Rollie Wesen

Co-Founder, Vice President, Executive Director

Dr. Rollie Wesen is the Executive Director of the Jacques Pépin Foundation (JPF), a professor at Johnson & Wales University (JWU) in Providence, Rhode Island, and an adjunct professor at Boston University. The JPF teaches and inspires people to cook for personal growth, improved health and skills training for jobs in food service. It honors Jacques Pépin’s love of culinary arts and legacy of teaching, by utilizing his thousands of published recipes, and hundreds of hours of his technique video instruction, and new JPF developed video recipe production, and curriculum development to expand education and training for all.

After earning his BA from Carnegie Mellon in Literature and Creative Writing in 1990, Rollie worked for 20 years, in many different types of professional kitchens, from small independent eateries, to large hotel operations, to restaurants with Michelin stars, in locations all over the US and the world, including New York City, London, New Zealand, Roanne, France, Pittsburgh, Seattle, Portland, OR, and Denver.

Since 2011, Rollie has taught at JWU, in Providence, RI. He teaches cooking competency in culinary labs and academics in the College of Food Innovation and Technology (CFIT), at all levels offered, freshman through post-graduate. Rollie has developed courses and programs for CFIT that have broadened the scope of learning about food within the college, including “Cultivating Local Food Systems,” “Conscious Cuisine,” “the Science of Cooking,” and “Shaping the Future of Food,” with a particular focus on social, economic and environmental sustainability issues within the food system, and envisioning opportunities to create a more equitable, resilient, healthful and sustainable food system for all.

In 2016, Rollie and his wife Claudine Pépin founded the JPF. It has grown from a tiny, family-operated non-profit, to a nationally recognized organization, impacting nearly every state with its Community Kitchens Support programs. Rollie earned his doctorate in Educational Leadership in 2019, with research on educational outcomes in culinary, workforce development programs.

Rollie and Claudine live near Providence, RI and frequent Jacques’ home in Madison, CT. He enjoys traveling, photography, mountain biking, snowboarding, writing, cooking and spending time at home and in the kitchen with Jacques, Claudine, their daughter Shorey, and Bisous, their dog.