Culinary Diplomacy: Leadership, Relationships, and Soft Power with Jeremiah Knight

What can the kitchen teach leaders about influence, trust, and soft power?

In this episode, Shelby and Belinda are joined by Jeremiah Knight, Foreign Service Officer and author of Diplomat in the Kitchen, to explore leadership through the lens of culinary diplomacy.

Jeremiah shares how food, storytelling, and hospitality can build trust across cultures and serve as a powerful form of soft power in professional environments. He also reflects on what it took to create Diplomat in the Kitchen over several years, including the importance of building the right team, accepting honest feedback, and pursuing a passion project strategically while maintaining a full-time career.

This episode offers grounded leadership lessons on influence, discernment, resilience, and building relationships that last.

Transcript

Why Turn A Passion Into A Project

SPEAKER_00 0:01

Welcome to the Leadership T podcast, where we invite you to slow down, connect with your purpose, and strengthen the leader within. My name is Shelby, and I am joined by my co-host, Belinda. And today we are thrilled to welcome Diplomat in the Kitchen, author, and Foreign Service Officer, Jeremiah Knight. Jeremiah is a friend of ours, and he is a dynamic diplomat, an incredible professional, and most importantly, he cooks. He has written a book entitled Diplomat in the Kitchen, and it covers recipes from Jamaica to Antarctica to Iceland and everywhere in between. There's something for everyone in this book. And what I love about Jeremiah is how he uses the beauty of culinary diplomacy to weave storytelling and building relationships and using creative ways to negotiate as a diplomat, as a person who cares about community. I know you're going to get a lot out of this episode. We're so grateful to know Jeremiah and to support him. So without further ado, let's get into it.

SPEAKER_04 1:21

We are definitely enjoying everything you have here for us today. And it's going to make, I think, the afternoon a really exciting one. So we're interested in learning about why you have pursued this project. What is it that you know you have a very successful career and yet you have successful it is, but okay. You are very successful and we're not, you know, no modesty here. And yet you have pursued this project. This didn't happen overnight. You really had to dig in and, you know, build a network, you know, learn, experiment. You had successes, you had failures, but you stayed at it. And I'm interested in knowing more about what drove you to do this and what keeps you coming back to the table.

From Blog Idea To Magazine Column

Finding A Voice And Writing The Book

SPEAKER_03 2:15

That's a good question. I mean, looking at my past, food has always been a passion for me. Um when I was in high school, I know that I wanted to go to school for culinary artists, but my parents had other parents. Like you have one brother as an artist, and that's enough to be a fancy. And I I remember I was I got the application for Jowns in the Wells, and that was gonna be my path. That was gonna be a chef. Because my uncle was he he was the master chef in London, and my aunt has had a Jamaica restaurant in in Atlanta, and my grandparents co-owned two restaurants in Connecticut in Springfield, Massachusetts. So like food has always been like a really important part of my family. And I had picked up food from a very young age. It was not an option to go to school for that. Um, I never gave up my passion, right? So, you know, I continued like going to grad school, I started cooking for all my friends every Sunday because I at least never are for dinner alone by yourself. Um, but the key pivot to taking this from an uh just a passion to something that I was actually gonna pursue. I remember it was 10 years ago when I was here in Washington working, and I said, you know what? I want to create a blog about food. That's when blogs are like really big. And I was like, I want to have a name for like this particular thing that I'm doing with food around the world because I was really because my career was traveling around and picking up new cooking techniques and learning different flavors and styles. So I came by draft, I remember I drafted this whole idea of this blog. I asked certain of my friends, would they help which I was like, Lawrence Randolph? I was like, he was gonna contribute his recipe. And I remember talking about Anna as for him. I was like, you're gonna contribute this. And I wrote this whole invitation letter, and it was plummeted because it never actually didn't, right? But I'm saying it's the same because it was all a process. So fast forward about three years later, four years later, I moved back to Dominican Republic, and I had a longtime friend who was the owner of this conglomerate of magazines, lifestyle magazines, and one in particular is called Santa Mirz. I remember she came up to me, she's Cuban, she's Cuban that had migrated to DR, but she was of Scandinavian descent too. And I actually said, You know, you've made all these sunny dinners at your house, but I've never been violent. And I was like, okay. So I meant who's Scandinavian dinner for her, right? That's to her surprise. And then she said, You know, I'm doing actually a special edition of my magazine just around food, and we're gonna call it Manhai, red, right? And so she was like, Would you be interested in having a future? And I'm like, she was having real chefs and everything. I was like, I'm just cooking at my house for people, but I said, Of course. And then I said to her, I was like, if this is successful and it becomes a full magazine, I have an idea for a column. And my column was gonna be a thing that I had written up three or four years before. And so it wasn't it. That special edition was a big hit, and they decided to make a full flinch magazine about my really like, you know, high-level magazine logic. And so then I she introduced me to the new editor-in-chief for the magazine. I presented my idea that had for a blog to make it actually into uh uh actual uh column, and it was called The Lord of Flavors. And so for about four years, I was writing, I'm gonna write for free because it was just my because I wanted to get myself out there in the food world. And what better way to do it? And I and I I put a proposal on that too, because not everything you have to get paid to do, certain things you just do because it gives you the opportunity, right? And so I wasn't known for food, period, uh on my social media tubes. It was more about travel, and I was like, I want to get into the food space, so what better to do is to write for a food magazine? I'm doing it for free, it doesn't make a difference, but I get to have access to this, right? So I got access to all the chefs and all this, and then like on their social media tubes, they were tagging me until more people start following me about food and they start pushing my social media to a whole different way. But then I ran into a problem. They were editing the life out of my video, my um column because people with magazines basically just want to look at the photos and look at the recipes, they don't care about your stories, right? So the first column I wrote was long, was talking about my time in Iceland and about the food and they were like, after they're like, Jeremy had two paragraphs, and I got upset. I was like, this is crazy, like I really want to write. And then I said to myself, let me write how I want to write. After about five, four years of that, I was like, I'm gonna write how I want to write, give them the edited version, and then I'm gonna start writing the book. And I was gonna use the name that I was creating for my column to actually read my book. So it was almost seven, eight years in the making to do that.

