Giada De Laurentiis: The Real Value of Going to College

I recently had the pleasure of interviewing Giada De Laurentiis, an Emmy-award-winning TV personality, celebrity chef, and New York Times best-selling author.  One of the topics that we touched on was the value of going to college.  Despite coming from a very successful family – her grandfather Dino De Laurentiis was a very successful famous movie producer who made over 600 movies and her grandmother was the popular Italian movie star Silvana Mangano – Giada was the first person in her family to attend college.  Her grandfather only finished eighth grade, while her grandmother only went to high school.  She came from a traditional Italian family where they thought women didn’t need to go to college, and in her family’s eyes there was little value in pursuing a college education.

Giada thought otherwise – she craved independence and did not want to rely on her family for her future.  As the eldest of four children, she knew that she could only make something of herself by continuing her education after high school and going to college.  Despite her family’s wealth, she didn’t ask them to pay for it knowing that they wouldn’t.  Going her own way, she took out a student loan and earned a bachelor’s degree in social anthropology from UCLA.

For Giada, college was more than just earning a degree and attending classes:  she grew up working in her grandfather’s restaurant and college was a great way for her to figure out if she wanted to pursue a career in cooking and also a great way to learn about herself.  Giada loved how her college experience, both inside and outside the classroom, gave her the opportunity to grow as a person.  “It really helps people focus on what they’d like to do and meet people that really influence the rest of their lives,” Giada said.

I share Giada’s views – college was an excellent opportunity that allowed me to discover myself and grow as a young adult – and it also was a necessary and critical stepping stone for my future.  At the University of Michigan, through a tremendous amount of hard work, I not only excelled in the classroom but also experienced my first taste of entrepreneurship.  When I wasn’t in the library, I made cool Michigan-themed t-shirts and tirelessly sold them by knocking on every single door of every single dorm at Michigan until I hit all twelve of them.

The lessons that you learn in the classroom are important – and the lessons you learn outside the classroom can be as valuable or even more valuable In Search of Excellence.

This article is based on my interview with Giada De Laurentiis, an Italian-American celebrity chef, writer, and Emmy award-winning television personality.  She was the host of Food Network's Giada at Home and has been the host or co-host of 18 television shows, and she also appears regularly as a contributor and guest co-host on NBC's Today show.  She is the founder of the catering business GDL Foods, and the founder and CEO of Giadzy.com, an e-commerce platform which sells culinary goods and contains recipes, entertaining, and travel tips.  Giada is also the author of nine cookbooks including the #1 New York Times Best-Seller Eat Better, Feel Better.  Listen to the full episode here.

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Randall Kaplan is a serial entrepreneur, venture capitalist, philanthropist, and podcaster. He is the founder and CEO of JUMP Investors, a venture capital firm that has invested in more than 80 early-to-late-stage technology companies, including Google, Seagate, and Lyft. Randall is a Co-Founder of Akamai Technologies, a publicly-traded technology company that has 8,000 employees around the world and earned $3.8 billion in 2022 revenues. He is also the Founder and CEO of Sandee, the largest provider of information about beaches in the world with over 100 categories of information for more than 100,000 beaches in 212 countries.

Randall is the host of In Search of Excellence, a podcast designed to motivate and inspire others to reach their potential and achieve excellence in all aspects of life. Randall’s guests have included Mike Tyson, Mark Cuban, Kevin O'Leary, David Solomon, Bob Pittman, Sharon Stone, David Rubenstein, Steve Case, Orlando Bravo, Sammy Hagar, Sam Zell, Rachel Zoe, Tim Draper, Kliff Kingsbury, and Eric Garcetti, among many others. Randall is also a dedicated philanthropist – he is the founder of The Justice Ball which has raised more than $8 million for a non-profit legal clinic that aids more than 12,000 poor, sick, elderly, and homeless residents of Los Angeles each year, and is the Co-Founder of The Imagine Ball which has raised millions of dollars and is dedicated to ending the cycle of poverty and homelessness in Los Angeles.

Read Randall's full bio at www.randallkaplan.com.