What does it actually take to feed 156,000 kids a day across 360-plus schools with a team of 2,500 people? Ask Angie Kasselakis, RDN, SHRM-SCP — Food & Nutrition Officer at Miami-Dade County Public Schools — who has spent 25 years inside the same district, working her way up from a part-time role to running one of the largest and most complex school meal operations in the country. In this week's Next Up episode, host Marlon Gordon sits down with Angie to talk about clean labels before they were cool, a nutrition ambassador program that is quietly rewriting the menu, and why she still tells aspiring dietitians to think like business owners.

25 Years, One District, and a Business Card That Waited a Decade

The episode opens with a story that says everything about how relationships in school nutrition actually work. Angie was cleaning out old business cards and stumbled across one Marlon had given her more than a decade ago at a Florida SNA conference — back when he was running his first company, Next Up Innovators. Ten-plus years later, she is on the podcast that eventually grew out of that name.

That patience shows up everywhere in her career. Angie started at Miami-Dade as a part-time food service employee while finishing her Registered Dietitian training at FIU. She rotated through health inspection reports, equipment specs, and school follow-ups before graduating into supervisor roles, running the meal application center, then eventually leading personnel, HR, and training for the department. Along the way she added a master's in public administration and a SHRM-SCP certification — one of the toughest HR credentials in the country, with a global pass rate near 51 percent.

Miami-Dade by the Numbers

The scale of Miami-Dade County Public Schools is genuinely hard to comprehend. Angie leads a food and nutrition operation that serves roughly 150,000 lunches and another 62,000 breakfasts every school day, across more than 360 schools, staffed by 2,500 employees. That is the equivalent of running a mid-sized restaurant chain — except every location has to hit federal nutrition standards, allergen protocols, and community expectations that shift by neighborhood.

What sets the district apart is not just the scale but the willingness to move first. Miami-Dade was pulling artificial food dyes, MSG, and high-fructose corn syrup out of its menu long before those ingredients became a national conversation. That is not a compliance story — it is a leadership story.

"I have the power to remove food dyes. I have the power to remove MSG. So how exciting that parents that are working towards doing that at home — guess what? Your child is not getting that at the schools."

The Student Nutrition Ambassador Program

The center of gravity in the conversation is Miami-Dade's student nutrition ambassador program — a small group of about 15 students that has become one of Angie's favorite parts of the job. The ambassadors are brought to the district's food show, walk vendor booths alongside decision-makers, sit in on menu discussions, and are being trained to give real feedback on what the district serves.

Angie is doubling down on this in the coming year. She has committed to one-on-one school visits with each ambassador — unannounced to the cafeteria managers — so she can see the kitchens through the students' eyes and make sure their suggestions actually show up on the tray. The goal is to turn the ambassador program from a focus group into a leadership pipeline, complete with a "Student Menu Takeover Week" where kids build the district menu for a full rotation.

"They keep me young. Strategically, in the space that we're in, we need to have boots on the ground and we need to know what these kids really like. Do I have time? No — but I'm making the time because it's important."

Scratch Cooking at Scale and the Jambalaya Story

One of the most memorable segments is what Marlon calls "the jambalaya story" — how Miami-Dade's cooks-and-bakers training program led to a scratch jambalaya recipe that became a district favorite. It is a small example of a much bigger idea: even at 156,000 meals a day, scratch cooking is not out of reach. It requires training, standardized recipes, and a leadership team that trusts the people in the kitchen to execute.

Angie also uses the episode to push back on a common misperception — that packaged retail brands are inherently better than the products schools serve. In fact, the K-12 versions of many mainstream products are formulated to be healthier, with less sodium, cleaner labels, and tighter nutrient profiles than what parents can buy in the grocery aisle.

Advice for the Next Generation of RDNs

Angie's parting advice for aspiring registered dietitians is the kind of thing you rarely hear in a nutrition-science classroom: think like a business owner. School nutrition is one of the largest, most stable, and most impactful career tracks a dietitian can choose — and it needs more people who can lead teams, negotiate contracts, run budgets, and speak the language of operations. Her career path is a case study in what happens when a clinical credential is paired with real leadership training.

Key Takeaways