SPEAKER_00 6:49

The power of storytelling really comes through in your book. Um, I love how you dedicate the book to your grandmother. You start by writing about your grandmother and the influence that she had on your life, and especially, you know, cooking with her in the kitchen. And I just wonder how did your upbringing influence the way that you approached diplomacy? And how is it that that contributes to your views on storytelling and the power of storytelling?

Advice To A Past Self: Team And LLC

SPEAKER_03 7:23

So having a grandmother as a pastor, storytelling is like definitely part of what you do, right? I remember as a high school kid, she would sit me down on Saturdays and be like, hey, could you only write my film for tomorrow, right? And she would tell me some of the thoughts and ideas, and I'll draft you together. Little I do, I was becoming a speechwriter. I was doing that because after offering, she would then be like, have the offering. So I was like, this is a good deal, right? You were right, you were right, serbians. But storytelling was really important, and then the ability to um to just know how to engage with various people from various backgrounds. Like coming into her church, they were beaten from various socioeconomic backgrounds and the ability to just make everyone feel welcome. And I think her and my mom was like really good at doing that too. I came, and that's just my grandmother was my father's mom, but also my mom was a person that loved to entertain and loved to share. And so that just became a part of me. But the storytelling part, you know, was really important. Like how I think my aunt, I wrote about my aunt in Jamaica, how she opened my world to food outside of the US by my first trip going to Jamaica when I was 12 years old. And so then I sparked my interest of like flavors and food, and in my family, I never thought I was artistic because my brother's an artist, I thought art is just painting. Then I start looking like you know, culinary arts is actual art and your ability to pick up things because I was a fast money. You show me something, and then I start knowing how to do it. Right. Um and how does that, I mean, going into affecting my with my career moving forward, you know, I brought in that ability to just be open to differences and have an ability to just um share what you have to say in a palatable way that people can from various backgrounds can be able to receive what you have to say. I think is super important. And that was one of the key things that I did learn from her. And also one of the most was just my family, even to this day, knows how to keep me healthy, right? And that this is just this is one part of who you are, but it's not your this is not the totality of who you are. I guess you come with so many different aspects of who you are, and that one thing can be taken away in a amount of seconds, and so you never build yourself up completely on that personality. So when I approached this job as a diplomacy, I was like, I was looking at well, this thing gives me a great opportunity to taste food from around the world, right? It gives me an opportunity to draw and see some interesting things, and with this job, it gave me access to even one of the kitchens of restaurants for the folks that I had which otherwise I wouldn't. So I was like, I was using it as opportunities for my passion, along with learning how to do diplomacy.

