People of The Institute       Alumni Profiles         Kim O'Donnel Culinary Arts '97   Kim O'Donnel likes to tell stories. With her food blog for WashingtonPost.com, A Mighty Appetite, she gets to use food as the entry way to those stories. O'Donnel also freelances for the printed edition of the Washington Post, and has a weekly column in an Atlanta newspaper. After graduating with a degree in literature from the University of Pennsylvania, she spent two years as a reporter in Philadelphia. Because she had traveled a lot while growing up, she wanted to work internationally, and ended up at a magazine in South Africa. When she came back, she became certified to teach English as a Second Language. But the pay was low, and she started working at a Washington, D.C. bakery to supplement her income. This gave her the idea to enroll in culinary school, and she also apprenticed and trailed in two D.C. restaurants while waiting to get to school. She received the James Beard Foundation's Peter Kump Memorial Scholarship, which allowed her to move to New York and attend what is now ICE. Afterwards, O'Donnel moved back home, just outside of Philadelphia, to do her externship at the Striped Bass. It wasn't quite what she expected, so she switched to an organization that delivered meals to people with HIV. She then received a phone call from someone at the Washington Post who asked her to combine her journalistic and culinary skills and write about food for the paper's website. In 1997, this was still a novelty, and O'Donnel wasn't sure she wanted to be back behind a desk so soon. She took the job, however, and by 1999 was hosting a live cooking chat on the site. She also started doing shooting videos for the site and teaching cooking classes, while still writing. This life continued until June 2005, when she switched to a contract position and kicked around the idea that became her blog. Because so many people want to write about food, the challenge is to find one's own voice, O'Donnel said. To keep her cooking skills sharp – a must for any food writers, she said – she cooks for private parties when she can. -- 2007