My Story

Born and raised in Panama City, I discovered my passion for the culinary arts at an early age while helping with my mother’s catering business, where I learned the traditional cooking techniques I still use today.

When I was ten, I told my dad I was going to be an astronaut. I studied electronics at an all-boys technical high school and, after graduating, moved to the United States to earn a degree in Electrical Engineering with a minor in Computer Science and Robotics. After completing an apprenticeship at NASA, I became a Technical Analyst and Designer of banking systems and traveled the globe for more than three decades for work. Everywhere I traveled, I would intentionally taste the local cuisine.

After our move to the U.S., my mother began making and selling fruitcake and built up a large clientele. When my mom passed away in 1990, I had to inform my mother’s clients that the fruitcake recipe had died with her. To my surprise, I was reprimanded and shamed, especially by my senior clients, who asked, “How on earth do you not know how to make fruitcake if you were with your mom until she died?”

I asked them to allow me one year to figure it out. During that year, I tested and experimented with the cake until I perfected it to my liking. I also started receiving requests to cook for special events. After the year, my creation was not my mom’s cake, it was my cake, and I kept my promise, providing my clients with fruitcakes each year after that. And, just like my mom, I made everything from scratch with no recipes and no measurements.

Twenty-five years later, as the requests to cook for special events continued to roll in, I began contemplating a life change over to the culinary world. In 2008, I decided to go back to school and get a degree in culinary arts. While earning my Culinary Degree at the Art Institute of Washington, I opted to return to Panama for my externship rather than France, where I spent three months studying under culinary matriarchs in the countryside who taught me about the wonderful world of native Panamanian gastronomy.

In 2012, I founded Esencias Panameñas in Washington, DC—one of only a handful of Panamanian food businesses in the United States. Voted Best of D.C. three years in a row, Esencias Panameñas serves authentic Panamanian cuisine and is the only Panamanian catering company in the U.S. to offer its food nationwide.

I believe in giving back. I have performed cooking demonstrations at the Farm-to-Street Party as part of the Eat Local First Week, as well as during Growing Healthy Schools Month, which celebrates the D.C. Healthy Schools Act. I also volunteer at N Street Village, cooking and serving meals for women. Most recently, I traveled to Ukraine with World Central Kitchen to prepare and provide meals to families remaining in the country.