Baking & Snack - December 2020 - 22

2020 OPERATIONS EXECUTIVE OF THE YEAR

sometimes doesn't end before the next one starts.
But for Ms. Watkinson, there's something oddly rewarding about it all.
" I've never felt so busy in my life, but at the end of every day, I feel like I really accomplished something, " she
said. " That's sort of the beauty of all of it. "

A life-changing decision

Left: Aladdin Bakers
creates artisan and Old
World products that are
baked in rack ovens.
Right: The bakery also
produces a high volume
of baked goods on automated production lines.

In so many ways, Ms. Watkinson has demonstrated the
leadership qualities and management skills that so many
production supervisors, plant managers and other essential workers have had to rely on this year as they
struggled and persevered through untold challenges
caused by the pandemic. For these reasons and others,
Baking & Snack magazine has named her its 2020
Operations Executive of the Year at such an unprecedented time when the industry needs to take off its hats to the
frontline workers who did their jobs under extraordinary
circumstances and the people who have led them.
Unlike the classic operations executive, however, Ms.
Watkinson didn't grow up in the family business, study
to be a master baker or even earn her stripes from working decades in the bakery. Rather, in her previous career,
she practiced as an attorney, which came in handy with
the onslaught of worker safety issues that bakeries had to
contend with this year.
" I can understand labor laws. I can understand all
of these new COVID laws, " she noted. " They change

22 Baking & Snack December 2020 / www.bakingbusiness.com

daily, and we don't generally have to contact our outside counsel because I understand the law that they're
setting forth and what it means to us and what we
have to do. "
After attending Nassau Community College and New
York University, Ms. Watkinson graduated from Hofstra
University School of Law in 2005. Over the next decade,
she worked at various New York-area firms representing
clients, including several bakers, in complex commercial litigation. That's where she met Joe Ayoub, owner of
Aladdin Bakers, and learned about the industry.
" I became interested in overall operations of a bakery,
how products are produced and the relationship between the bakery and consumers, " she recalled.
In 2015, her law firm's managing partner began contemplating retiring, which prompted Ms. Watkinson
to explore the next stage of her career. She received
numerous offers from other firms, and one from
Mr. Ayoub, whom she had represented and had been
asking her for years to join the bakery as its chief administration officer.
" I was really trepidatious about doing something besides law, because that's all I knew, " she said. " I had decided that I'd always be a lawyer, but not always have the
opportunity to work at a bakery, so 'Why not?' I asked
myself. I took a leap of faith, and I haven't looked back. "
Mr. Ayoub, who made pitas by hand in the 1970s
and delivered them throughout his neighborhood be-

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Baking & Snack - December 2020

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