Feeding the Soul: A Conversation with José Andrés and Laysha Ward

José Andrés

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This episode features an extraordinary conversation between chef and humanitarian José Andrés and Target strategic advisor Laysha Ward.

Andrés’s work with World Central Kitchen recently earned him a nomination for the Nobel Peace Prize. In this conversation, which was recorded at the 2023 Pennsylvania Conference for Women, we’ll hear about his work fighting hunger, the power of compassion, adaptive leadership, and effecting positive social change.

Learn from his vision for creating a more equitable and nourished world — and identify small ways in which you, too, can make a difference and have an impact.

José Andrés

Our Guest: José Andrés

José Andrés, named one of Time magazine’s 100 Most Influential People in 2012 and 2018, and awarded the 2015 National Humanities Medal from President Barack Obama, is an internationally recognized humanitarian, culinary innovator, educator, and New York Times bestselling author. A pioneer of Spanish tapas in the United States, he is also known for his groundbreaking avant-garde cuisine and his award-winning restaurant collective, JoséAndrésGroup. In 2021, he launched José Andrés Media (JAM) which produces television series, books, podcasts, and digital content with a focus on food-related stories and the culture of food. JAM projects include the Emmy-nominated series José & Family in Spain for Max and the Longer Tables podcast. In 2023, Andrés and George Washington University partnered to lead the world in delivering food system solutions through a Global Food Institute, powered by interdisciplinary research and teaching. In 2010, Andrés founded World Central Kitchen, a non-profit which uses the power of food to nourish communities and strengthen economies in times of crisis and beyond. WCK continues to respond to natural disasters ranging from hurricanes, wildfires, and earthquakes, as well as humanitarian emergencies around the world. Andrés’ work has earned awards and distinctions, including Outstanding Chef and Humanitarian of the Year by the James Beard Foundation and the 2017 Lifetime Achievement Award from the International Association of Culinary Professionals. Andrés and World Central Kitchen were awarded the Princesa de Asturias Foundation’s 2021 Concordia Prize. As a naturalized citizen originally from Spain, Andrés has also been a tireless advocate for immigration reform.

Guest Host: Laysha Ward

Laysha Ward

Laysha Ward is an accomplished C-suite executive with 32 years of leadership experience at Target, where she now serves as Strategic Advisor. In 2017, Ms. Ward was named Executive Vice President, Chief External Engagement Officer, overseeing Target’s enterprise-wide approach to engage and deepen relationships with cross-sector stakeholders to drive positive business and community impact. She is a founding member of the Racial Equity Action and Change committee
(REACH), established in 2020 to help lead the organization’s strategy to drive lasting impact for Black team members, guests and communities. Ms. Ward began her career with Target in 1991 as a member of the store sales and management team of Marshall Fields in Chicago. She was named Director of Community Relations in 2000 and promoted to Vice President of Community Relations and Target Foundation in 2003. She previously served as Executive Vice President, Chief Corporate Social Responsibility Officer before being named to her current position. In 2008, President Bush nominated and the U.S. Senate confirmed Ms. Ward to serve on the board of directors of the Corporation for National and Community Service, the nation’s largest grantmaker for volunteering and service. She continued on the board under the Obama Administration, where she served as board chair. Later that year, she was promoted to President of Community Relations and the Target Foundation.
She serves on the Aspen Institute Latinos and Society Advisory Board and the Stanford Center for Longevity Advisory Council; is a member of the Executive Leadership Council,
the Economic Clubs of New York and Chicago, Alpha Kappa Alpha Sorority, and The Links,
and serves on the boards of Greater MSP, the Minnesota Orchestra, and the Northside
Achievement Zone. Laysha is also a member of Denny’s Corporation board of directors
and United Airlines board of directors. She received a bachelor’s degree from Indiana University, master’s degree from the University of Chicago, and an Honorary Doctorate of Laws from the University of Minnesota’s Humphrey School of Public Affairs. She and her husband, Bill, reside in Minneapolis, MN.