SPEAKER_04 10:06

So you've talked about how this experience has allowed for you to put yourself out there in ways that you wouldn't have expected to before. You had to write a column, you had to spend time with lots of different chefs and celebrities and things like that. If you could give yourself advice, like looking back over these seven or eight years, to if you could talk to yourself at the beginning of the journey, what would you say to yourself to encourage you to start and move forward and keep going?

Cooking As Diplomatic Icebreaker

SPEAKER_03 10:36

Well, one thing I definitely would have done that I found out later on was that I should have created the LLC a lot in my path because all these expenses that went into doing a lot of this stuff, I could have used it through my company, right? So I didn't realize that until farther on into the game, that that was an important part. Also, um I think learning how to create a team earlier off that had had your same vision would have been helpful to push the process a lot faster. Because I was doing it low star for quite a few years, writing on. Then I got to a point where I was really like, I can't. So this book, I don't accredit this book to just me. And if you see the dedication, I go for another, it was a village that worked together to help make this happen. I had a team of about five or six people that worked with me, that believed in my vision. Um, and some of them even did it on their free time, which I felt bad. You know, I had to I had to compensate them however I could for um supporting me and the whole brand itself. So I mean, from the designer of my logo, who was a Jamaican guy, from the the food photographer and the food stylist, to my friend who was the the sub-editor of the night scene I wrote for, who designed the whole concept, because the whole concept materiality. And then my principal editor, like she was amazing. Like being stuck in it was it was actually a blessing. Like to go to the Marshall Islands, I got stuck in this like political process about quarantining for the country, and I wanted having to do four weeks in hard quarantine in Hawaii and three weeks of hard quarantine on the US military base in the Martian Islands. So that was seven weeks straight, right? During that seven weeks, every single day I would get up. My editor pushed me every day. She would send me a list of things she wanted me to work on. I will work on all the stuff, I would send it back. If it wasn't for that quarantine, I don't think that book would have been fully edited.

SPEAKER_05 12:34

Wow.

SPEAKER_03 12:34

And my editor was amazing. I mean, she transformed, I think I'm gonna need to invite her, right? But she was able to pull out more of me, and I was getting annoyed at the time. Like, what else the fuck question she has about this? But she was able to pull on me to like push a little bit more and make the book in the way it should be. So I credit it too. But I think to answer your question clearer is like making sure you before you start launching into things, make sure you have the correct team at the beginning to help you. Because I think it wouldn't have taken as long as it took if I would have worked on freeing that team first and then moving into the project.

SPEAKER_00 13:13

So you've shared some really poignant points about leadership and how leadership skills have enabled you to reach this milestone of publishing a book, the importance of having a team around you that is supportive and, you know, trusting the process and putting in the work. Like this isn't something that happened overnight. This is something that you have been building towards over the past seven, eight years. And so I want to shift a little bit and talk about the intersection between your abilities as a chef and your skills as a diplomat. And I think it would be really interesting for our audience to hear how has culinary diplomacy helped you with some tough situations abroad when you were in a position of having to broker deals and negotiate as a diplomat. How did your culinary diplomacy skills come into play?

