Steve grew up in the Midwest and started working in the dining room of the country club his family belonged to when he was 14. He hit the jackpot (culinarily speaking) with a family move to Louisiana where he ended up living next-door to Chef Paul Prudhomme. Steve got a taste of the hotel business as a department head at a 5-star hotel in the French Quarter, and picked up a few recipes from Chef Paul on days off. A call from a recruiter on the East Coast landed him in New Jersey/New York with a large steakhouse group based in Dallas, Texas, where to this day, he says it was “the best hospitality education of my life.” Good fortune again shined on Steve when he returned to the Midwest and joined the team of the much-lauded L’Etoile in Madison, Wisconsin. Two years of hard-work and attention to detail later, L’Etoile was chosen as a “Top 100 in America” restaurant by several publications, including Gourmet magazine.

San Francisco was his next stop where he owned and operated several restaurants over a 20-year span, from Chronicle Top 100, to much loved burger joints, to a 24/7 diner in the night-club district. Steve made the move out of operations and into hospitality recruiting a decade ago when he realized he had a knack for finding quality leadership candidates and great clients to match them with. In the hospitality industry, it is often said that a well-rounded professional will spend some time in either New York City, or New Orleans, or San Francisco. Steve has had the extraordinary experiences of living and working in all three. Steve’s favorite word is “relentless”, and his approach to finding the perfect candidate for the perfect client is exactly that – “relentless”.