Hall, Carla Renata

Impact on the world

Built a culinary career from an unusual starting point, earning an accounting degree from Howard University in 1986 and working as a certified public accountant at Price Waterhouse before abandoning that career within two years and spending several years as a runway model in Paris, Milan, and London, where Sunday gatherings among Black expatriate models first sparked her serious interest in cooking; she went on to compete on two seasons of Bravo's 'Top Chef,' becoming a fan favorite known for her philosophy of cooking with love, and co-hosted ABC's Daytime Emmy-winning talk show 'The Chew' from 2011 to 2018, becoming, according to one description, the most visible Black person in American food media; her 2018 cookbook 'Carla Hall's Soul Food: Everyday and Celebration' received an NAACP Image Award nomination, and she won a 2025 Daytime Emmy for her culinary series 'Chasing Flavor.'

Life & background

Born in Nashville, Tennessee in 1964 to an accountant father and nurse mother, Hall grew up surrounded by Southern soul food and found early refuge in theater, crediting acting with helping her cope with being bullied as a shy, quirky child; after a deferred application to Boston University's theater program, she enrolled instead at Howard University, where her sister was already a student, majoring in accounting partly because she had enjoyed a high school accounting class. Two years into a CPA career in Tampa, Florida, she found herself in what she later described as an existential crisis over the unfulfilling work, prompting her in 1988, at 24, to relocate to Paris and spend roughly three years as a working runway model across Europe; she later described that period as a deliberate bridge between the corporate path she knew she didn't want and a culinary calling she hadn't yet identified, finding genuine homesickness for Southern flavors even while enjoying European cuisine. Returning to Washington, D.C., she built a small lunch delivery service called the Lunch Bunch after friends and coworkers kept requesting the sandwiches she brought to the office, eventually enrolling at L'Academie de Cuisine in Bethesda, Maryland to formalize her training and beginning a culinary career in her early thirties, considerably later than most professional chefs. She built a body of cookbook work including 'Cooking with Love: Comfort Food That Hugs You' and continued extensive television work as a judge and host across multiple Food Network programs after 'The Chew' ended, while remaining active in philanthropic work supporting children's nutrition and literacy organizations including 4-H and the Pajama Program; she has spoken candidly in interviews about her father's struggles with alcoholism and domestic violence within her parents' twice-married, twice-divorced relationship, crediting her own decision not to drink directly to witnessing that history.

Sources

1. Biography.com; Food Network; GENYOUth