From an Imprisoned Drug Dealer to an Award-Winning Celebrity, the Story of Chef Jeff Henderson

How Chef Jeff Cooks Up Motivation and Success

Award-winning Celebrity Chef Jeff Henderson to share his inspirational life story

An emotional story of how Chef Jeff overcame all odds

Jeff Henderson believes in the power of self-transformation. Unfortunately, he says, “what happens to many people, the people I call the have-nots in this country, their dreams have been stomped out of them. They have been told they are less worthy. They don’t have value systems, they’ve never clung to hope, they have no dreams, and they put themselves in a mental state of incarceration. That’s what poverty does to people.”

Henderson was born in 1964 in Los Angeles, California to June Marie Giles, a welder, and Charles Henderson, Jr., and raised by his mother.

He attended a host of elementary and junior high schools. He grew up on the streets of South Central, Los Angeles, and San Diego amidst the daily brouhaha where local gangs battled daily.

It was in 1984 that Henderson embraced a criminal lifestyle. His drug-dealing habits increased when his family moved to San Diego. He was earning as much as $35,000 a week dealing cocaine in San Diego.

“During the early part of my life, I was in survival mode. I was trying to figure out how to help my mother, who was a single parent, trying to figure out how to survive, how to keep food on the table, how to go to school, and how to figure out what my dream was. My dream was one day to be rich so I could help my mother buy a house,” he says.

He was already a millionaire at age 19, but in 1988 when Henderson was 24 years old, he was indicted by the federal government. He received a 10 years and seven months sentence. While incarcerated, Henderson said he read his first book. He was told for the first time that he was smart in prison.

He was sent to the Kitchen where he started taking a liking for culinary art. He soon developed a passion for cooking which will turn his whole life around. He worked in prison kitchens as a dishwasher and eventually he began preparing meals as a chef.

“It’s a part of my life I am not proud of,” Henderson recalls, but it was those dark days in prison that ignited his passion to change his life to overcome his criminal past.

By 1992, Henderson was transferred to Nellis Air Force Base where he worked in the dining hall. He was accepted into the Culinary Training School for inmates at Maxwell Air Force Base in Alabama.

Henderson left prison in 1996 and as the case for many ex-felons, all attempts to find employment proved futile at first.

According to him, one day a Wall Street business mogul, Ivan Boesky told him “Henderson, you moved amongst gang members. You said you never fought. You never carried guns. You were never violent but you became a millionaire when you were 19-years-old.

“He says all you have to do is to change the product and there’s no stopping you”.

Henderson worked on building his brand and rebuilding his image. He later got a job as a dishwasher and was later promoted to line cook. He was so keen on learning from the best chefs.

He moved on to other Los Angeles area restaurants where he worked at the Ritz-Carlton in Marina Del Rey, Hotel Bel-Air in Los Angeles, and the L’Ermitage Hotel in Beverly Hills.

He moved to Las Vegas and didn’t give up on his passion as a cook. Henderson later found a job with Caesars Palace and within a year he got promoted to head chef.

In 2001, he became the first African-American named “Chef de Cuisine” at Caesars Palace, and the first African-American executive chef at the Bellagio. He later became a star on his television shows (The Chef Jeff Project, Family Style with Chef Jeff, and Flip My Food with Chef Jeff) and a best-selling author (Cooked, and If You Can See It, You Can Be It).

Indeed, Henderson turned his life around after his incarceration thanks to people in the food industry who understood that people sometimes make poor choices and believe in second chances. He got a job in the restaurant business and later in the hotel industry, eventually making his way to Las Vegas, where “I found people in my industry had heart and was able to build a relationship with a potential employer who saw the value of what I bring, versus the bad choices I made two decades before,” he says.

He established The Westside Group, a non-profit organization to help troubled kids and in 2007, he published his memoir, “Cooked: From the Streets to the Stove”.

Chef Jeff is a role model to persons who need encouragement to reinvent their life. As a way of giving back to the community, Henderson created “The Chef Jeff Project”, a Food Network reality television program.

Millionaire Ex-Convict Reveals How To Tap Into Your Genius | chef Jeff Henderson | Goalcast

The project identifies and takes in six at-risk young adults intending to turn their lives around by putting them to work in his catering company, Posh Urban Cuisine.

Henderson’s challenge to the corporate world: Disrupt the biases that describe people who come from poverty. People, he says, need hope, no matter their circumstances so they can achieve their dreams.

“The one thing about me is I always betted on myself,” he says. “As a little boy, I always knew there was something special that I was supposed to achieve. Once I discovered what my gifts were, the one, two, three things I knew that I did extremely well, I knew that was my vehicle. It was culinary, it was speaking, and it was writing. Those are the three things that I do today to make a living and help change the world and to make people better people.”

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