Hosting To Ease High‑Stakes Talks

Holiday Table: Fusion And Tradition

SPEAKER_03 14:10

So, I mean, being aware of different cultures and their culinary histories, I think is a good icebreaker. And I'll never forget, you know, when I moved to the Marshall Islands, like breadfruit was such a big thing for them and it's such a big part of oceanic culture, right? But breadfruit was brought from the Pacific to the Caribbean. So like it was something that I grew up. So when they saw that I actually understood what breadfruit was and how you cook it, and next one, it was a good icebreaker for like, oh, this guy kind of gets us, he understands. So like and use the use of coconut and all this kind of stuff. I think that that was just really good. I mean, even when I studied abroad in London, I remember we would share a kitchen and it was a group of five or six of us in our dorms. And one girl was uh, she was in Indian, British Indian, right? And you know, the fact that I could share, like, oh, my curry is this way, but you guys, and we would do curry exchanges and all that stuff. So being aware and exposed to different cultures, I think, and and having an appreciation for them is a good icebreaker. But also using your skills, your cooking skills, into actually helping to forward agendas is, I mean, I have used it to my benefit during my career. Um, I think I shared um when I was in DC during one of my uh book signing events that, you know, when we were in the Marshall Islands, we were doing the compact negotiations, which was like, you know, they do it every 30 years. It's very, it gets very tenuous about the U.S. nuclear legacy and the likes. So the U.S. delegation was coming in to like push forward on the officially start and push forward on some of our agenda for it. And normally that's a very tense time with the Marshalles because currently now with the situation with the run at Dome and the leakage into the ocean and the lights, there were just some serious issues that they had. Um, and I'm like, I never forget that my boss, my ambassador, said to me, at that point I was a deputy chief of mission, that she wanted me to host the dinner at my house, partly because my house actually had a little bit more space than hers. And also to get up, it was for people that had access issues, it was easier. But also, she wanted me to cook, which I was like, uh, excuse me. Yeah, exactly. I don't, I'm not, you have a full-time chef. Right. Why am I cooking? Right? She's like, Jeremiah, I think they're gonna really enjoy um you preparing the mail. I've told them how great chef you are, right? And I was like, okay. Um, and so I, you know, I curated this whole meal. Um, they were the the US delegation plus now most of the Marshallese had not been to my house. It was only a few folks that were in that delegation actually had been over. So they were high, they had heard about my cooking from the actually, it was a story about me cooking for the president that made his rounds around there. So they were happy that they were actually able to come over and cheer. And so through serious conversations and laughter and food, I think it's it's pre created like a good start or beginitiation of a conversation that took a year or two to finish. But having that as your opening, and I mean, I think it provided a record, the right ground for having those type of conversations.

SPEAKER_04 17:19

That sounds excellent. I know in my own experience, I have found that it's so easy to connect with people when you prepare a meal for them, right? You share with them, you're able to explain your culture and your background and your history really is a connection point. So, with that in mind, I was wondering if you could tell our viewers a little bit about what we have here today, what we're enjoying. And I'd also love to hear about some of your favorites from the book.

SPEAKER_03 17:44

So, I mean, both of these are actually in the book. So, you know, uh from my Jamaican and Caribbean side, you know, holiday sorrow, the hibiscus um plant is something that's used constantly for Christmas. And so I made some holiday sorrow for you guys. Sorrow. And then also I but purposely I like to show how Christmas is celebrated in various cultures. Like, and so my whole book is about meshing together, doing doing fusions per se of different cultures to have a one thematic focus. And so, you know, Christmas in Iceland is done by having black pepper cookies, right? These black pepper, these spice cookies that have black pepper delights. So I have those on the table with the Jamaica, so we have the Caribbean with Scandinavian, right? Put together at one point. So you guys should try them. And they're both inside of my cookbook. Uh and um I made them fresh just for you guys. Um, and the sorrow has been sitting for about a week. Because I say in my cookbook, never serve it right away. You have to let it sit. So the flavors mesh together and and marry together really well.

SPEAKER_04 18:54

100%. Yeah, I know, excited.

SPEAKER_03 18:57

So I bought some of those to my cousin's uh Christmas dinner, too. And they and I ate up with like a dozen of them. So they're very taken. They're like a spice cookie, but they're a little bit different than a regular spiced cookie.

SPEAKER_04 19:08

I think for many of us who have lived all over the world, our tables look like this. Right. Right? They reflect recipes from many continents.

Global Pantries And A Smaller World

SPEAKER_03 19:18

Right. And that's the good thing about it. You can be, you can, and then I put my personal take on the cookies. So, like, for instance, the cookies are not exactly 100%. I mean, I had a little bit different different things in there that I thought that would be nice. And then my book encourages you to do the same thing. Like using your background, whether it's your your own personal culture background to it, or your experience from other places to do the put to put inside and fuse inside the recipes, it's a good thing. It's not a negative. Like, you know, there's some things I do purists, but a lot of things I like to do is like, you know, mesh and put things together. Because the world is becoming a more um you know connected place, even with produce and talking about the food industry and the likes. And um, you know, nowadays you can go to the grocery store, like growing up, you know, as a kid, I never saw star fruit in the grocery store. And then nowadays, or passion fruit in the grocery store. So like the world is becoming more and more. I mean, my I say in my cookbook, if you read in the chapter about Pakistan, I found Jamaican jerk, a grace, jerk, a bottle of grace jerk seasoning in Pakistan. So that just shows I like how the world is becoming smaller and smaller. I was like, when I saw that, I was like, what in the world are Pakistanis doing jerk seasoning?

