Nicole Pisani
Co-Founder, Chefs in Schools
“We believe that better is possible. We can provide food that’s made from scratch, made with love and that everyone would want to eat. If you wouldn’t want to eat it, why would you serve it to a child?”
- An enthusiastic pocket-rocket from Malta who works tirelessly to transform school food and the education around it. Her mission is to instill in children a lifelong love of good food and so help reduce childhood obesity.
- Formerly Head Chef at leading London restaurant NOPI and author of cookbooks including ‘Salt Butter Bones’
- In 2014, Nicole responded to a tweet by Henry Dimbleby asking for a chef to work in a Hackney school. She took the role, introducing cookery lessons including how to cook on fire pits and butchery.
- Having achieved a better work/life balance and huge job satisfaction, Nicole co-founded the charity Chefs in Schools in 2018.
- In 2020 The Hackney School of Food opened, which works to create the next generation of school chefs and increase education around health and nutrition.
- A champion for change, by the Autumn of 2020 Chefs in Schools was providing 11,000 London students with fresh, nutritious and creative food.
- Where Jamie Oliver’s famous campaign in 2005 aimed to alter things from the top, through government edict, Nicole has started from the bottom.
