People of The Institute       Alumni Profiles         Michael Weisberg   Long Island native Michael Weisberg may, as he says, have gone to law school "for all the wrong reasons," but after graduation from USC he had two experiences that changed his life. First, he met his future wife in a bar review class, and second, during the months when he was waiting for his exam results, he headed back to New York to attend The Institute of Culinary Education. With a passion since childhood for food, he had visions of opening his own restaurant and felt his legal training might be put to good use in the venture. He externed in the highly regarded restaurant March but, despite his love for cooking and the excitement of working on the line, he decided that restaurant life just wasn't for him Weisberg returned to Los Angeles to be with his new sweetheart, and began carving out what has become a very unique position in the local food scene. With a few month's of catering experience under his belt, he landed a job as personal chef to the CEO and founder of a national restaurant chain. The flexibility and reasonable hours left him with enough free time to volunteer for local food events. He chaired Share Our Strength's "Taste of the Nation," a job that put him in touch with the top chefs in LA and beyond. A stint running Bloomingdales' cooking program followed, a program Weisberg expanded to include cookbook authors on tour. As his contacts with publishers and local media outlets grew, he started booking the authors on TV and radio shows as well Today, Weisberg's multifaceted career involves doing freelance cookbook publicity for clients both locally and nationally, including Steven Raichlen, Alton Brown, Claudia Fleming and Bert Wolf. The list of chefs and authors he has produced events with includes just about every major name in the industry: i Julia Child, Jacques Pepin, Charlie Trotter, Ming Tsai, Anthony Bourdain, Nobu Matsuhisa and Daniel Boulud, to name just a few January, 2003