Don is an award-winning journalist, a certified culinarian, and culinary educator. He is the current president of the board of directors of the Chefs de Cuisine Education Foundation, a board member of the Chefs de Cuisine Association of San Diego, and a member of the American Culinary Federation. He also serves on the Advisory Board of the Mesa College Culinary Arts Program.

The “Cooking With Chefs” series he designed and coordinates, focuses on students attending schools in underserved San Diego neighborhoods. Youngsters are provided with healthy recipes, recipe ingredients and lessons on cooking, food safety, and nutrition as part of an effort to combat the high incidence of childhood obesity and childhood diabetes in many of these communities.

Kitchens For Good is an important component of who he is and what he does. On a daily basis, the program proves that individuals can overcome mistakes and poor decision making to achieve positive, dynamic, lifechanging successes. The Kitchen For Good staff and the apprentices they serve make a major personal commitment to reach goals that transcend culinary skills and become empowered to create generational excellence for themselves and their families. The essential passion here goes beyond culinary skills training and further than job placement in the food service industry. It inspires everyone involved with the organization to reshape the way we see ourselves and the way we view and interact with the world around us.