About Steve
Experience From Every Side of the Workforce Conversation
Steve’s career began in restaurants as a teenager and continued through five years of foodservice in the United States Navy. From there came food manufacturing, business management, entrepreneurship, and hospitality operations, before his career took an unexpected turn into secondary culinary education.
The classroom demonstrated firsthand what can happen when education connects students with meaningful opportunities beyond it. Later, higher education and workforce leadership expanded that perspective from individual programs to the larger systems connecting employers, educators, industry organizations, workforce partners, and communities.
Each chapter provided a different perspective on how people find opportunity and how organizations can help create it.
The value of that journey isn’t simply having worked in different environments.
It’s understanding how they connect.
Today, those perspectives come together through DeShazo Advisory.
Why DeShazo Advisory
Turning Experience Into Connection
Across hospitality, important work is already happening. Employers are creating careers. Educators are preparing students. Workforce organizations are investing in talent. Associations and community partners are creating opportunity.
Yet even strong efforts can have limited impact when they operate independently.
DeShazo Advisory helps organizations find the connections between those efforts.
The work focuses on identifying where opportunities are being missed and bringing the right people together around practical solutions.
How Steve Works
Listen First. Build Together.
Every organization, community, and workforce challenge is different. Meaningful solutions begin by listening to the people already doing the work, understanding what already exists, and building from there.
DeShazo Advisory works collaboratively to turn that understanding into practical action.
Ideas should lead to action.
Partnerships should create value.
Strategies should be implementable.
And successful work should leave organizations stronger than they were before.
Leadership, at its best, is service to others.
Let’s Start a Conversation.
If your organization is strengthening hospitality talent, connecting education and industry, developing career pathways, or bringing partners together around a shared challenge, let’s talk.