Get to know the people behind the mission! Each month we’ll introduce a member of our incredible, hard-working team. Meet the whole #FeedIndy staff here.
Name: Chef Kyle Burnett
Title: Culinary Job Training Program Manager / Instructor
How long have you worked at Second Helpings?
4 1/2 years
What do you like most about your job?
Equipping people to be successful and self-empowered to accomplish their goals and dreams. Giving them a polished mirror to believe in themselves (some for the first time ever) and see their true potential. I love the challenge of getting people to overcome their obstacles and be driven to succeed. Cooking, food, those passions pale in comparison to the true work that’s done in the program.
What is the best career lesson you’ve learned so far?
Working in this space requires a ton of patience and faith. I can’t expect my students to be driven and motivated if I’m not. I have to be equally, if not more, motivated and driven. Passion and hope are both equally contagious. The human heart is like gasoline and when you hold the flames of passion and hope to it, the heart ignites. But good work ethic, integrity, those things must be modeled, and a standard must be held to get people to aspire to. Not out of fear and trembling but out of result from the flame being held to the gasoline.
What would you do (for a career) if you weren’t doing this?
Working in the ministry field, leading a multifaceted parachurch organization, a faith-based community center, that would supply other ministries with resources and training while equipping leaders and helping faith-based organizations plant and grow and offer free community classes and programs that would equip people to start and launch ministries of their own.
Where is your favorite place to be?
Every year I look forward to serving for Lamplighter. An awesome community of people share one common goal of loving people well. Aside from that, I love being with my wife and my kids pretty much anywhere. We don’t get to go camping enough, but I love being out in the woods like that. If I could, I’d just live out in the middle of nowhere, off the land. I just love being out and away like that. It’s so good for you, there’s a lot less distractions.
Favorite line from a movie or book?
One of my favorite books of all time is written by John Eldredge and it was a very transformative book for me. One the things that really spoke to me in this book was this: “Until a man learns to deal with the fact that life is hard, he will spend his days chasing the wrong thing, using all his energies trying to make life comfortable, soft, nice, and that is no way for any man to spend his life.”