Women Amplified Host: Celeste Headlee

Celeste Headlee is a communication and human nature expert, and an award-winning journalist. She is a professional speaker, and also the author of Speaking of Race: Why Everybody Needs to Talk About Racism—and How to Do It, Do Nothing, Heard Mentality, and We Need to Talk. In her twenty-year career in public radio, she has been the executive producer of On Second Thought at Georgia Public Radio, and anchored programs including Tell Me More, Talk of the Nation, All Things Considered, and Weekend Edition. She also served as cohost of the national morning news show The Takeaway from PRI and WNYC, and anchored presidential coverage in 2012 for PBS World Channel. Headlee’s TEDx talk sharing ten ways to have a better conversation has over twenty million total views to date. @CelesteHeadlee

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Episode Transcript

Laysha Ward:
Well, we are about to have a conversation that will be food for our souls, so I really appreciate you all giving us your full attention. You are in for a real treat, Jose, you are of course an extraordinary human, a world renowned chef. He has four Michelin stars, over 30 restaurants worldwide. You are an author, a podcast host, you’re also a humanitarian, a dad, a partner. So many extraordinary things. And so I’d like to have our conversation start back in the early days, okay?

José Andrés:
Okay.

Laysha Ward:
You came over to the United States at the early age of 21 as an immigrant with the equivalent of about $50 in your pocket, which is extraordinary and built your business empire and became an expert philanthropic icon in hunger relief. And so I’m just curious, given the journey that you’ve been on, you’ve learned so much about leadership and perseverance and determination. What would be some of the leadership lessons that you could share with all of us?

José Andrés:
Well, wow, I always say that every one of us, every one of you, we are who we are. Thanks to the people that surround who we are in the present in the past, people that sometimes forget people that sometimes you have to be a grown up person to have memories and to realize that that person was a far away, more influential person in your life than you ever thought. And I will say that early memories and unfortunately something I realized when I became much older but will be my mom, I didn’t have, life is complicated, right? And I didn’t have what I would say the best relationship with my mom, but nobody could give more thanks to who I am today than my mom. And often now that she’s not any longer with us, I maybe have a regret that I wish I did. And that’s why I always tell everybody, open up your mind and your heart, especially to those people that they help you be who you are. But my mom was an excellent cook. She was the cook at home Monday through Friday. My father helped my three brothers and I would help, but my father was more the weekend cook. But my mom,
She will be this magician that at the end of the month when there was no more money and my father and mother had to wait for the next paycheck, she will go into the fridge. And when sometimes the fridge, when you go to Best Buy or Target,
Thank you, and you are buying and you buy a new fridge and it’s empty at the end of the month, the fridge look like this in my house and my mom will be able to get the last remaining little piece from the roasted chicken and half a boiled egg and out of nothing, she will make this bacha milk with flour and milk. She will add the chopped chicken and the chopped egg, and she will make this amazing croquetas with the bread that was left over during the week. She will use the coffee grinder to make breadcrumbs. That’s why the coffee in my house was always very thick
And my mom will make those croquetas. That to this day, if you ask my brothers and I, what is the most amazing memories was us helping my mom, making the croquetas, us helping my mom fry the croquetas, but especially sitting down and making sure that everybody got the right amount of croquetas equally between the brothers. There was not only my mom showing me what a talented cook she was, but was my mom also the loving mother feeding us even when sometimes at the end of the month was again, no more money. She was showing us as a cook that now I am a humanitarian. I didn’t realize that she was the person that in me made me understand that we can do a lot even when we feel we have nothing. So I will say that my mom in these early parts of my life was the person that planted the seed on me of knowledge is power.
Many years later in 1993, I was in different low-income parts of Washington DC sharing the Croquetas story and the croquetas recipe of my mother with families that they needed knowledge about how to feed their families without spending a lot of money. If you think about it, life is a beautiful story that sometimes we forget to connect the dots, but now I understand why my mom taught me when I was a young boy, six, seven, 8-year-old boy. That story, that progeta recipe, I’ve been able to bring that story to many other parts of my life in this case, in a low income neighborhood in Washington DC that I know now many of the people are passing the legacy of my mom.

Laysha Ward:
And what’s so powerful about that is you also found a way to build a connection to that community, right? A way for them to see that you in many ways were more alike than different. And what a beautiful story to celebrate not only your mother, but so many of the moms in this room who are making a way out of no way for their families as well. Really powerful. I love that story. And the connection to something you said too about your mom teaching you about being able to feed people, right? It seems to me that you’ve always been called to, that feeding people connected to your purpose in a way. Why is that beyond this sort of lesson from your mother, do you think you’ve been called into that as a vocation?

