Chef Maria Kemp Puts Culinary Spin on Diversity Trainings

On Feb. 21, Republicans in the NC House of Representatives filed House Bill 171, a bill that prohibits state agencies from promoting, supporting, implementing or maintaining workplace diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) programs, policies or initiatives.

The introduction of the bill came as little surprise to those who have seen the second Trump administration attack and rescind DEI programs and initiatives across the country, emboldening Republicans at lower levels to follow his lead.

And so House Bill 171 was met with resistance, though some in the minority party did speak out. On Feb. 27, Mecklenburg representatives of the State Legislative Black Caucus, NC Rep. Jordan Lopez and NC Sen. Caleb Theodros, responded to the introduction of the bill with a statement warning that the DEI witch hunt would end up costing North Carolinians jobs while slashing critical funding in farming and research fields.

“House Bill 171 is part of that witch hunt, and measures like this ignore the contributions of many communities that have long been overlooked,” the joint statement read. “The Legislative Black Caucus remains committed to lowering costs and creating greater economic opportunities for all. We welcome the efforts of anyone who truly cares about uplifting those principles. But we will not tolerate any efforts that use those principles under false pretenses, while eliminating jobs and opportunities for North Carolinians.”

Cornelius-based Chef Maria Kemp knows DEI better than most. Professionally trained with a L’Art de la Pâtisserie certificate from Chicago’s prestigious French Pastry School, Kemp began as a traditional baker but has transformed her business into a hybrid of food education and DEI training.

Having closed her Decadence Bakery and Pastries storefront in Normal, Illinois, and moved to North Carolina after the passing of her mother, she originally launched her company Beyond Decadence as a traditional catering and delivery service.

Forced to adapt during the pandemic, Kemp has evolved Beyond Decadence away from dessert catering and nationwide shipping to DEI baking demonstrations, team-building experiences, and speaking engagements, combining her passion for pastry and diversity under the name Inclusive Excellence (formerly DEI & B).

She has also become a steadfast advocate for caregiving, having been the primary caregiver for both her parents after her mother suffered a stroke and throughout the time that her father struggled with dementia and late-stage Alzheimer’s.

Kemp spoke at a Charlotte City Council meeting on Feb. 24, warning that the coming “Silver Tsunami” will overwhelm the system, pleading that city officials prepare to invest in caregiver support and programming.

Many people are unaware that caregiving falls under the realm of DEI, Kemp warns, and the elimination of all things under that umbrella could mean a shortfall in funding for critical programs at a time when they should be seeing substantially more investment.

“We’re in a volatile time right now,” she said. “I want people to understand what’s happening in the world now as DEI has been weaponized.”

Though Chef Maria Kemp is no longer catering or taking orders, she still uses her culinary skills to ensure people truly understand what DEI is — a job that’s become all the more important over the last two months. We caught up with the advocate chef following her speech to city council to discuss her work in this critical time.

Queen City Nerve: Can you tell me about your program in your own words?

Chef Maria Kemp: It’s a framework that covers seven different key areas that a corporation would want to focus on to help bring understanding. The seven different key areas are from equity to leadership styles, cultural differences, addressing communication styles, neurodiversity, inclusive communication and diversity categories. I call it a framework because it’s a way of taking all those key pieces that people need to know and understand on a deeper level and breaking them out into modules.

I pioneered this approach where I use desserts to help with the definitions and the understanding. I create scenarios and bring food into it, which is namely dessert, to help them understand the definitions and concepts. Now, depending on the limitations and what we agree upon is going to be most effective for that group, there could be an interactive portion where they’re doing a little light construction or assembly, but it has to fit the lesson that needs to be learned overall.

What made you decide to conduct DEI training this way?

It originally started before the world blew up because I had gotten into pairing the diversity message and the desserts together at the request of a former client maybe three years ago. I took it even further beyond fulfilling their initial request and doing the project for them, and DEI & B grew from there.

Does this visual interactive method work better than more traditional DEI training, in your experience?

Absolutely, because you’re feeding people. They really enjoy the experience because they don’t know what they are in for. Food is a universal language, and it resonates. When I wear my jacket when I go to events, I immediately draw attention because we’re driven, empowered, motivated by food. It opens people up.

Beyond that aspect, it lowers the temperature of the weightiness of the topic because you’re not talking about Black, white, brown people, whatever — you’re using food to have those same conversations. I think a lot more can get in and resonate and stick, because now you’re doing that and making different similarities or differences or inequities amongst the individuals through food.

Why are these trainings personally important to you?

Because people don’t understand. They’re afraid to ask because they feel like it makes them anti-something and afraid that they’ll be ostracized. They feel people might say, “What do you mean you don’t know that? Does that mean you’re against it?” No, that just means I don’t know. And you don’t know what you don’t know. If you don’t ask, then you don’t learn.

I always start by saying that my training is foundational level because I want to help people understand it from a foundational level. There’s so much lack of clarity around what diversity really is and who it includes and what it encompasses, and people are making decisions and assumptions and voting for things that they don’t fully understand. They’re drinking the Kool-Aid, and there are people who drank the Kool-Aid who are no longer with us.

