Carlene Vail

Background

About Carlene Vail

Trade-qualified chef with over 19 years of experience within the hospitality industry. I completed my trade apprenticeship in 2004. Following on from my qualification, I have worked in an array of A la carte restaurants before moving across to catering. For the past 14 years, I was employed by a company named Spotless, which I thoroughly enjoyed working for. To start, I was employed as a casual chef. Within a few months, I was offered a permanent full-time position. After being in the same role for 3 years, I was offered a Chef Manager position which I held over two sites for 9 years. During my time with the company, I learned a great deal about food safety. I was very fortunate to have wonderful mentors with a wealth of knowledge guiding me along the way. Throughout the years, I became very interested in internal and external council audits. I completed a supervisors food safety course to become a registered food safety supervisor at my site. I took pride in my work and establishment overseeing the day-to-day implementation of food safety in the workplace. It was in my new role as Chef Manager, I knew I wanted to continue my education and pursue a degree that would broaden my knowledge of Environmental Health and achieve my ultimate goal of becoming an Environmental Health Officer.Entering into university as a mature-aged student has had its challenges. I have come to learn in my foundation year, that Environmental Health is a vast field. No day will be entirely the same. To me, this is a very exciting prospect. Having worked in the industry for some time now, I hope to transfer the life skills and knowledge I have obtained over the years into my new career. • Good people skills: Working front and back of house, I have obtained a high level of customer service skills and also have a great repour with clients and suppliers.• Auditing: Throughout the years, I have been completing internal audits for both Food Safety and OHS. This required great assessment skills, report writing, critical thinking, and correspondence of corrective actions.• Food Safety: Working in hospitality, I have great knowledge and understating of both food safety and legislative requirements which were implemented on a daily basis. • Management: Modeled leadership, responsibility, and collaboration to a team of 4+ Catering staff members with varying levels of skill, including teaching new skills and mentorship.I look forward to the completion of my degree where I will be able to truly fulfill my long life dream of becoming an Environmental Health Officer.