Words by Molly Hays
Photography by Jacklyn Greenberg

If a proper success story should read like a résumé, all steady build and single-minded trajectory, don’t tell Lucinda Scala Quinn. In 2000, she was home full-time with her three young sons, “fully immersed in motherhood.” Today, she’s a four-time author, entrepreneur, television host, and Executive Food Editor at Martha Stewart Living Omnimedia. “My life has really been an improvisation,” she says. Clearly, this hasn’t been an issue.
In the Beginning
Looking back, it’s easy to see the underpinnings of Scala Quinn’s success. Growing up, good homemade food was the norm, and the glue that gathered extended family together. “I was in an environment that felt good. I felt safe and secure and nourished.” Add to that the “social interactions with multiple relatives, and it just felt amazing to be IN it.”
Small surprise, then, that she began cooking professionally as a teenager. She enjoyed it, excelled at it, moved to New York to pursue it, and then? Walked away. When her sons were born—she has three, Calder (26), Miles (22), and Luca (19)—she switched gears. “I just had this gut sense that I really needed to be rooted where I was.” Freelance writing and odd catering gigs aside, she left the fast track to be home with her boys.

It wasn’t easy.

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