José Andrés:
Well, I think my father told you that he will cook on the weekends and he will cook for everybody who will come. My father will not keep track of who they will invite. And my mom, who was the one that had to make sure everything will work, how many people you invited? 10 or 30. My father for that was a very easy guy in his answers. He always thought that big problems have very simple solutions. So when sometimes my mom or my brothers and I will tell, but daddy, how many people are coming? If more people come, what do we do? No problem. We only add more rice to Japan.
But for me, it was a moment that was very iconic in my life. I arrived Washington DC in 1993 and three years later, 1996 was a building red brick mortar building and they were doing construction and somebody found the belongings boxes of somebody that somebody was a woman that used that red brick building as the home and as the office, that red brick mortar building was the house where this woman created the office of the missing soldier’s office. One person, a nurse like my mom that thought that we had to be bringing light to what happened to the many people that perished or disappeared during the American Civil War. That woman was Clara Barton. That’s the woman that also created the American Red Cross. And this is kind of a very early example in my life that I saw this person, this woman, like my mom, she put her knowledge not only to take care of the few, but her knowledge and her way to see the world, to help the many.
We all do have that talent in a way, she’s a person. Even I never met her because already her story is distant, that she also planted the seed and sent a message saying, we all have a talent. Who do you send to stop a fire when there is one in the city? The firefighters. Who do you send to take care of the wounded after explosion or in a war zone? Doctors and nurses. Who do you think will be the best person you can send to feed people after an emergency? You see, again, simple, a big problem sometimes have simple solutions. Clara Barton in a way, after I began reading and knowing more about her, she showed me that sometimes every one of us, every one of you have that talent to do so much more. You only have to believe in yourself

Laysha Ward:
Clearly. You have believed in yourself clearly. And I’m struck and moved by how you have been called into serving during disasters and crises, right? Trying to make sure that people are fed and nourished in some of the most challenging times of their lives. And in fact, you said something here, you once were quoted to say something about being a chef makes you uniquely qualified for disaster relief and crisis. What do you mean by that?

José Andrés:
Well, okay, all of you go to restaurants, right?

Laysha Ward:
I

José Andrés:
Do. Raise your hand if you go to a restaurant once a week, welcome people. We need you. I have cookbooks, but the recipes don’t really work. Why? I want you to cook at home when I need you to come to my restaurant.

Laysha Ward:
I spend a lot to your restaurants and they’re all fabulous, I might add,

José Andrés:
But restaurants are places that they can be very chaotic. There’s a lot of chaos in a restaurant on a Friday night. Everybody has garlic. Is shrimp with no garlic? I No, it’s rem. And on top of that, I cannot pronounce his rem. Yeah, you tell me about it.

Speaker 8:
But how is it?

José Andrés:
So restaurants are displaced that you have, you can plan all you want, and we all live life with a plan. And sometimes life doesn’t come with instructions. You tell me, I very became a husband and is like, how is the instructions to be a good husband? You become a father. What are the instructions to be a good father? And very often we are all trained and prepared to follow a plan, the plan of life. What happens when things don’t go as planned that we fail? Because sometimes we stop because we’ve been trained all our lives to follow that plan. And when we don’t see the door in an I way, we freeze. We need to start embracing the complexities of the moment in our private lives, in our families, in our communities, in our work.
And we need to embrace that complexity and start talking about adaptation. Let’s adapt to every moment. Let’s adapt to every situation. Let’s make sure that every time something happens, it’s a moment for us to raise above the issue we are trying to solve. And for that, let me tell you, and not because I am in a conference for women, but if you ask me who is the most capable people in the world, not to follow a plan but to adapt, I have all of you in front of me. Women are ready to adapt to any circumstance. I’ve seen it with my mom, I’ve seen it with my grandmas, I’ve seen it with my wife. Adaptation will win the day. That’s why we need more women up there in places of power, from companies to countries. Guys, we’ve been running the world away with too many mens and take a look, the message we are creating. So what every one of you is waiting for to run for every single office, Republicans and Democrats, independence, I don’t care. We need you up there helping us adapt to the lives and moments we are living.

Laysha Ward:
Amen. Can I have the crowd say amen? Amen. I love that adaptive leadership so important. We spend a lot of time talking about that at Target as well. It’s important to have adaptive leadership qualities and I do agree that more women leaders make a big difference in an organization and in the world, and we have a lot of extraordinary women leaders

José Andrés:
Here. You are adapting. I am. Are you going to help me give a big round of applause. She’s been working at Target for 32 years and she’s retiring next year and still she has another lifetime ahead of her. Yeah,

Laysha Ward:
Thank you. Yeah,

José Andrés:
I already know somebody should be running for office.