Soft Power And Relationship Building

SPEAKER_00 20:28

Yeah, I like what I thought. We are proud to be sponsored by State Department Federal Credit Union, a financial institution built around the realities of global service and frequent relocation. From competitive lending and rewards credit cards to international money management through WISE, SDFCU provides reliable financial access wherever members are posted. Learn more about their global banking solutions at SDFCU.org. State Department Federal Credit Union is federally insured by the National Credit Union Administration and is an equal housing lender. Membership and product eligibility is subject to approval. Yeah, that's actually a segue to another question that I wanted to ask you as we think about modern-day professionalism and work and how we approach work and all of the discussions about artificial intelligence and new forms of technology, et cetera, and how those things are going to define the way that we approach work in the future. I just wonder if you could talk a little bit about the power of soft power and how you have been able to accomplish the unachievable or the unattainable or the impossible through the power of culinary diplomacy.

SPEAKER_03 21:53

So I I I they wrote an interesting article about me when I left the Dominican Public when I was a spokesperson there. Um And I would do these journalist gatherings at my house, and I purposely would fix the majority of the food. I wouldn't cater it. And, you know, we would have some interesting, serious conversations. And I saw the power of building relationships so that even when there was a need for professional engagement, we still had that level of personal relationship. And then they wrote about me and they're like, Jeremiah was the consummate spokesperson, diplomat that would take all your hard questions, but never fully answer them the way you wanted to smile. And so that was that was my mantra. Like, I'm gonna I can build on my relationship, but also even with people, and I I purposely reached out to people that were uber critical of our government, our policies, um, invite them to break bread in my house. I mean, there was one particular person, she we are BFF style. I mean, she before I arrived, she would constantly have like these uber critical uh remarks, and she had one of the most listened to radio talks, political talk shows in the country. And I was like, why aren't we inviting her to do stuff? Like, we need to have her over. And I was like, I saw her at an event and they introduced me, and she was like, I was like, you need to come over to my house for one of my gatherings. And she's like, Me? Do you know who I am? I was like, Yeah, that's who I am. That's why and she came over and she said, I know what you're trying to do. And did she ever stop being critical of fuel's policies? Not necessarily, but did she give you would she call me in advance and ask me, hey, I'm about to say X, Y, and Z. So do you have any remarks about this? Yes. Do we have off the records where I said, Hey, last time you were on the air, you said X, Y, and Z. It didn't make you look the most intelligent because you need to have some more facts. So these are some of the facts, right? So it would help me to do backgrounders, not just with her, but others. And I think that food and the fact that they bringing people into your space, like we have these representational homes that a lot of people don't and I fully in my whole career truly believed and using my space as a place to engage with people, yes, right? And and bringing them into your atmosphere because inviting someone out to a dinner that's in a restaurant is entirely different than having them sit at your table, or even even if you did, you know, a like a jacuterie board of stuff, like just having that presence there and showing that you cared, and then also being cognizant of some of their likes, like their cultural relativities, you have some of their foods and this and that on the table, then also use it as an opportunity to share some of your background and some of your food.

SPEAKER_05 24:29

100%.

SPEAKER_03 24:30

I mean, that being said, I mean, I go into how I always use Thanksgiving as a way to demystify, or will break the myth that American food was just hamburgers or hot dogs. I told folks growing up, I hardly ever went to McDonald's or Burger King. Exactly.

SPEAKER_02 24:45

If I used to McDonald's or burger, even my parents were like, you, we're gonna make that up. Oh yeah. Hey, you that's the big old french fries are like two times the size of regular French fries. I think I don't know what home.

