Today we’d like to introduce you to Grace Ramirez.
Hi Grace, so excited to have you on the platform. So before we get into questions about your work-life, maybe you can bring our readers up to speed on your story and how you got to where you are today?
I never set out to become an investor. That wasn’t part of the vision I had for myself — not even close. And yet here I am, and I think that’s actually the most honest thing I can say about where I am today: the path kept revealing itself, and I kept saying yes to things I hadn’t planned for.
My background is well-documented at this point — media, television, culinary school, global travel, building La Latina Cocina into the largest Latin food concept in U.S. higher education. But what’s happened more recently is a shift that I’m still processing in real time. I’ve moved from being someone who cooks and creates to someone who also owns and invests. And that transition has required me to learn a completely different language.
I founded Tamalito, Inc., through which I became an ACDBE joint-venture partner at JFK Airport — one of the most internationally traveled airports in the world, currently undergoing a historic $1.5 billion transformation. To have Latin culture represented there — not just as an employee behind a counter, but as an equity partner in the enterprise — is something I’m still sitting with. To be there not just as a chef, but as an equity partner — that’s a sentence I’m still learning to say out loud. And maybe that’s okay. Some things are bigger than the moment you’re living them.
I’m also now an investor in FarmdOut, a platform that maps America’s farms and makes local agriculture accessible, connecting communities directly with the people who grow their food. That investment is deeply personal to me — it lives exactly where I’ve always stood: believing that sustainable food systems require us to see, support, and pay fairly the people who feed us. That’s not a new value for me. But being an investor in a company building those systems is new, and it’s thrilling.
I often think about the eagle. It always knows where its prey is, but it never goes against the wind. Sometimes it waits on a branch. It trusts the timing. And when the moment is right, it moves with precision. That’s how I’ve tried to approach this whole journey — not forcing doors, but being ready when they open. And lately, some extraordinary doors have opened.
I’m sure it wasn’t obstacle-free, but would you say the journey has been fairly smooth so far?
The short answer is no — and I’d be doing a disservice to anyone building something real if I said otherwise.
What’s different about where I am now versus earlier in my career is that the challenges have changed shape. The early ones were about being seen, being taken seriously, being in rooms I wasn’t supposed to be in. Those were real. I was the only Latina, the only woman, often the only bilingual person in professional kitchens — which made me a bridge but also made me invisible at the same time.
The newer challenges are about something different: the complexity of building as an entrepreneur and investor when no one in your family ever did it. I didn’t grow up with a business template. I don’t always know what I’m doing — and I mean that literally. There are days I cry because I don’t understand the terminology in a meeting, or because I said yes to something before I fully understood what it required. But I keep going. I’m in accelerator programs. I’m reaching out to mentors. I’m putting my hand up and saying “I don’t know, teach me” in rooms where that doesn’t always feel comfortable. The truth is, nobody hands you a roadmap for a joint-venture airport concession deal or an equity stake in an agriculture platform — especially not when you come from the world I come from. You figure it out as you go, you ask for help more than you thought you would, and you trust that the willingness to keep learning is itself a form of expertise.
There’s also something nobody talks about enough: the emotional cost of scaling. Every version of growth requires you to let something go — a way of working, a relationship, a version of yourself you’d gotten comfortable with. I think about what Spider-Man’s uncle told him: with great power comes great responsibility. When you’re growing and scaling, you have to be incredibly mindful of that. Because the bigger your platform gets, the more people it affects — and not always in the ways you expect. What nobody warned me about is that growth also means you’re going to upset people. Not everybody wants you to succeed. Some people will root for you until you actually start winning — and then something shifts. That was new to me, and I won’t pretend it doesn’t hurt. Doing all of this as a Latina woman, in spaces that weren’t designed with us in mind, adds a layer of weight that doesn’t disappear just because you’ve achieved things. You carry it. And you learn to carry it with grace — because at the end of the day, grace is all you’ve got.
But I’ll tell you what I’ve learned through all of it: the only hand you absolutely cannot let go of is your own. People will disappoint you, deals will fall apart, projects you poured yourself into will never see the light of day. I’ve experienced all of that. What keeps you going is knowing that your commitment to yourself is unconditional — that you don’t need everyone to believe in you, as long as you never stop believing in yourself.
Appreciate you sharing that. What else should we know about what you do?
