Staff Spotlight: Dustin Seymour
If you have seen Georgetown ISD Chef Dustin Seymour at work, you would probably imagine him entering the world with a spatula in hand, ready to dive into the culinary world from day one. However, Chef Seymour had other aspirations before the thought of being a chef even crossed his mind.
“Originally, I wanted to be an eighth grade history teacher,” Chef Seymour said. “My teachers in middle school were super passionate about their jobs, and it inspired me to want to help students the way that they had helped me.”
As Chef Seymour grew up and entered high school, his interest shifted to theater arts. He received scholarships to performing arts colleges in Boston and New York and pursued the theater path after high school. But after a week away at college, family matters called Chef Seymour back home. This step back is what would eventually lead to a major leap forward in Chef Seymour’s career.
“It was the first time I had stepped away from theater arts in eight years,” Chef Seymour said. “My passion for theater started to fade, and through a series of events my life was starting to take a different turn.”
That was when Chef Seymour came across an advertisement in the newspaper for an executive sous chef at a five star restaurant. Chef Seymour grew up in an environment where cooking was a frequent occurrence, but that was the extent of his culinary exposure.
“I had no idea what an executive sous chef was,” Chef Seymour said. “When I walked into the restaurant to inquire about the job, the head chef looked at me like I was crazy.”
“The head chef told me, ‘There’s no way I’m starting you off as the executive sous chef, but I’ll give you a week to show me what you can do.’,” Chef Seymour said. “About seven months later, I was executive sous chef of a 15 million dollar restaurant at the age of 18.”
Chef Seymour never attended culinary arts school, but instead learned from working alongside prominent chefs – including one that had worked at the White House – who passed along their priceless knowledge.
Over the years, Chef Seymour worked at restaurants in Maine, Vermont, Massachusetts, Tennessee, Virginia, West Virginia, Pennsylvania, New York, New Hampshire and Texas. While in Virginia, Chef Seymour was running nine restaurants at the age of 20, working 100+ hours and preparing 10-15 thousand meals a week. When the time came for him to take a break from the whirlwind of the restaurant industry, he took a job as a private chef for a family in Boerne, Texas for seven years.
“I developed a passion for culinary arts over time through these different job opportunities,” Chef Seymour said. “Everything led me to Georgetown ISD, where I was able to shift my focus on helping students while still building recipes and catering.”
Chef Seymour and the food service team take on a variety of roles: overseeing the day-to-day operations of food service on campuses, working with vendors and approving food orders, building menus with GISD dietician Teri Balog, and catering district events off-campus.
“My job is definitely multi-purpose,” Chef Seymour said. “But first and foremost, my priority is to make sure that students are receiving the best possible experience through our recipes and menus.”
Chef Seymour not only serves GISD students through food service at their campuses, but he also works with culinary arts students in the district as an educational guide.
“Chef Seymour provides a fresh opinion at our culinary arts team tryouts and helps us through our competition practices,” East View High School senior and culinary arts student Cailin Ross said.
“I have attended a few events with him where he has taught me a lot about what it is like to cater big events, such as GISD State of the District,” Ross said. “Chef Seymour is a very hard working person, and I am honored to have the opportunity to learn from him.”
When COVID-19 came, Chef Seymour was here to see the impact it had on GISD. Instead of condensing lunch menus and food services to keep up with the changes COVID-19 brought on, Chef Seymour and the food service team continued to serve the GISD community by supplying meals twice a day and offering curbside pickup.
It took a tremendous amount of work, but the numbers show that it paid off. 2,201,786 free meals have been served to students since 2020. Yes, 2,201,786. This is the result of combined efforts from staff all over the district.
“I think a time where I really saw the impact of the work that we do was during the first two months of COVID,” Chef Seymour said. “We were serving regular meals on a Friday before spring break, and then the following Monday, we were closed and had transitioned to curbside meals for thousands and thousands of people.”
“I was standing in 100+ degree weather with a mask and gloves on, surrounded by teachers and principals rallying together to feed our students,” Chef Seymour said. “To be able to see what that meant to the community, it was inspiring. That is the way things are in GISD.”
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Chef Seymour proudly serves our district through GISD’s partnership with Southwest Foodservice Excellence (SFE), the food service provider for Georgetown ISD. You can read more about SFE on their website.
