As a new generation of women ascend to leadership positions, the pizza community worldwide is feeling the effects—all positive, we believe. For our second annual 10 Women to Watch feature, PMQ once again turned to Alexandra Mortati, founder of the nonprofit Women in Pizza, to handpick the movers and shakers who are challenging the male-dominated status quo and powering the industry onward and upward to a more equitable—and prosperous—future. Check out Women in Pizza at WomeninPizza.com and follow the organization at @womeninpizza on Instagram for regular live interviews and more uplifting, informative articles!
New Brunswick, NJ
As a five-year-old who already dreamed of being a chef, Jackie Mazza nearly burned the house down a time or two. She’d borrow cookbooks from her kindergarten library and sneak downstairs every Sunday morning to make breakfast. “There were a few close calls where the toaster oven caught fire,” she remembers. “Oh, and the microwave went up in flames once. There was no way my parents were letting a five-year-old make breakfast, so I have these vivid memories of my father flying out of bed.”
But Mazza proved unstoppable. After earning a degree in culinary arts and restaurant management, she worked as a pastry chef, opened her own bakery and eventually co-founded a neo-Neapolitan pizza bar called Fatto Americano. The pandemic shut it down, leading to her current role at DHS Hospitality, where she oversees seven different restaurants.
Along the way, this culinary wizard has competed on Beat Bobby Flay and Cutthroat Kitchen. Her latest project: DeeDee’s Pizza in Highland Park, New Jersey, where she trained the team on the intricacies of New York rounds and Sicilian squares. She works so hard, she says, “I need to grow a third leg.” But, she adds, “I feel like you don’t choose this industry—this industry chooses you. I hate the expression, ‘If you do what you’re passionate about, you never work a day in your life.’ If you do what you’re passionate about, you work constantly!”
Read more at PMQ.com/jackie-mazza.
Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada
Before she purchased a Famoso Pizzeria + Bar franchise, Andrea MacLeod usually said no to opportunities that took her out of her comfort zone. But she finally grew tired of coasting. “I was at a fork in the road and needed to make a choice about whether I wanted to give 60 to 70 hours a week as an employee or as a business owner,” she recalls. “So I said, ‘F— it. If a bank will give me a small business loan, I’ll do it, and if they won’t, I won’t.’” A Red Seal Certified Chef with more than 30 years of commercial kitchen experience, MacLeod got the loan and has been confronting the challenges of restaurant ownership ever since. And she had a lot to learn—handling broken ovens and compressors, unplugging toilets and “protecting my servers from creeps.” Her husband, who is disabled due to a massive stroke, formerly took care of the family’s finances. Now, she says, “I’m learning how to be a master financial manager.”
She’s also learning to thrive in a business once dominated by men. “To be in this industry, you really need to be ruthless,” she says. “Men like being like that. It’s good for their self-esteem and makes them thrive and work harder. It ends up being good for their business and financial success. But, for women, not so much. I’m not a person who gets mad that often. I’d rather just talk about the solution than get triggered and angry.” The key, she says, is to “make sure emotions are not involved when making decisions….It’s not emotional in business. If you think owning a restaurant will be fun, you’ll go down with 95% of the rest of them.”
Provo, UT
When Janine Coons opened Fat Daddy’s in Provo, Utah, she already co-owned another Italian restaurant with a friend. Before long, she was running herself ragged, especially after that friend had to step away. “I spent 2023 trying to figure out who I was and what I was doing,” she recalls. “I had a handle on the back end, but marketing was a mystery. My friend was the face of the business, and suddenly, that role was empty. I knew I needed help to tell our story, so I hired someone.”
That someone was Sia Sepehrnia, whose previous “toxic” job had left her feeling undervalued and trapped. “I walked into the pizzeria and was immediately drawn to its retro vibe,” Sepehrnia says. “Janine started talking about her goals, and I knew I could help her express her story.” Together, they’ve become master storytellers, with Coons—a self-described nurturer and caretaker—as the central character. They have created content that showcases Janine’s journey, including blogs like “A Day in the Life of a Pizzeria Owner.”
Meanwhile, Coons empowers her employees as well as her children, who work at the pizzeria. “I want my kids to see that they can do hard things and face challenges head-on,” she says. Sepehrnia, too, values helping others and hopes to continue running fun events, like a Star Wars-themed “May the 4th” promo that proved a huge success. “Food marketing is something I didn’t know I needed,” she says, “and I’m always happy to offer advice to others.”
