About Kyra!
Kyra (KEER-ah) James is a food industry professional with over 10 years experience, centered in the Greater Boston area. Her experience began after pursuing a master’s degree in Gastronomy from Boston University. She quickly fell in love with the specialty food industry and vast world of artisan cheese, becoming a manager, buyer, and educator at Formaggio Kitchen South End and Formaggio Kitchen.
Kyra moved her focus to food education and management as the Program Manager for The Boston Center for Adult Education. Where she created 100+ food-related classes and events every 8 weeks, immersing herself in the most current food trends, innovative ideas and fun experiences. This experience gave Kyra insights into the world of Adult Ed. and how it applies to the food/restaurant industry.
Now with over 10 years of food industry and cheese experience, Kyra has launched Own Your Funk to incorporate her professional knowledge and experiences with her personal growth through cheese-centric events.
When not creating cheese-centric events, influential food industry content and sharing her cheese-y knowledge with others, she is also a board member for The Cheese Culture Coalition which focuses on building equity and inclusion for B.I.P.O.C. (Black Indigenous People of Color) individuals in cheese.
A LOVE LETTER TO FUNK:
Since my beginning days as a cheesemonger in 2012, I’ve said that cheese can be used as an analogy for all sorts of things and the biggest, for me, is how similar it is to humankind. The most obvious being how unapologetically funky it is - you can almost always know how it’s doing and what it’s all about based on its appearance and scent. Humans aren’t much different. So I got to thinking, if we work to understand cheese for what it is, and love it anyway, why don’t we do the same thing when it comes to understanding ourselves?
That’s where the idea to OWN YOUR FUNK came from.
In 2019, when getting sober, my attention became heightened to how often certain cultures leaned on substances - most significantly how alcohol is used to support their daily lives. At the same time, I was on a personal quest to learn who I really was and what my purpose(s) could be. And as cliche as all this sounds, admitting I had a problem was truly the missing piece for me to begin learning how to love ALL of me. Cheese + Music + My Flaws
Own Your Funk embodies more than just a love for cheese. It’s about understanding who you are from the outside, in, through fun and interactive experiences - using senses and knowledge as power to thrive in our own authenticity, strength, and uniqueness. My foundation for self love was built through eating cheese, maybe yours can be too?
To Own Your Funk is to appreciate the good and the not-so-good parts of you. Embrace your flaws and see the beauty that wouldn’t exist without all facets of you! The hardest part is being brave enough to acknowledge everything about yourself... so be like cheese. Be unapologetically true to yourself but most of all... stay funky!
— CEO + Founder, Kyra James