Creating Home with Melina Shannon-DiPietro

“We often need to step into the unknown to grow…it is important every now and then to challenge ourselves to step into change.”

Summary of Episode:

Jenn talks to Melina Shannon-DiPietro, the executive Director of MAD (Danish for ”food”), the nonprofit organization founded by René Redzepi of restaurant noma. MAD inspires and empowers cooks, servers, and eaters to create sustainable change through education programs and publications. An American girl from Albany, New York, Melina spent her life dreaming about food and built her career in the industry, always thinking about where our food comes from, our community and environment. Never thinking she would leave the US, Melina uprooted herself to Copenhagen before the pandemic, pioneered the MAD venture with Chef René and the NOMA team, found love, purpose, home and stayed in Denmark! She shares her amazing journey and how the value of creating a home is important to her and how she defines that.

We can make decision for something we love and want or we can make decisions away from something because it doesn’t feel good to us, it feels fearful, negative, it drains our energy. We are all our best monitors of that. The more one can make decisions towards joy and not because you are pumped by fear the better.

About Melina Shannon-DiPietro:

Melina Shannon-DiPietro is Executive Director of MAD (Danish for ”food”), the nonprofit organization founded by René Redzepi of restaurant noma. MAD inspires and empowers cooks, servers, and eaters to create sustainable change through education programs and publications.

Prior to MAD, Melina was a director at Friends of the High Line, the organization that transformed an abandoned elevated rail line into one of New York City's best-loved public parks. She began her work in food as co-founder of the Yale Sustainable Food Program. Building organizations, connecting with nature, and helping people to be their best has been a primary motivation throughout her life.

Melina grew up in Albany, New York, surrounded by a loving and loud Italian-Irish-American family who still asks as they wrap up each meal, “What do we eat next?” She lives in Copenhagen, Denmark.

Episode Resources:

IG / MAD / MAD Academy / MAD IG / MAD Scholarship / London Meditation Centre / Why Meditate? Because it Works / The Art of Possibility: Transforming Professional and Personal Life