<pclass="lead">Forty-seven years old. Born and raised in La Grange. African-American, Southern, and proud of both.</p>
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<h2>The Kitchen Taught Me Everything</h2>
<p>I started washing dishes at Mama Jo's on Main Street when I was fourteen. Worked every station — fry, grill, sauté, expediting — before I ever managed a budget line. The kitchen teaches you things no business school does: how to read a room, how to anticipate the rush before it hits, how to keep your cool when the ticket rail is three feet deep and the fryer just died.</p>
<p>Twenty-some years later, I'm still using those lessons. Operations management is just mise en place at scale. Same questions: What do we need? When do we need it? Who's doing what? What happens when something breaks?</p>
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<h2>Roots & Rhythm</h2>
<p>My grandmother taught me to grow collards and tomatoes in the backyard plot behind the shotgun house on Elm. She taught me that food is how you love people — not the fancy kind, the real kind. A pot of beans that feeds a family for three days. A smoked shoulder that brings the block together on a Sunday.</p>
<p>Sam Cooke on the porch radio. Gospel at First Baptist. The rhythm of the seasons — planting in March, first tomatoes in July, collards sweetened by October frost. This is the metronome I live by.</p>
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<h2>What I Carry Forward</h2>
<p>Every system I build, every schedule I write, every budget I balance — it's all in service of the same thing: stability and nourishment for the people around me. My team. My family. My community.</p>
<p>That's the work. Not flashy. Not loud. Just solid. Like a well-seasoned cast iron skillet.</p>
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<p>Rony Thomas • La Grange, Kentucky • <ahref="https://rony-thomas.4ort.net"style="color: #c47032;">rony-thomas.4ort.net</a></p>