Las Vegas, NV
Christina Martin could teach a master class on team building and management. As the owner of Manizza’s Pizza, she oversees a passel of youngsters—an unenviable task for many operators, but one that Martin handles with skill, wisdom and aplomb. An employee who wants to move up in Martin’s business had better be ready to read a book or two (or four). And Martin keeps a library in the lobby just for them. “Some are about personal development, and others are business biographies,” she says. “To be promoted, you have to finish two books and write book reports. My mentor is Mike Bausch [owner of Andolini’s Pizza in Tulsa, Oklahoma], and I want to encourage them to read his book, so that one is a two-for-one special. You can read Unsliced instead of having to read two books.”
Martin maintains checklists for onboarding new employees and knows who learned what from whom. “If they screw up the sauce, I know who taught them how to make it and when. If they are really good on the register but struggling with a calzone, we can identify it and help them prioritize. I’m big on checklists, but they must be worthwhile and important. Everyone learns by osmosis, and I have really good leadership. The team members who come in and ask for the library are the ones I invest in quickly. I’m passionate about my pizza, but I’m more passionate about my people.”
San Antonio, TX
To this day, Hengam Stanfield doesn’t know what her in-laws were thinking when they loaned her and Matt, her husband, the money to launch Mattenga’s Pizzeria in San Antonio. Safe to say, though, Matt’s parents have no regrets. The Stanfields, a pair of former engineers who had zero experience in restaurant operations, parlayed $140,000 into a wildly successful chain with nine locations. “Like Texas, you may as well go big or go home,” Hengam says. “We wanted to build something big and substantial.”
Featured on PMQ’s cover in June-July 2024, they’re a power couple of sorts, each playing a vital role in the brand’s growth. Hengam is essentially the COO and a firm believer in making “bold moves.” But she admits you never feel truly prepared for the next store opening. “As soon as you think you might be ready for another, five people quit or a manager moves on. You have to move forward despite being ready or not. You have to take a calculated risk. It was four years before we opened our second store, but then we opened four in 2022. It’s about having a vision and clarity. Are we going to continue on this path, or are we going to sell?” Even when the Stanfields got a tempting offer to sell Mattenga’s—at a time when it wasn’t very profitable—they turned it down. “We realized this was our dream,” she says. “We were already positioned, so starting from scratch made no sense. We chose not to sell and to go all in. Once you make the decision, people will show up because you communicate that vision, and they’ll come on board.”
Livermore, CA
Imposter syndrome feels real enough, but Mel Fucilla knows it’s a big, fat lie—for her, anyway. She and her husband, Giovanni, along with a close friend, are partners in Peace of Pizza, a plant-based catering and pop-up operation, and she’s the culinary mastermind behind it. Nevertheless, customers still ask her male partners—not her—about the oven or the dough. Fucilla is used to it, but she knows her worth. “You can do anything,” she says. “No matter how cheesy it is, if you care about it, you will make it work. Imposter syndrome is so real. Does anyone actually know what they are doing? I feel like you wing it and roll with it. You’ll be scared not doing something, and you’ll be scared doing something, so you may as well just do something if you’re going to be scared anyways.”
What Fucilla wants to do next is open a brick-and-mortar pizzeria. In the meantime, she’s wowing vegetarians, vegans and meat eaters alike with pies like the Ringo Starr (mozzarella, grilled caramelized peaches, burrata, crushed pistachios and basil) and their top-seller, the Funky Fungi (a mushroom paté base, white truffles, fresh mozz, Pecorino and green garlic sauce). “We try to stay away from faux meats and focus on using simple things that are good for our health,” she says. “When we say we don’t have pepperoni because we’re vegetarian only, people ask us for our most popular pizza. Good food is good food—it doesn’t matter what it is. It all comes back to having a good crust and a great sauce.”
Los Angeles, CA
Jillana Miller might not be a major name in the pizza community—yet—but celebrities in Los Angeles know exactly who she is. Working, at first reluctantly, for her dad’s private chef business, she began by delivering orders to the rich and famous. When she tried her hand at cooking, everything changed. “My father had one client that just wanted to receive drop-offs, so I started doing that. The client reached out to my father and asked, ‘Who made the food this time?’ My father told him it was me and asked, ‘What was wrong?’ The client said they really liked it and wanted to talk to me about coming in full-time.” Before long, legends like music producer Rick Rubin, Mary J. Blige, DJ Khaled and Kobe Bryant were clamoring for Miller’s handmade dishes.
