Sheila: “I was already considering going to the hotel school in high school. But ‘you didn’t do that’ if you could also go to the university. And so I went to study business administration in Rotterdam. In my study time I worked in the service in a restaurant. Because the owner knew that I was happy to cook, I was allowed to replace the cook during the holidays.
“Yet after my studies I chose business life. I went to work at Procter & Gamble, including in Frankfurt as a communication strategist. In 1997 I set up my own advertising agency. I had that for seven years. Then Philips called, where I became head of marketing consumer products worldwide in the long term. I worked there for six years. In 2012 I started working at Shift Invest, a sustainable investment company that puts daring capital in start-ups. As a shareholder, I am still affiliated with it. But I have had my entire career in mind: if everything fails, I can always go into the kitchen.
“And then I fell from my horse and my wrist turned out to be crushed. Four operations were needed to put the case up again. In the meantime I wasn’t standing still. At that time I was involved in the establishment of a hospital for breast cancer, was on the Supervisory Board of Luzac and was an advisor to Koninklijke Horeca Nederland. In 2015 I started working at Europcar in Paris, where I was responsible for international innovation. I often traveled to the Netherlands, to my partner. But cooking remained in my head. Then I quit my job and I went to study at the Paris ‘Kookuniversiteit’ Le Cordon Bleu. I wanted to become a sustainable cook, after all I had been working at a sustainable investment company for ten years. ”
Travel by train
“Thanks to my jobs in the business world, I was able to pay off my mortgage. That gave the mental freedom to change my life and become a cook. I went an internship in a friend’s restaurant in Rotterdam and followed a Cooking Cooking course. I got so much fun that I knew: I want to continue with this. In 2019 I started working as a call cook, but then Covid came. At that time I launched my website and I became a culinary writer: for the culinary platform Food Inspiration and for the We’re Smart website. I didn’t want my own restaurant – that’s too intensive for me. Moreover, I wanted to learn a lot of news, such as the transition to local and vegetable cooking. I am now hired as a speaker and occasionally cook for business companies. And recently I wrote a book about sustainable cooking. I earn just enough not to rely on my savings.
“I regularly shuttle between the Netherlands and Spain, to our house on the Costa Brava. My partner stays there for a few months a year, he is a lot on the road, he likes traveling. So we don’t see each other every day. But that’s fine, we don’t have to be together to be happy. In the winter I have a lot of work in the Netherlands. Then I often cook for companies or I give presentations. In Spain I often work with a female cook who cooks a lot in nature or at people’s homes. I travel by train, because you can’t say that you are a sustainable cook and then fly a lot. Once a year I go by car. Then I take our two dogs with me. “
Little things
“I don’t miss the corporate life. The first years did, it was as if I had lost my ‘social capital’. Previously everyone I knew when I got somewhere, now no longer. That initially felt some ‘naked’, but that passed. I am really a doer now, have less patience with talking and meeting.
“I spend money on the train journeys to Spain and to eat with chefs that I admire, but not too often. Furthermore, I don’t need much. I consciously buy little things because I want to live sustainably. I now have many things repaired. I sometimes buy expensive clothing on second -hand sites, I wear them for years. My goal is to die without one cent.
“Actually, I am busier now than in my previous life, in the sense that I spend more time on things. But there is less pressure on it. I now have much more fun in my work. I don’t find myself that important anymore. I am where I will his will.
“I suspect that I will continue to like life as a cook for a few years, it also depends on how fit you stay. I can imagine that I will make another book and write other things. And I am lucky that I have a ‘portable’ profession: I can also cook in Mexico for six months. But with a return to the business community I can’t imagine anything. Maybe I will live in Spain in ten years, I will see that. I don’t think about that yet. ”