LifeChanger of the Year Nominee Profile

Sarah Natvig was nominated by an anonymous member of the community.

Imagine a career that begins with observing "the art of culinary arts," finding a passion for it and incredible talent in all facets of it – from palate to plate, partners to pivot points. Mrs. Natvig has lived this journey. In just a decade after taking a leap into restaurant co-founder, she became the restaurant owner and chef with a certified organic farm partner, transitioned to middle-school Culinary Arts Instructor, and accelerated to School District-wide Child Nutrition Director. Notably, she has accomplished all of this in the Town of Randolph, with a population of just under 4,800. 

Mrs. Natvig is undeniably a LifeChanger in her community.

It was her exemplary record as a professional in the food industry that led to Mrs. Natvig's enrollment at New England Culinary Institute (NECI). Given her interest at the time, she focused on front-of-the-house operations, but that changed when she became intrigued by the creativity she saw coming out of the kitchen.

"I don't know what switched or turned on, but I just really wanted to try to figure out food and, you know, try cooking, essentially, for the first time in my life," Natvig said.

She started acquiring cookbooks from well-known authors and experimenting in the kitchen. Within a few years, she had progressed to co-founding a small restaurant on Randolph's Merchant's Row with just 25 seats. Mrs. Natvig's skills quickly drew a following, particularly in the wave of farm-to-table restaurants that opened over the past 15 years. Pebble Brook Farm, which her husband Chip started in Moretown, Vt., and then moved to Braintree, Vt., supplied the restaurant with organic produce. The Natvigs have lived there for the past 11 years, and the farm and restaurant went hand-in-hand, leading to great success.

From the start, Mrs. Natvig saw Black Krim Tavern as a vehicle for creativity. Though she became a chef by necessity, she was ready for the kind of experimentation that running a kitchen required. She changed the menu at Black Krim every week, giving her artistic freedom to combine flavors and try new ideas. The restaurant expanded and doubled in size, including a pantry addition, and it acquired a broad New England following until 2021. Though Mrs. Natvig hadn't planned to close Black Krim, the opportunity came to move into education, teaching juniors and seniors at the tech center. It was one she couldn't pass up. Mrs. Natvig coached middle and high school soccer and was fueled by seeing youngsters build life skills through the sport.

"Taking my current job in restaurants and hospitality and working with high school students in my hometown — it's just perfect," she said.

Also, the opportunity afforded Mrs. Natvig more time to spend with her family, including her 14-year-old daughter. Leaving a restaurant work schedule for an academic one was, in her words, "literally a game changer."

In her first year of teaching, Mrs. Natvig brought her disposition into the classroom. She distrusts recipes, so some classes started with analyzing a recipe to see whether it would work. The program consisted of 16 students who cooked five days a week. It didn't take long for Mrs. Natvig to be able to say to her students, "OK, you get up, you get in pairs, you walk around the kitchen, pantry, cooler, freezer, whatever, you pull products out, you make a dish." And they did.

"They did an amazing job with no recipes. They just picked up a bunch of ingredients and gave themselves ten minutes of research and how they would do it," said Mrs. Natvig. "They cooked, and it was amazing. I was like, wow, this is so cool!"

Mrs. Natvig encourages her students to be well-rounded and curious, so they can step in and pick up an unfamiliar role in a pinch.

"One component that I talk about quite a bit is getting as much experience as possible in different departments," she said, demonstrating the wisdom of learning and gaining an experiential perspective. She understands the full spectrum of the food service industry, from cooking to styling and photography, sales to marketing, recipe development to client curation, health to taste, and fresh to frozen. Her own experience gives her a way to provide students with a nurturing learning environment while demonstrating a pathway they can follow.

"My curriculum here is essentially modeled after how I would train my staff coming into the restaurant," she said. "99% of the folks I hired for the restaurant had never worked in a restaurant before, and definitely not a kitchen. They had a passion for food, which is the most important thing...It seems to be working, because they're doing a great job."

Within a year – and while not surprising, no less incredibly – Mrs. Natvig moved into an even more significant community-life-changing role to become the Child Nutrition Director at Orange Southwest School District (OSSD), including three elementary schools, a preschool, two middle schools, and a high school. Within months, she's found ways to improve the nutrition, freshness, choice, artistry, and nutrition of the food service program and expand it to breakfast and lunch. She's hired staff for middle and elementary schools to have hands-on culinary training, assist with menu planning and recipe building, and provide "from scratch" cooking for the growing bodies and minds of her district's children.

While Mrs. Natvig humbly calls her work "building community through food," she's really a LifeChanger through food, culinary artistry, education, and extraordinary generosity of spirit. Mrs. Natvig has given her life's work and passion to this community with an undeniable legacy.