James is a native of Southeast Michigan, who originally graduated from Oakland University with a degree in Broadcast Journalism. He spent his days and nights covering sports, writing feature stories for local newspapers in Detroit, Michigan, and working at radio stations in Toledo, Ohio. He then moved across the country to Ukiah and El Centro, California, where he was a sports editor for those towns’ newspapers. He then got the culinary bug after watching some food science cooking shows and decided to go back to school for culinary arts, baking and pastry at Grossmont College, where he received a dual-degree in those subjects. After working in many of San Diego’s best kitchens, he helped develop an online cooking school platform which never got fully off the ground but provided his soul with some much-needed inspiration, leading him to pursue education and teaching at the collegiate level. While working as an admissions advisor for a local university, he received his Master of Public Health degree with a focus on health promotion. That led him to manage a program at the University of California, San Diego Moores Cancer Center that focused on teaching cancer patients more about healthy cooking and behavior change.

He has taught culinary arts, baking and pastry, and culinary nutrition at local community colleges in San Diego while also taking classes in sustainable urban agriculture to understand more about the connection to food and how it makes its way to the plate. In his spare time, he plays beach volleyball, plays the guitar, eats a ton of amazing food around the country, and spends as much time outside as the San Diego weather allows, which turns out, is a lot!