When defining success, Joan Brett also refers to her original vision, on which her school was based: "To teach people about all aspects of preparing food: nourishing, beautiful, creative, spiritual."

From teaching two classes of 30 to 40 students per week in her home in 1991, and then doubling that by the next year, Brett's curriculum has expanded from the culinary basics to pastry making and other specialties during the past 17 years.

"Thousands have been transformed by their increased cooking knowledge, also influencing their kids, partners, friends and their very personal appreciation of the place of food in their lives," Brett says, of her school.

And she says she wants to continue to be innovative. Today, the culinary school offers classes, corporate team-building activities and three professional programs. Annually, thousands of students enroll in the home cooking classes and team-building events, in addition to handfuls of students in the more specialty classes, such as culinary arts and pastry arts.

Brett practiced family law for 15 years before starting the culinary school. Feeling burned out, she took a cooking class in New York City, which eventually inspired her career change.

"If you follow your passion, work hard and care deeply about the quality of your product, success will come. I had a vision, and was lucky enough to be able to follow it," she says.

This passion also carried her through the tough school's accreditation process in 2001, which she describes as "trial by fire."

All business and management processes, files and curricula were subject to review by the Accrediting Council for Continuing Education and Training. The Boulder school is also accredited by the state of Colorado.

It has since racked up a list of honors, including the 2001 Boulder County Business Report's IQ award for the school's part-time evening "Chef Track" program; induction in the Boulder County Business Hall of Fame this year; and the YWCA's Hall of Fame in 2003.

Last month, inspired by the book, "The Omnivore's Dilemma," by Michael Pollan about food sources and processing, the school launched a six-month "farm-to-table program," focusing on local food origins. Participants will visit and work on several farms on the Western Slope, and take a two-week "externship" in Colorado restaurants to learn how chefs interact with farmers.

Brett finds the national press on this topic exciting, and a mark of progressive culinary information as success in its own right.