Breaking Barriers as a Mentor
Throughout her career as an editor, writer, and leader, Toni Tipton-Martin has mentored women. She even expresses her messages through her own cookbooks.
At last year’s IACP conference, I watched a trail of women follow Toni Tipton-Martin around. Whenever I saw her in a hallway or conference room, someone had engaged her in conversation (including me!).
That’s because Toni, an award-winning writer and head of Cook’s Country magazine and its television show, believes in mentorship and paying it forward. And she has decades of modeling and skill sharing to offer.
A recipient of the International Association of Culinary Professionals (IACP) Trailblazer Award and its Book of the Year Award, she is a two-time James Beard Book award winner for Jubilee: Recipes from Two Centuries of African American Cooking, and The Jemima Code: Two Centuries of African American Cookbooks.
Currently she oversees a new cookbook series she created for Cooks County magazine, where she is the editor in chief. And she just published her third book, Juke Joints, Jazz Clubs, and Juice: A Cocktail Recipe Book: Cocktails from Two Centuries of African American Cookbooks.
Recently Toni received a Julia Child grant for her non-profit foundation. She intends to create a mentoring project for women writers and is consulting with a team of industry experts to formalize the concept. She also is working with emerging female editors to create a Cook’s Country cookbook centered on the women behind Southern food and cooking. When I have more news I will share it with you.
Toni and I first met at the IACP annual conference in Texas in 2011. The conferences are a valuable place to network and to see Toni in action. This fall, she will be the keynote speaker at the Les Dames D’Escoffier International conference.
A big part of my job as a writing coach is also to mentor. But for me it’s paid work. For Toni, it’s purposeful extra work.
I spoke with Toni about how she empowers women:
Q. How long have you been a mentor?
A. I have a broad sense of my responsibility to share what I’ve learned with others. My entire career is devoted to mentorship and modeling.
Q. What does a mentor do in our business?
A. Be a friend to the next generation, help emerging writers understand the nuances of publishing, help people who haven’t necessarily focused on cultural writing to be competent in that area. I’ve tried to provide open communication that wasn’t available to me, in a direct way.
I mentor the way the few mentors mentored me, and that is through a relationship. For example, Nathalie Dupree and Ruth Reichl went beyond their jobs to ensure I was successful. Only the women whom I was not going to compete with were willing to be my mentors.