SPEAKER_03 25:01

I was like, I was like, I don't know what you guys are talking about. I had my mom cooked almost every single day. Yeah, and my grandmother was the same exact way, right? And so there was a rarity that we went out to eat fast. So I was like, so I use Thanksgiving as a way to show my experience with food in America, and that our food has a rich history and it's also very regional, which like certain things growing up in New England, you guys who are from New England didn't eat. Right? And so, like, um, and I think that that opened up a space also for folks that they got to see, and and my things dinners became a thing. Like in Jamaica, my last one, almost 85 people showed up and caused a traffic jam. And the whole, and I mean the whole street was like clogged because everybody's parking almost like, and I kept inviting, I made two turkeys, two hams, three chickens. I was like, and I cooked it all myself. Yeah, I didn't have anybody. And it was great because in the DR and in Jamaica, my housekeepers would like literally spend the night and they would help out with like, and I would show them how to make food outside of their own culture. And I just talked to my house, my housekeeper from um Dominican Republic on Christmas Eve, and we were laughing about like how she learned and she cooks some of this stuff even to this day.

SPEAKER_05 26:18

I love it. So that's amazing.

SPEAKER_04 26:21

Yeah, I I I think we've all had experiences where things that are really meaningful to us when we share them with others, it really opens doors. I wonder if um if you have a favorite though. Like, is there a favorite dish or ingredient that you've used? We've heard about gumbo diplomacy. We've you know, I know I've got a few things in my repertoire that I that have a story behind them to really help me connect with people.

SPEAKER_03 26:48

Let's know yours.

SPEAKER_00 26:49

Everything in my book is perfect, so there's no favorite that you may have like.

Go‑To Dishes And Reading The Room

SPEAKER_03 26:57

But you're asking, like, is there a go-to dish? I am so whimsical in that sense. It's so weird. Like, because even if you look at like what I cook on a Sunday, there is not, yeah, there's a very few times I do a lot of repeats. Like for me, what I cook for myself as comfort food, I don't necessarily share it with everyone else. Right. Uh, but what do I do to where I try to impress someone in the house? It's just literally it all depends on how I feel at that moment. It's it I yeah, I don't because you know what I do, I keep in mind who that person is that's coming over. Um, what I've seen about their likes and dislikes when it comes down to food and the likes, or also what I think that they should be exposed to. And that's different for every single person. Like it's not it's not the same thing. So for me, I uh yeah, it's not like I know that there's gumble diplomacy that that should highlight your particular heritage and the likes, but I don't necessarily do that. I just do it based on what I have surmised, what will go well in that particular environment. So, like, and that's the good thing about me is that people are like, they come over my house and like, we don't really ever eat the same thing over and which is nothing wrong. It's good to have some same things. Yeah. Um, but I I I have a lot of variety. I vary a lot. But like for me, if it's just up to me in my house, I cook the most boringest meals for me. Like my food is not people, people are like, how do you stay in shape? Like, and you, yeah, on social media, I was like, that's social media, my friends. Like Monday through Friday, I'm having like chicken breast with like vegetables. Yeah, I even have popcorn with the smoothie for dinner. I love popcorn. And like my Jamaican family in Atlanta, they know when I come, I want cooked down soft fish with green bananas and avocado. That to me speaks Jamaica. Like, that's my Jamaican food. Right? I'm not doing that. I don't want the curries, I don't want this and that, I want that. And my auntie, like when I came and went down there for Thanksgiving this year, she's like, you know what's inside the stove waiting for you. I was like, my favorite food.

SPEAKER_00 29:02

You're gonna have to have us back over so you can see. Definitely. Take some of that.

Regional Menus And Flavor Play

SPEAKER_03 29:06

And I mean, that's what I do. I try on Sundays. The norm is to try to do like expose people to a different culture and from start to finish. So, like, you know, I would do a Chilean meal. Well, I'll start with like pisco sours and have like a ceviche and then go into like the pastela chocolate, which is inside the book, the land salad, and it ended off with a dessert from the region and like so they can have a full experience, you know? And then sometimes I do regional ones. Like, I went to Vietnam this past summer, and I took a cooking class there, and I was and I always, well, when I'm going to places, I'm always tasting around like, what can I bring back? And that's in the back of my mind, everywhere I go. What can I bring back? And so I was like, you know what? Every year I do an end of summer barbecue on my rooftop. Let's do Vietnamese barbecue, right? But then in my cookbook, I have this recipe for Thai like sticky rice, but I wanted to change it up a little bit. So I did some roasted coconut to go along with the sticky rice. And I put a little bit of lemongrass inside the coconut milk while it was cooking up. So I like, so you you you start playing around with the flavor. And so I just basically basically made made like a South Asian, like older South Asia for like the end of your barbecue. Wasn't it necessarily Vietnamese or necessarily Thai, but it was having all those influences together.

