After my first year, I went to work for the World Trade Center to make some money and ended up transitioning to work with one of the most famous fine-dining restaurants in the world: Le Cirque on Park Avenue. While there, I was in charge of the lobby lounge and room service.
Oftentimes, I would be serving seven-course meals to some pretty high-profile guests, like Robert De Niro, Sergio Valente and Donatella Versace. At the time, the restaurant was housed in the Mayfair Regent. They were really amazing business people. I learned a ton from them.
The ownership was incredible. I had a great experience at the hotel, I used to walk through the lobby and think there are people wearing shoes that cost more than everything I own.
After that, I went back to Cornell to finish my degree. I then started at The Ritz Carlton, Atlanta in the late 80s as the Beverage Director. That experience was amazing, but I realized that I was a New York City girl at heart. I moved back up north to work at the Rockefeller Center.
Up to that point, I had changed jobs a fair amount during the years; I like to go into a place and fix all the things that are broken until I get bored.
I was the manager at the American Festival Cafe in Rockefeller Center, which was like running a business made of three restaurants. That job was the perfect blend between running banquets and running a restaurant because every season, we changed the restaurant entirely. We changed the uniforms, we changed the menus, we changed almost everything. Summer Garden where the ice skating rink is, is a whole different restaurant from when it's the ice skating rink. That was a lot of fun and I never got bored.
Once I got pregnant, I decided I didn't want to be working the crazy hours anymore, so I got into a doctoral program and taught at Fairleigh Dickinson University for 15 years before moving to Sacred Heart University.
