Shelley is the owner and president of Beyond Cuisine, Inc. an off-premise catering and professional consulting company in Atlanta, Georgia. Founded in 1992, her boutique-style catering company specializes in full-service social and corporate events featuring completely custom menu designs, and has produced events that have run the gamut from seated dinners for 400 guests to receptions and galas for 1600 people…and an occasional, pull-out-all-the-stops, elegant dinner for two !

She began her catering career more than 18 years ago in her hometown, Milwaukee, Wisconsin, where she was the Director of Catering for two well-known, upscale gourmet markets. She also coordinated in-store retail vendor demos and samplings, helped initiate a very successful in-store weekly cooking school, and implemented the community and charity projects hosted by their tray-service French-style cafe which was situated on the store’s mezzanine overlooking the store. She also executed their unique, one-night promotion entitled “The Single Gourmet,” which drew more than 1200 singles to the store for 25 simultaneous food demos, wine/beer samplings, live jazz on the deck, hilarious sports celebrity cooking demos, and creative food games and entertainment. It remains the corporation’s most successful special event to date.

Shelley was recruited and relocated to Atlanta in 1988 by Tom Murphy, owner of Murphy’s Restaurant, a highly regarded dining establishment in the eclectic Virginia-Highland neighborhood, to take over the Catering Department. She took charge of five salespersons that generated both self- and full-service catered events. In 1992, they won the Gala Award for “Best Food Presentation” conferred by the industry’s magazine giant Special Events Magazine at their annual trade show and exposition. Her winning event was a themed Grand Opening Reception for 900 people for the Dallas-based retailer “The Container Store” for their first outside-of-Texas unit in Buckhead.

She is a frequent seminar speaker, industry panelist and workshop presenter nationwide for such clients as the National Restaurant Association, National Grocer’s Association, National Association for the Specialty Food Trade, U.S. Army Officers’ Clubs, The Special Event 2000 and CaterSource, Inc. with whom she toured with Chicago’s catering guru, Michael Roman, on his six-city national tour with five other speakers who presented seminars to nearly 1000 attendees overall. She also brought a fresh approach to the course she taught at DeKalb College entitled “How To Start Your Own Catering Company” where she continually received top ratings from student evaluations. January, 2000 saw her complete her duties as Curriculum Editor for PCDI (Professional Career Development Institute), the second largest distance learning company in the country for their newest accredited course entitled "Gourmet Cooking and Catering".

After a twelve-year avocation as a national, elected-volunteer officer, Shelley is now the Immediate Past President of NACE, the National Association of Catering Executives, having completed her second two-year term as National President in 1998. She is the first off-premise caterer to be elected president of this, the oldest - founded in 1958 - and largest professional association for caterers and their affiliates. The association enjoys the strength of local chapters in 47 cities across North America and along with its 501(c)(3) Educational Foundation, strives to promote networking and educational opportunities and raise the level of expertise and professionalism in the catering industry. She earned her CPCE career certification (Certified Professional Catering Executive) in 1994. She is also the Foundation’s Endowment Chair, charged with raising $1.3 million over the next five years to create new and heightened educational initiatives for NACE.

Shelley is also a member of ISES (International Special Events Society) since 1994, and a Board Member of CIC (Convention Industry Council, a federation of 26 associations representing the meetings and exposition industry, of which NACE is a constituent organization.

From 1995-97, her company also took over operation of the upscale, window-service cafe, Caffe Antico, in the exciting, expanded space at the Michael C. Carlos Museum on the campus of Emory University. Founded in 1919, it is the oldest art museum in Atlanta and enjoys the dramatic design concepts of famed architect Michael Graves in the new spaces of the tented-effect round cafe and the striking Reception Hall which adjoins the cafe that can be reserved for seated dinners and receptions for both social and corporate events. Beyond Cuisine is proud to remain on the Preferred Caterers List at the Carlos Museum as well as many other venues in the metro Atlanta area.

Shelley also participates on several volunteer boards of the Cystic Fibrosis Foundation of Georgia, where she designs and develops silent auction displays for the major fund-raisers of this worthy children’s charity.