Some passions are a slow burn, built over time. For Tracey Marchetti, it was a lightning strike. It happened when she was eight years old at the Edgerley Family South Boston Boys & Girls Club, then still called the Boys Club, where she was one of the first girls to walk through the doors. She joined the Chef’s Club, and after one session, she went home and made an announcement to her parents: “I’m going to be a chef.”
That single moment set the course for her life. It was a declaration born in the safety and opportunity of the Club, a place that would become the foundation for a remarkable career and, eventually, the destination for her journey home.
In that Club kitchen, Tracey didn’t just learn to cook; she learned resilience. As the first girl in the Chef’s Club, she recalls, “they weren’t real happy about it.” But she was determined, and with tenacity and talent, she “won all those boys over.”
More importantly, she won the heart of her mentor, Chef Howie Bunkley. He saw her potential and nurtured it, guiding her through her teen years. Just as BGCB does for teens today, the staff supported her through her SATs, ensured her grades were strong, and helped her complete all her applications. While the Club provided a critical support system, Howie provided the vision, encouraging her to apply to his alma mater, the Culinary Institute of America.
“The support was amazing,” Tracey recalls. The Club was the anchor that allowed her to dream big. It kept her busy and focused, a member of the swim team and the Keystone leadership club. As she reflects now, that engagement was pivotal. “If I was not at the club as a teenager, I may have been out with some of my friends from high school who were not doing great stuff at that time… I really appreciate that the club kept me so busy.”
Tracey was accepted to the Culinary Institute of America, arriving on campus to find she was one of only eight women in a class of 110. The need to prove herself, first learned in the South Boston Club kitchen, had prepared her for this moment.
Her career has spanned 25 years of high stakes, demanding work. She designed the galley of a private yacht, opened new restaurants, and spent eight years at Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government, where she cooked for U.S. presidents and international dignitaries. That experience taught her the choreography of service at the highest of levels. She credits her time at the Club for making it all possible. The extreme background checks required for those roles demanded a spotless record, a record she believes she maintained because the Club gave her a positive place to be during her formative years.
After a successful career and a much-needed break from the intense restaurant life, Tracey felt a pull back to her roots. A conversation with her lifelong friend, Lisa Gillis (a fellow Southie Club alum and current BGCB staff member), brought her back to where it all began, the Club.
Tracey returned to BGCB as the Culinary Program Manager at the Gerald and Darlene Jordan Club of Chelsea. It wasn’t just a new job; it was a profound reconnection with her purpose.
What she had no way of knowing was she was arriving at precisely the moment her community would need her most. Just months after she started, the Covid–19 pandemic hit, and Chelsea, with its high concentration of essential workers and dense housing, was devastated.
Tracey and the Jordan Club team pivoted from daily service to family-scale support. Meals went out the door. Food boxes and frozen weekend meals followed. The work was urgent and human. It reaffirmed her calling. “I knew I was exactly where I needed to because…I was able to just jump in and do what needed to do to make sure our kids and our families were being taken care of.” She had come home.
Today, Tracey is the mentor she once looked up to, creating the same kind of life-changing opportunities for a new generation. She re-established the Chef’s Club through a partnership with premier Boston hospitality provider, The Catered Affair, outfitting members in professional chef coats and teaching them not just to cook, but to work as a team. She sees that most clearly in members, like a current member and high school senior she is helping apply to culinary school.
“We’re going to do all the same things for her that the Club did for me,” Tracey says. “When you talk about full circle, it just doesn’t get any more real than that.”
She now works to ensure the Club is what it has always been for her, a soft place to fall, where members can try, fail, and still come back to win again. “We teach you that it’s okay to make mistakes because you are still awesome and you will find a way to get it done.”
“I have the best job in the world,” Tracey says. “My experience at the Club changed my life. Now I get to do that for someone else, every single day.”
