Once you see Elizabeth's TEDxManahttan speech, you'll know exactly why we tracked her down to do a blog profile: she's creative, funny, and equally dedicated to good food and to her dog Vespa. Essentially, we want to be friends with her. And as it turns out, her answers provide insight on her perseverance - a key to any good food job success story. While we don't love the experience of hating your (not good food) job, we do love how it motivated Elizabeth to chase her dreams.

What attracted you to a good food job?

I always wished I had one of those stories that began: "I started washing dishes as a toddler at a local diner where I grew up in Jersey," but unfortunately my story is much more simple: I always loved cooking- I went to the kitchen to create things when I was in a good mood and feeling inspired, or when I was in a bad mood to cheer myself up. One day I thought I should try to make a career out of something that made me happy, so I went to culinary school. My parents were thrilled about this decision after having paid for 4 years of undergrad at Vassar. By the end of culinary school I was 110% certain I never wanted to work in a restaurant?but I was required to do an externship. I began at Charlie Palmer's Aureole and 2 years later I was still there! I loved the challenge of working on the line, but I knew that running my own restaurant or kitchen was not my long term goal (being a line cook was already cutting into the time I could dedicate to my other pastimes: kickboxing, yoga, running, crosswords, reading, family, relationships and travel.) At that point, I didn't know where I would end up, I just kept following food until it led me to my dream job.

How did you get your current good food job?

My current good food job is the result of sheer persistence and creativity. I joined del Posto as a cook in late 2005, and after about 6 months had developed an excellent relationship with the absurdly talented and visionary executive chef Mark Ladner. I expressed to him my desire to get out of the kitchen and do something more for the restaurant, and slowly we created a kitchen manager position, a catchall position for things that needed managing in the BOH that sous chefs were too busy to handle. From there Chef allowed me to focus on my particular interests (food safety and sustainability) and use del Posto as a guinea pig to try out the different initiatives. Once it was successful I was able to present the progress to Mario Batali who let me replicate some of the initiatives at our other restaurants. For a while I did both jobs (the kitchen manager at del Posto and the food safety/sustainability all-around person) until I annoyed Mario enough that he finally created my own post.

How did your previous work or life experience prepare you for a good food job?

Honestly, the best preparation for this job was having jobs that I was not passionate about. Once I saw the opportunity to create this job, I knew it was worth waiting, and fighting for.

What advice do you have for others in search of a good food job?

Easier said than done, but if the job you want doesn't already exist, or if they aren't hiring, create it. And have patience - I don't have any, so I sympathize, but the payoff is worth it.

If you could be compensated for your work with something other than money, what would it be?

Immortality for my dog Vespa (or shopping sprees at Anthropologie - sorry Vesp!)