We sat down with Lynn Septoff to kick-off our "When Human Capital Management Meets Inspiration" series which is, you guessed it, a series of blogs on the inspiring stories of different people.

Lynn is a self-proclaimed “work-a-holic” and Co-General Manager of e.a.t. café, our Viventium lunch destination. The café offers delicious meals each day with so much variety. There is a salad bar, a grill, a sandwich bar, and more; on Fridays, there is even a self-serve station. To top it all off, the café is always very tastefully decorated. We just finished up the “Halloween” season, and the café was filled with spooky décor that had us all in the spirit.

We wanted to sit down and chat with Lynn because even though we always see her around the café, we don’t really know her. After all, some of us would cross paths with her daily! So, we’re here to give you a snippet of Lynn’s story.

Lynn’s been in the food industry for over twenty years, but she hasn’t always had the same role. Her love of baking is what drew her to the industry. She started out at a young age working for a bakery and has remained in food services since. While she loves to bake, her people-managing skills showed through, and she eventually ended up on the management side of things.

It’s easy to see that Lynn is a good manager and loves her work. She shared with us the difference between a café and a cafeteria. In her eyes, a café is somewhere people can come to relax and to eat. It has a different vibe than a cafeteria does. Another important thing to Lynn is sustainability. E.a.t. café is very environmentally friendly, using cardboard containers, rather than Styrofoam or plastic.

Because Lynn is a lover of baking, naturally we had to ask what her favorite thing to bake is. This was a difficult question for Lynn for two reasons:

1. She wanted to know if it was for her, or for someone else because she likes baking for others to make them happy.
2. Because she bakes so many different things!

However, we did learn that Lynn makes a killer chocolate mousse cake. She also likes to bake things that fall into the “comfort food” category, because as she puts it, “comfort food makes people really happy”.

Lynn is motivated each day by her children, and the fact that she has a job that she loves. She likes to keep her employees involved and always listens to them because she loves learning from them.

It was a pleasure chatting with Lynn and learning about what drives her. Next time we’re grabbing some general tso’s cauliflower from the café, we’ll say hey.

Inspired?  Check out the rest of our “When Human Capital Management Meets Inspiration” series here!