Laysha Ward:
Thank you very much. She and I were just talking. We’re the same age, by the way. So he’s my brother from another mother, and I shared with him that on Tuesday I did announce after 32 years I’ll be retiring in April. And so I’m excited to adapt and have another chapter. So I’m feeling very blessed and grateful and highly favored to think about the ways that I can continue to have an impact in the world. So very kind of you to turn that spotlight on me, not to you as well, but I’m going to turn the spotlight back on you. Okay? Okay. And it’s a spotlight so well-deserved. I’ve been following you for a long time and I was so inspired by the work that you’ve been doing in Ukraine just yet another example of where you go to where there is such extraordinary need. And when you go into these places, it must be difficult to know exactly what to do when you hit the ground. So much chaos. And to your point, adaptive leadership is likely a component of that. But how do you figure out what to do first in such a complicated situation? And then how do you also continue to engage and inspire and mobilize your teams because they have to be there for an extended period of time providing those critical services, incredibly dangerous settings.

José Andrés:
Yeah. Well, so in my life it’s been beyond my restaurants and my family and especially my wife, who I will not lie to you if I don’t tell you everything I am today. It wouldn’t be happening if I didn’t have my wife Patricia next to me. I love that.

Laysha Ward:
Let’s give it up for that

José Andrés:
Because she gave me the freedom to do things but not use the freedom, the wise words and the support and the wisdom and the whispers in the ear. Yeah, without my wife, I wouldn’t do much of what I’ve ever done. But organizations for me were important is this is RA Kitchen. Anybody from Washington DC here? Marianne, Virginia. Oh, I love you too.
This is RA Kitchen. I arrive as a young cook and I’m not going to make it long. But anytime any one of you is in DC, please visit DC Central Kitchen. This was funded by a man called Robert Egger. He’s retired now and he’s the guy that told me that philanthropy seems always is about the redemption of the giver. When philanthropy must be about the liberation of the receiver, this is a big phrase, powerful phrase. We all do good, but we must all do a smart good. So this organization was great because it was fighting food waste. But more important, we were fighting not wasting people’s life. And this organization will get people out of the streets sometimes drugs, drug addicts. One of the early teachers was, she’s not any longer with us, Marianne Ali, she became like a sister to me. She was a woman that came from the streets, torn her life around and became the one teaching everybody coming from the streets or from jail in how they could be themselves, agents of change for themselves and for the community. So this Isra Kitchen did that food waste, giving opportunity to people, training them to be cooks, putting everything together in the process, producing 10, 20,000 meals a day and feeding the community and in the process restaurants like me. We could be hiring those amazing people. $1. $1 to give opportunity to people, $1 to train people, $1 to rescue food, waste $1 to feed the homeless, $1 to employ people around the city, $1 multiply five 10 times

Laysha Ward:
Collective impact. Really amazing collective

José Andrés:
Impact. And this showed me the power of food to change the world. One community at a time. War central kitchen use happened because I was too comfortable when I was watching the horrors of after hurricanes New Orleans, Katrina, category five, hurricane, thousands of Americans, low nine forgotten, no way to go help, no activation for adaptation because the plans were no longer feasible. But we had tens, thousands of people in the Superdome and we forgot about them. Do you know what the Superdome is? An arena, a stadium. Everybody thinks it’s a place for sports or music, but everybody’s wrong. An arena, a baseball stadium, an FL stadium. It’s a gigantic restaurant that entertains with the sports and music. Everybody’s sitting hotdogs in the baseball stadium. So imagine if we were able to go activate the community, people that were stranded there and just open the same places that in the good times are feeding, but now transforming those places to feed people in need.

Laysha Ward:
And you’ve been doing that in the United States and all over the

José Andrés:
World. So this is how ation began. I watched from the comfort of my home how Katrina was unfolding. I didn’t go. I was younger. It’s not like I could escape my work. But then Haiti happened. 2010, one of the biggest earthquakes in the history, hundreds of thousands of people die.

Laysha Ward:
Devastating.

José Andrés:
The devastation beyond imagination. I went there on my own with two friends with one simple idea, not to help but let me go to learn. And that’s how the beginning of war drag action was. That’s

Laysha Ward:
Extraordinary.

José Andrés:
To go to emergencies, the latest one, we are right now helping feed people in Israel that they lost life. And because the Hamas attack we’re also in GAA helping Palestinians, we’re providing support from Egypt at the end. We are building longer tables. We all are one. We all need to wish for others what we wish for our own. What Zen Drag Kitchen does is trying to build longer tables.