Nowadays, they’ll have to order from MillerButler, a catering and pop-up operation Miller owns with her husband, Ahmad. Working out of a ghost kitchen, Miller develops and executes the pizza recipes while also forging business strategy with Ahmad—all while raising their young daughter, Sofia. MillerButler is a nontraditional company, but, she says, that has “allowed us to really establish our business in a real way before we take big, big steps. Every couple is unique, but for us, it might be the best way.” Meanwhile, she adds, “Being a woman forced me to evaluate the worth of my work. It’s so important as a woman, because if you’re weak about it, they will take advantage of it. [Customers] look at my husband and say, ‘How long have you been a chef?’ And we laugh, and he says, ‘Actually, my wife is the chef.’”
Murphy, NC
Running a single-unit buffet restaurant is its own special dance, especially if you’ve tossed the usual boring buffet rules out the window. Lizz Aquarian is so good at it, PMQ featured her on its September 2024 cover. But there’s more to her story. She makes her own rules as a manager, too, although her mother officially owns Downtown Pizza Company. When Aquarian took over, she says, “I wanted to change management in terms of scheduling. I wanted employees to make their own schedules and tell me when they wanted to work. I wanted them to tell me their expectations of us. This essentially diminished the amount of callouts and absenteeism and helped us to eliminate employees who were not performing correctly. It put power back in the hands of the employees.”
But Aquarian exudes her own power, too. “The big thing for me was…showing people that I could be a tiny woman and be a boss. I had to learn how to exercise my authority and hold court.” How does she lead her young staff, many of whom are still in high school? By joining them in the trenches. “You need to work side by side with your crew,” she says. “You have to work harder than everyone. Your crew needs to see you doing the things that they do. This morning, I cleaned the bathrooms. You are no better than them. They are better than you, and you rely on them. You have to sweat, put in the work, and do the hard stuff. Make sure that they see you doing it. Absence from your own kitchen can breed resentment, so there needs to be a balance. They want to see that you care, and you should be there to support them. Even just popping in for 10 minutes can change the course of the evening for the crew. Keep your kitchen culture positive and not toxic.”
Long Island, NY
Victoria Tiso grew up in the shadow of a pizza giant—her father, John Tiso, is the (now retired) co-owner of the legendary Louie & Ernie’s in The Bronx. Today, she’s building her own legacy with Tori T’s, which opened on Long Island in March 2024. First, though, she had to venture away from pizza and go her own way, coaching college softball for eight years. “I always had this idea that I wanted to do pizza, but I also wanted to have my own sense of being, so I went to take on the sports world,” she says. Over time, “I saw where my career was going in athletics, and I saw I was being overlooked for positions. It was degrading. I thought, ‘Why am I running away from what I know and what I’m good at?’” Back to Louie & Ernie’s she went, this time with a mission: to learn every aspect of the business. But when her dad retired last year, Tiso, who had been instrumental in bringing the old-school Louie & Ernie’s into the 21st century, faced a choice: Stay with the family business or start a new team of her own.
Tiso chose the latter with Tori T’s. Now all of the pressure is on her. “There’s no one telling me no [and] no one telling me yes,” she says. “You’re your own boss, your own worst critic or best critic. And if you’re hard on yourself, you can take anything else coming your way. You’re always trying to form into your own person. You’re trying to step out of that shadow and have your own vision and ideas and bring them to light, with [the family] lingering in the background because you’re always going to be associated with them—because they’re blood—and it’s hard.” But, she adds, “I’m building my own brand….I have my foot on the gas, no stopping. I’m 200% or nothing. I’m never going to give you anything less….It comes with being a woman, and I want to keep showing the world that I can do it all.”
Miami Lakes, FL
Growing up in her family’s pizzeria, Gabby Rodriguez wasn’t so sure she’d end up in the business, too. She really wanted to be a teacher. She even took time off from Pizza Scene to work as a teacher’s assistant in Orlando. But pizza kept calling her name from afar. “I came back because my parents were struggling a lot, and the business wasn’t thriving,” she recalled. “I had always told them I’d come back to help if they needed it. Coming back gave me a different outlook—I found a new love for it.” In the end, that short-lived teaching job “was actually the one thing that helped me realize 100% that pizza is something I want to do.”
But she’s kept her teaching skills sharp by training new employees—after all, there isn’t a single job at Pizza Scene that she hasn’t done herself. “One employee is now 19 but started at 17,” she says. “I taught him how to do everything. In that aspect, I was living my teacher fantasy out. I was able to show him what I’ve learned over the years.” She has developed new skills of her own, too, like adding Sicilian-style pizza to a restaurant best known for its 24” New York-style jumbo pies. “My dad wanted to try Sicilian years ago, but me and my siblings were not on board with it. It’s a different process to do the dough, and he didn’t want to be the only one doing it. We did a lot of test runs back then, and it never came through, but we finally have it down pat. Now all of us are constantly trying to think of different concoctions to put on our Sicilian pizzas.”
