We were lucky to catch up with Aleya Zenieris recently and have shared our conversation below.

Alright, Aleya thanks for taking the time to share your stories and insights with us today. So let’s jump to your mission – what’s the backstory behind how you developed the mission that drives your brand?

I am the co-creator of a serial zine called Heard. We’re a culinary anthology zine that features individuals across the food space and gives them a space to gather, to listen, and to be heard. My co-creator, Codii, and I met while working for Buzzfeed’s food brand, Tasty. She was a culinary producer and I was a video producer. Fast forward a few years, we both are working at different places and missing what it felt like to find food inspiring again. We missed the creative zest we used to have for this space and decided we should change that. We came up with the idea of Heard. during some of the hardest times we had both gone through and found that working on it was a beacon of light and joy for us. Which is why we decided to make the first issue’s theme: Joy. We felt that our lives and the culinary industry had felt a severe lack of joy and we wanted to create a roadmap back to it.

The first issue showcases so many beautiful and unique depictions of joy it was incredible to be able to see the way everyone’s definition of a word we use so often was so wildly different. Some pieces, like Chef Johnny Lee’s (formerly the executive chef of Pearl River Deli and current executive chef of Rasarumah) showcased the joy that hides within closing your restaurant, your child. Others, like Amanda Veitia’s piece, taught us how dining alone is genuinely a spiritual experience.

Our mission is to amplify voices that represent this beautiful space we all adore and to allow others to find that love for it as well.

Awesome – so before we get into the rest of our questions, can you briefly introduce yourself to our readers.

I grew up in Florida and came to California for college where I went to film school at the University of California San Diego. After graduating, I moved to L.A. and started working as a video producer for Buzzfeed’s food brand, Tasty. Food had always been my special interest in filmmaking and in life. For me, it is the universal language, the bridge between people from different backgrounds or cultures. I’ve always understood that food is ultimately about people and tracing the origins of food tells the story of us as a species. I got to bring that passion to Tasty and tell some really amazing stories, one of which resulted in a James Beard Media nomination in 2022 which is still something I don’t truly believe happened.

I currently work as a Video Producer for Spotify’s The Ringer. I’m on their podcast side, producing video podcasts for various shows but I also created a new food podcast this year called “Shift Meal” where the host, Danny Chau, sat down and had a meal with four different barbecue pitmasters in L.A. to figure out what L.A.’s BBQ identity really is.

We’d love to hear about how you met your business partner.

I met Codii while we both were working at Buzzfeed Tasty. She was a culinary producer and I was a video producer. I was the young, spunky, annoying producer excited to take on everything I possibly could and Codii was the seasoned, over-it producer that would look at me and sigh lol, so to think we are here now is a feat in and of itself. We would often be paired with different team members over the course of our work but I always loved being paired with her. We had a rhythm when we worked together. She’s highly skilled in culinary work and has worked for so many food productions so I learned so much from her and our shoots would feel like a dance of us moving around each other, working in tandem, It almost always also featured music as we’d share our current hyperfixation album.

Working on a creative passion outside of your 9 to 5 isn’t easy, and we both certainly wouldn’t have gotten to the ideation stage of Heard. if we didn’t have each other to lean on and energize each other. In the same way we flew around the set in sync, we did in creative headspaces: when one was down, the other picked us both up and vice versa.

Is there mission driving your creative journey?

The main mission for us as we create Heard. is to build community. In the same way we were so creatively burnt out, we realized so was the rest of the culinary industry. So when we brought our contributors our prompt and asked them to take the time and space to find the creativity and the joy again, it was such a beautiful journey to see them all go through. And when we launched the issue in October, we held a small launch party to celebrate our contributors that were in town and watching them meet each other and share their experiences and wins and loses with each other genuinely was the full circle moment for us. It was like everything we set out to bring into the world with this little zine came to fruition and suddenly the community was there in front of us.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://www.aleyaz.com/
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/aleya.mp4/ and https://www.instagram.com/heard.collective/
• Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/aleyazenieris/

Image Credits

The first two images were photographed by Breana Parks, the cover was designed and shot by Aleya Zenieris and everything else was shot by me except for the editor’s photo of Codii and I which was shot by Breana Jackson.