Laysha Ward:
It’s such a powerful message. Building longer tables, food as a source of unification, nourishment, as I said earlier, we’re going to be nourishing our souls here and you’re teaching us about nourishing not only our own souls, but the souls of others. And it’s a really powerful message. I would say that some of the ways that you’ve done that successfully is through one of your gifts, which is storytelling. You do an extraordinary job of taking things that are complex and at times divisive and humanizing it. And I do think it’s through powerful storytelling that people can begin to find ways of connecting. And you have a whole business around that. You have a production company and are doing a lot of amazing things to share powerful stories that engage and inspire us and give us hope and inspiration. So could you tell us a little bit about storytelling and why you have that business?

José Andrés:
We mentioned about Wall Central Kitchen. If anybody wants to learn more about Wall Central Kitchen, a Disney plus. Ron Howard, the amazing director, did the story of Wall Central Kitchen. It’s called We Feed People. Very simple name. It’s beautiful. And there you’re going to see the work of the man and woman of Wolf Kitchen all across America, and especially all across the world now. But I do believe storytelling is important. I’m not a good painter. I’m not a good writer. You see my English, my daughters tell me when I was young, when I was a younger dad going to school, daddy, please speak Spanish to us and we’ll translate. I’m like, really?
As an immigrant, my love, I know the country come from, and I know also the country belong. I’m a very proud immigrant. I feel I’ve been all my time, all my life an immigrant, and I believe immigrants like me. Even I felt an immigrant in Spain growing up because in the moment you move from one region to another, even if Spain, it’s like you are an immigrant in a way. We’re all immigrants. It’s beyond flags and borders, but immigrants, we all have the responsibility to build bridges. So right now, for example, I have this amazing show on CNN and this is a commercial which is called Jose Andres and family in Spain. Not very creative name, no, but

Laysha Ward:
It’s lovely. It’s with him and his

José Andrés:
Daughters. But tells the story of the country I came from, but also tells the story of three daughters who are rolling the eyes every time your dad speaks.
So I invite you to watch it. It’s on Sundays at 9:00 PM It’s lovely, Jose Andre. But then there’s many more stories we need to be telling. One story I want to be telling and we don’t know, we’re talking about woman, an empowering woman. Over 3 billion people on planet earth cook with charcoal fossil fuels as the only way to feed their families. Those 3 billion people you know who fits the world. Every time you read about, there’s always chefs who seem they’re the top chefs in the cities. But can I tell you who fits the world? Who is in every little town that has no name is always woman. Women are the ones feeding the world.
And what we need to make sure that in the process of feeding the world, women are not putter because it’s very important that they are not. Because very often they are the mother of their family, if not all the time, and cannot be that in the process of feeding their families. Many women die because they inhale the smoke, they overspend money because the charcoal keeps burning and they over buy charcoal to feed the families when they’re only making $3 a day, but they’re spending 20, 30, 40 cents a day to cook one meal. Deforestation, young girls don’t go to school. Why? Because they send them to the forest to pick up the wood. They get in danger, they don’t receive education. So one of the biggest issues we are going to be facing that we can make a huge difference in ending hunger and poverty and empowering women around the world is investing in clean cook stoves to every single family around the world. That women are the ones carrying the boarding of feeding those families. This is the ways we can be telling stories to change the world, but really making it happen with boots on the ground.

Laysha Ward:
Thank you very much. In fact, we unfortunately have run out of time. We have to wrap. But I’m going to squeeze in one more question because it I think is really important to share with this incredibly connected community, which is on hope and optimism. We want to end on hope and optimism and activation. So from your perspective, how can we continue to inspire this community to really move from, I’d like to help to actually helping. What are some words of wisdom that you would share and provide about how we can use our gifts, our talents, and our treasures to make a difference in our communities?

José Andrés:
Please wrap up. Please wrap up. This is popping up quickly.
Listen, I think that you are already here listening to leaders of the community, people that you can be inspired by. I think that’s one amazing step, but I think it’s time to start putting the boots on the ground. It’s time that we stop clapping so much and start making things happen is the moment that we need to start really building longer tables where everybody is welcome. That what is good for your family must be good for the other family. That we understand that we need to give the dignity that we want to receive, that we need to give the empathy that we want to receive, and that if we respect each other and we stop clapping so much every time somebody gives a speech, but we make sure that the speech is followed with actions on the ground, that’s the way we can have a chance to start making real change. Biggest speeches at the United Nations for the last 60 years has not end hunger and poverty. Actually, it seems that hunger and poverty keeps growing. We need to make sure that we make our leaders in a good way, accountable of their promises. Promises need to follow action. Action with boots on the ground. They show real success altogether. We can do this. We all should be part of the solution.

Laysha Ward:
Thank you very much applies to not only our words, but to our actions. Thank you. Thank you.