SPEAKER_04 30:24

Right. I will say, however, as someone who spent nearly four years in Peru, I think pisco sour peace.

SPEAKER_01 30:32

Oh, I'm not this is going on. I never said where pizco sour was from. I just said that too many exact pisco sour. What the fuck?

SPEAKER_03 30:46

Peru is one of my favorite Latin American cuisines because it's such an amalgamation of like Asian slash indigenous slash Spanish. Like it's African. Uh yeah, African, yeah, it's such like the I eat a gallina and like Lomo Sotheau. It's amazing. I think I think they're there, I ate myself into, and then they give, well, my experience at Lima was their peaceful styles were given in larger uh cups than the worst.

SPEAKER_04 31:17

There was one not enough, but three is too many. Of course not.

SPEAKER_03 31:21

But three is too many.

SPEAKER_04 31:22

Three is too many.

SPEAKER_03 31:23

No, I I I have a great, but you know, there's also a age drinking pisco that one of my friends gave to me as a going away gift, which I had never that you don't mix with lime and it's not. It's basically a sipping pisco, which is uh mainstay. Yeah, I had never, oh my god.

SPEAKER_04 31:39

There's special glasses for those two.

SPEAKER_03 31:41

Yeah. That was so the funny thing about this, I was talking about peaceful. So when I I was in Senegal, I got invited out to dinner right before I left to this restaurant that had some Latin flair to it and Asian flair, but they had peaceful sours. And the group I came with had never tried Pisco before. And I was like, no, we gotta try the Pisco Sours. And they became fans of Pisco.

SPEAKER_00 32:05

I love it. I love it. Y'all got me feeling like I've been missing out. Oh, you haven't had pisco? Well, I've had pisco, but I've never made it to Peru. Oh, Latin American countries that I have.

SPEAKER_01 32:15

That is like even that that is the food is telling me. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_03 32:19

Peru is amazing with cuisine. Yeah, it's I mean, everywhere you go, it there's just full galore. That's amazing.

SPEAKER_04 32:26

Yeah, there's so many rated restaurants.

SPEAKER_00 32:28

Yeah. Yeah. That's one of the things that I love about your book. There's like no corner of the world that you don't touch. And even though people have complained that I've included their country. I was like, I can't put every single country in the bookbook. But there's a little bit for everything.

Scope Of The Book And What’s Next

SPEAKER_03 32:44

My West African friends were very disappointed that I did I have I tried to explain to people, there was a cutoff point where I had to stop adding countries and had to actually start working on editing and finalizing the book. And so I said, a lot of these places I hadn't gone to before I finished the book. Right. That I went to fight. So I got a message from one of my close friends in the Marshall Islands. He's like, but I bought your book, but there's no Marshallese recipe. I was like, there is a Marshallese recipe. I actually wrote it for the magazine, and I said I'm going to share it at my second edition.

SPEAKER_00 33:14

Okay. Also, there's a stuff.

SPEAKER_03 33:15

I've been writing my second edition.

SPEAKER_00 33:18

Love it. It's wonderful. Love it. Love it.

SPEAKER_03 33:20

So Diplomat in the Kitchen T-O-O. That's what it'll be called. And it'll be sharing stories for more, more stories from my friends and me about their experiences around the world.

SPEAKER_00 33:32

Can't wait to can't wait to read it. I'm going to be pulling on you guys to share your stories. Please do. Please do. I think, first of all, thank you so much for hosting us. Thank you for all that you have done in the world of diplomacy. And as the frustrated chef who became a diplomat as you have described yourself, I wanted to just close by asking you what is a critical leadership lesson that being a chef and a diplomat has taught you? What is something that you want to share with our audience?

