organisations who are really and truly doing the work and there are so many, but when we talk about dream…my dream partner is the globe, the people of the world collectively when we wake up and supporting work like Mission:FoodPossible supporting activists like myself supporting neighbours supporting farmers. If we were supposed to collectively, BOOM! Wake up, that’s a powerful partnership. I wouldn’t need to name a conglomerate; I wouldn’t need to name another organisation to work with. It’s the people that we want to wake up. It’s the people we want to activate, collectively, that’s my dream partner. It’s the people I dream of partnering with to move in unison to eradicate SDG #2.

SN: What are you most proud of?

PI: I’m most proud of the people who I’m able to inspire. I Remember my son, when he was about 3 or 4 got a project in school and his teacher asked him who he most admires and my son said his father is a superhero because his father is trying to solve hunger. I have a team that I work with that is dedicated. I’m most proud of the people that can choose to be anywhere at any given time doing their own thing and who choose to be by my side doing this mission. Whenever we have to execute a Mission:FoodPossibe training, I have to speak to people and explain what we do, and whenever I’m done explaining what we do, the people who say, “say no more, I want to be a part of this project.” That is what I’m most proud of, the ability to inspire people. I’m proud to have the ability to inspire others when it comes to this work. I know you probably expect me to name an accomplishment, but my biggest accomplishment is the ability to light the fire inside others to fight alongside you. There is no reward bigger than that.

SN: What has been your biggest challenger to date?

PI: My biggest challenge date has been more psychological than anything else. I’ve never shared this anywhere else before, but I’ve always had this relentless pursuit of success as an entrepreneur. It was literally all that consumed me for a while. However, to be passionate about food security and start learning about regeneration and learn what it would take to evolve as an entrepreneur and practice what you preach, that means it can’t be about profit. It has to be about community and people who don’t have, and if they don’t have, then that means no matter what I have, I also don’t have. I think understanding this as a young man making a transition, discovering more about the world and having your conscience activated, and having to stand true to that was something that presented itself as a challenge.

SN: What will you say to someone embarking on this journey?

PI: I’ll tell that person to go for it! Make sure your passion about this  . It won’t be easy. If it was easy, everybody would do it. Do not chase accolades, any glimmer of success and recognition see me receive. They have to remember that I’m more than ten years deep in this work. So I would say we need you. We need more of you. Go for it.

SN: What advice will you give to 16-year-old Peter?

PI: A friend of mine once told me that “if you can see yourself in the big picture then you can see yourself in the big picture.” It was so profound to me because that’s how I feel without ever using those exact words. So when I heard it, it was so profound that I felt like why I hadn’t heard this quote before? My 16-year-old self would have benefited from this. I would have wanted this knowledge to understand that when I look to the future, I should look for the greatest satisfaction in doing for others. That’s where the wealth is, that is where the riches are, that is where respect is, that is where you get the best night’s sleep. So at 16, when I left high school, well ready to take on the world dreaming of being this high-flying entrepreneur, I would have understood what that meant.

I trust you feel the passion and conviction of this young servant leader as we continue to celebrate this beautiful journey called life BEYOND THE RUNWAY.