Meet the CEO Chef Team

The heart and soul of CEO Chef® is our leadership team of our president and chief of operations, Renee Gordon and our founder, Chief of Fun Transformation (CFT), Jim Connolly. They have been the driving force behind our organization for over 16 or our 22 years of operation. Both have degrees and experience in culinary arts, business management and organizational development and are ready to serve you in helping you create a winning work culture within your organization.

RENEE GORDON, PRESIDENT, COO

CEO Chef has been blessed with finding and retaining such a talent. Renee has a diverse career background that fit perfectly within the CEO Chef family.
Renee is a professionally trained chef, graduating from the original Cordon Bleu School of Cooking in Paris, France. Worked both in France and Spain then returning to the United States to work with her mentor and friend Wolfgang Puck. That is not to overshadow her years as a real estate agent & broker, multifamily unit manager and investor, print model and spokesperson for Shiseido Cosmetics in Japan. She is a certified relationship coach, author and professional speaker. But Renee is most proud of her certification as a CEO Chef Trainer and as a CEO Chef Master Trainer with the ability to train other trainer prospects to becoming a certified CEO Chef trainer.
She was born in Hawaii but has spent most of her adult life living in Beverly Hills, California with her many pets including, but not limited to her constant companion and canine muse poodle, Jean-Luc, three Maltieses (Joy, Harmony & Bliss), 48 exotic birds, multiple fish tanks and exotic Koi pond.

JIM CONNOLLY, FOUNDER, CFT

CEO Chef was the brain-child of Jim Connolly over 22 years ago. His original program, aptly named, Team Cuisine, was created out of a need in his local community of Silicon Valley, California, to experience a team building training that was both highly effective and fun, coining the phrase, High Fun-ctioning Teams.
Jim combined his experience as a world class chef instructor, mixed it together with his vast education on organizational development, NLP (neuro linguistic programing), and business leadership skills, and added a generous pinch of fun to create these rich culinary team building programs that his clients thoroughly enjoy today.
He is proud to call many of Silicon Valley’s top companies his clients like H.P., Facebook, Google, Symantec, Cisco, Genentech and many more. He enjoys traveling the U.S., Caribbean and Canada to touch the hearts and stomachs of some of the finest organizations in the world.
Jim is an honors graduate of Johnson & Wales University, certified in NLP, certified Executive Results Coach, certified in the Art and Science of Group Dynamics and Doctor of Philosophical Theology.
Beside being an authority in the area of team & leadership development and business culture development, Jim is a professional speaker, Business Results Coach/Consultant, leadership trainer and author of two books, Teamwork: Recipe to Your Business Success and i Lead: When Will It Be Your Time to Cut Down the Net?
Jim is currently working on his third book on the subject of team and leadership organizational development, Creating Leaders to Build Teams, Aligning Your Purpose Toward a Winning Work Culture due to launch in the third quarter of 2017.
He was born and raised in Providence, Rhode Island and had called California his home for the past 30 years. He is a proclaimed basketball “nut” and is passionate to teach youth the team fundamentals of the game he loves.