Leadership Lessons From Kitchen And Corps

SPEAKER_03 34:09

I think as a leader, like, you know, stepping out into spaces that are not comfortable is key to always key to reaching your personal objectives. It's not comfortable. Like me deciding to invest money and time, and I didn't know how to create LSC. But you'll find that when you start stepping out, the support will come. And it will come in so many different ways. But you'll never know that. The fear of not receiving the support should never be the that which prohibits you from actually doing it. And being confident that there will be mistakes on the on the road as you go along. That's completely fine. And then having the ability to be transparent around who you're working with on those mistakes and how you're learning from them, right? And just doing it. Just don't be if it doesn't work out, who gives a care, right? You learn from it and then you move on from it and it's fine. Because, you know, they I I I read, I brought up the author of the 10% entrepreneur, the book that was written about investing 10% of your time into your personal goals while you have a professional job. Because you guys, you need money to do your goals, right? So like uh just dropping 100% of what your your full-time job is to go after a personal desire, where are you gonna get the funding? Right? So using the money that you have from your nine to five to pay for your passion projects is key until a little bit by little by little, that passion project starts generating more money and you get to invest more time into that. I think and so a lot of people want to be entrepreneurs, but they want to you just jump in it full throttle. And I don't think that necessarily is the best thing as a leadership tenant. I think you need to be strategic and be wise, right? And utilize your resources, your your networks. Remember, you guys asked me one of the things I would have done at the beginning, making sure you build that network at the beginning and not later on. And then having a circle around you that are not afraid to tell you their opinions and the truth, right? And so some of my ideas were wacky and they weren't great. And I'm glad that I had people to tell me that they're hold on a second, that's not gonna work. I mean, this is a perfect example, like at the beginning for the cover of this book. I was like, yeah, I had this wonderful photo of me, like, you know, uh on the uh cooking on the on a on a beach. And I was like, we should put that as a friend. My friend that was the editor. Yeah, those pictures are wonderful. So it's like you don't nobody knows who you are. Right.

SPEAKER_02 36:36

You are not an established, nobody's gonna put a picture of you and put it on their coffee table. I'm so glad you told me that. And this became the cover instead of my face.

Strategy, Networks, And Honest Feedback

SPEAKER_03 36:48

Like, so if no one was honest about that, I could have made a mistake, right? And so them being honest and you being able to receive criticism, right? So what we did is we went through, there was other photos of food that we debated. Oh, it was a group of us because I decided that it wouldn't be just my decision, right? And so the reason why this photo was picked partly was because this is a recipe I wrote myself. Um, come from scratch. And this is an American recipe that when I was overseas, it was hard to find sweet potatoes everywhere. And so for Thanksgiving, I wanted to have something that mimics sweet potatoes, how I grew up. So I started using carrots and made a carrot souffle recipe that kind of mimics. And I thought the photo would be, and they all agree with that, but it was some but with some back and forth that we actually came up with this. So having a team that's just honest, that can share, and then you're listening, actively listening. Yeah, because a lot of people think keeping your mouth shut while someone's talking is listening and it's not necessarily, but understanding where I'm coming from and and trying to work on because it would have been a flop to have that picture that you're talking about before.

SPEAKER_00 37:55

Because you are not closing in, James.

SPEAKER_02 37:57

Right. They're about to.

SPEAKER_03 38:01

They're about to. And just but being realistic about like who you because some people, their egos take over so much, right? And being being grounded and having people to help you stay grounded. Exactly.

SPEAKER_04 38:11

It's really important. So Jeremiah, we're really thankful that you could join us today. If our audience wants to be strategic and learn more about where they can get the book, where they can connect with you, where should they go?

SPEAKER_03 38:22

So my website is diplomat in the kitchen.com. So it has links to buy the book and this and that. And then also on um Instagram, I am J-E-R-R-Y underscore J-A-K, Jerry Jack. And it's the same for Twitter and also for threads. And I think, and yeah, those are the three that mainly use. I'm supposed to be doing a YouTube page, but that will be coming in the future.

SPEAKER_04 38:48

We're ready for it. We'll we'll link to it. We'll link to all of that in the show notes for everyone who's listening and watching. And we'll also share a little more information about the book as well. Jeremiah, again, thank you so much for joining us.

SPEAKER_03 39:02

Thank you guys so much. You didn't drink enough or eat enough.

SPEAKER_00 39:06

There's no, we're on it now.

SPEAKER_04 39:08

We're on it. And for our audience, if you are listening on the audio, come join us. This is a really fun episode. Join us on YouTube. Like and subscribe while you're there. And thank you again for joining us on the Leadership Tea Podcast, where we are sipping wisdom and stirring success.