If I had to describe what I actually do — not the title, but the work — it’s this: I use food as infrastructure. For culture. For dignity. For representation. For connection. For policy. The businesses, the platforms, the partnerships — those are the vehicles. But that’s always been the destination.
I’m the founder of La Latina Cocina, a concept that brings authentic Latin flavors to university dining halls across the country in partnership with Aramark. We’re in over 85 food halls nationally — the largest representation of Latin food in U.S. higher education done by a Latina woman. When a student messages me to say the food reminds them of home, or of their abuelita — that’s not a data point. That’s the whole point.
Through Tamalito, Inc., I’m an ACDBE equity partner at JFK Airport — one of the most traveled airports in the world. I’m also developing a line of spices with La Criolla, a Latino-owned company out of Chicago — because bringing these flavors into people’s everyday kitchens is just as important to me as bringing them into airports and universities. And I’m an investor in FarmdOut, a company working to make local farming visible and accessible across America — which connects directly to my long-standing commitment to sustainable food systems and the people who grow our food.
One of the most genuinely joyful roles I hold is as the Worldwide Culinary Ambassador for Zacapa Rum. I’ve been a fan of this product for over twenty years — I fell in love with it long before there was any business relationship. What drew me even deeper was meeting Lorena Vásquez, the master blender behind Zacapa — a woman who built a world-class rum brand rooted in sustainability, in celebrating Guatemalan culture, and in uplifting women. I became her ambassador because I am a true believer. When you genuinely love what you represent, it shows — and that authenticity is something I guard carefully across everything I put my name on.
On the advocacy side, food has always been my entry point into bigger conversations. I work with the UN’s Chefs’ Manifesto, the NYC Mayor’s Chefs Council, Wellness in the Schools, and the James Beard Foundation’s Impact Program. I’ve testified at the Senate on Latina equal pay. I’m involved with Aid for Life, which does critical work supporting migrants through immigration assistance and workforce development — issues that are deeply personal to me and deeply connected to who actually feeds this country. And I sit on the board of the Friends of the Latino Museum. I say all of this not to list credentials, but because each of these spaces represents something I genuinely care about. I use food as a tool not just for nourishment, but for policy, for visibility, for dignity.
What sets me apart — and I say this not as a boast but as an observation — is that I move between worlds that don’t usually talk to each other. Kitchens and Capitol Hill. University dining halls and United Nations rooms. Humanitarian relief and airport concession deals. I’ve learned that food is the one language that travels across all of them. And my job, as I understand it now, is to make sure that when Latin culture shows up in those rooms — it doesn’t just visit. It belongs there. Permanently.
Can you talk to us a bit about happiness and what makes you happy?
This answer has actually deepened for me over time.
For a long time, I found meaning in the doing: the cooking, the creating, the showing up, the fighting for a seat at the table. And all of that still matters. But what genuinely makes me happy now — what I come back to when everything else gets loud — is my inner life. The stillness I’ve built through meditation, through the retreat work I did at the Isha Judd Center in Uruguay, through the daily practice of checking in with myself before I engage with the world.
From that place, everything else gets richer. My relationships. My cooking. Even the business decisions — I make better ones when I’m rooted in myself rather than reacting to external pressure.
And I’ll be honest: this new chapter of investing and building equity has brought me a kind of happiness I didn’t expect. There’s something deeply satisfying about creating structures that give other people — especially people from communities like mine — a real stake in something. Not just a job. Ownership. That matters to me in a way I feel in my chest.
But if you ask me what makes me happiest, most simply? Breaking bread with people I love. Cooking for them, sitting down together, sharing a meal — there is nothing more grounding than that. That exchange — making something, sharing it, watching someone close their eyes on a first bite — it’s never complicated. It’s always everything.
And something that fills my heart in a way I can’t fully put into words: I can now board a direct flight to Venezuela to be with my family. Twenty-seven years of a very complicated political climate. Twenty-seven years of distance from the people I love most, of celebrations missed, of time we can’t get back. Every day we get a little closer to a free Venezuela — a Venezuela where I can just go spend a weekend, or a month, with my family. En mi tierra amada. That hope — and the moments when it feels real — makes me happier than almost anything else I could name.
Contact Info:
- Website: https://www.chefgraceramirez.com
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/chefgraceramirez/
Image Credits
Ajiaco Studio
Rolando Acuña