DEI has been weaponized. You think that you just made sure that Black people or brown people didn’t get any advantage that was unfair or only got it based on the color of their skin and now everything’s going back to merit-based. Well, merit-based didn’t work, and that’s why all the programs were instituted, so thank you for just taking us back in time 60 or 70 years.

And what people miss is when all the changes to DEI happen, race and ethnicity is just one of the pieces, but mental and physical abilities, sexual orientation, national origin, gender and age are also a part of that.

It even goes out further into education, political belief, family, organizational roles, religion, income – there are a lot of pieces to it. There are about 14 or 15 different categories that they’ve just eliminated. It hasn’t just eliminated Black and brown people; it’s eliminated a whole lot of people, organizations, and funding resources.

Do you think that most who oppose DEI understand the full breadth of what it encompasses?

I think there are some people [who do], but I don’t think the ones who have jumped on the bandwagon to be glad that it’s gone understand what the real impact is and all the categories or classifications of all the people that it takes in and helps.

Once services start disappearing in agencies who provided services to specific groups of individuals with challenges, or when funding is cut because they’re deemed to fall underneath the DEI umbrella, then that’s when I think people are going to wake up and want to unscramble the egg. And, of course, you can’t do that.

You’ve also become an advocate for the caregiver community, as you espoused during a recent Charlotte City Council meeting. What message were you hoping to get across with that?

People don’t always get this, but being a caregiver is still DEI. Becoming a caregiver is still very needed. According to Forbes, 73% of all employees have a secret second job and it’s caregiving. It’s a big epidemic. In the next five years, 73 million [people] are going to hit age 65 and either need care of themselves or be responsible for providing it for someone else. So this is the part of DEI that nobody’s thinking about.

When people think about caregiving, they’re like, “Oh, that’s just for that senior down the street.” No, that takes in your mentally and physically challenged, it takes in parents of small children or single-parent families. So eliminating DEI has also affected all of those individuals as well, including veterans. That’s what nobody is talking about. That’s the part that has been sanitized.

What do you think would be the next step when people try to unscramble the egg? Do you think there’s a way forward after that?

Well, that’s going to be tough because an executive order has been signed, agencies have already been disbanded and employees have already been fired or terminated. So all that would have to be undone.

Now, if we’re getting down to the state level, prayerfully, that won’t go through, but all that would have to be redone and recalibrated because there’s going to be a lot of people struggling for support and services that found themselves impacted in this merit-based system that we’re going back to. Well, we tried that years ago, and that’s why affirmative action and DEI and all that were put in place because merit-based didn’t work.

And why do you think that is? Do you have any thoughts on why you think that that’s happening?

I have so many thoughts. I’m sure it’s all motivated by money and the general public is probably not even privy to the level that it’s happening at, and the advantages and incentives and contracts or whatever. It all boils down to money, that by eliminating the chance for others to be considered who may not look like you tilts the scales.

There’s probably incentives or something that we can’t see from where we’re at of why it was being done, other than that it just feels like blatant racism.

What have been your thoughts seeing these DEI attacks amplify over the last couple of months?

I think it’s a travesty. I think it’s sad. I think if people took the time to actually research what it is and what it really means and all the people that are impacted, they would have a different understanding, and they wouldn’t be so quick to say, “Yes, let’s get rid of it. I’m glad you got rid of it.”

They wouldn’t blame DEI for everything that goes wrong in the country, like plane crashes. It’s being weaponized in the worst possible way. Anything that goes wrong or anything that’s bad, it’s DEI’s fault.

What would you say to the people out there who are fearful for what these types of attacks mean for them personally and for us as a country?

We perish from lack of understanding. Do your own research on what it really means and get a better understanding of what diversity, equity, inclusion means, and what that means to a corporation. In general, just understand what it is and why it’s important.

And here’s what is going to happen: When you remove diversity, equity, inclusion, you lose innovation, creativity, diversity of thought. It ends up affecting a corporation, the bottom line, because if you have everybody who looks the same, talks the same, has the same experience, same education, same income level, same everything, there’s no innovation and diversity of thought.

There are a million cited sources that talk about the statistics of a diverse and inclusive workforce and the competitive advantage that it gives and the revenue goals that they will achieve over a non-diverse and inclusive company. Those are statistics that I give in my interactive presentation.

With all that in mind, what are your thoughts on House Bill 171?

I didn’t even know about that. I mean, it’s not surprising because they’re all Republicans just following what Trump has been pushing as his agenda. That’s huge, and it’s horrible, and that moves it beyond the federal level.

I have corporations I’ve been talking to, depending on their industry, where they’ve had to totally change and pull information, any DEI information off their websites because they have federal contracts, and change training that they had scheduled, and reevaluate what they can or cannot do with me, and have their lawyers involved, and that’s just from the federal mandate.

Now, if we’re drilling down to the state level, then we’re going to start seeing that more locally. They’re just trying to shove it down everybody’s throat. That’s what it boils down to — to make sure they eliminate it and wipe it off the face of the Earth, period.