TI veteran takes her skills from corporate to culinary

Dallas Chef Michelle Spangler loves to add her own taste to everything she does.

As the owner of Infused Oils and Vinegars on Preston Road, 58-year-old Spangler runs a bright orange shop stocked wall-to-wall with over 50 infused oils and vinegars, as well as other cooking products such as salts and teas.

But the Louisiana’s career didn’t start with food. Before buying infused oils and vinegars, she worked for Texas Instruments Inc .. for over 20 years.

An exhibition of infused truffle oil at Infused Oils and Vinegars in Dallas.(Lynda M. González / photographer)

In 1983, fresh from the University of Louisiana at Lafayette, Spangler worked on the TI defense team as a programmer on the Tomahawk missile, a weapon used in Operation Desert Storm in 1991. She worked on the guidance system for the autonomous recognition of targets.

She then moved to TI’s semiconductor division in Houston, where she did factory and business planning. After five years in Houston and starting a family, Spangler ventured a new role at TI – Cell Phones. She called it the “place to be,” and Spangler was responsible for loading factories to supply millions of semiconductors for the construction of Nokia, Ericsson and Samsung phones.

She was often the only woman in the room.

“I was really in a place where there were no women in management,” said Spangler. “Texas Instruments understood then that it was a problem. For me, I was in the right place at the right time because they were looking for women who could be successful in the jobs they needed. “

She remembers one day standing in a group of her colleagues and hearing a male colleague say, “Well, we all know who is being promoted here.”

“I refuse to apologize for the fact that TI was trying to solve a problem that needed women – they had to hire more female engineers and give these female engineers positions of authority,” said Spangler.

Her former operations manager Jan DeMeulder says that Spangler did everything at TI “with a specific goal”.

“She has been very open to challenging tasks and changes in the way things are done,” said DeMeulder.

Spangler said Texas Instruments has taken steps to transform the work environment for women. According to a 2019 company report, 33% of the company’s board of directors were women, 13% of profit and loss positions were women, and 33% of employees reporting directly to the CEO were women.

As her two children got older, Spangler decided it was time to put family ahead of career. In 2000, she submitted her resignation to the company, but it was rejected.

Instead, the company offered her a year of vacation. She took it and returned to TI after the vacation was over. By 2005 she was ready to make a permanent exit.

“I was ready,” said Spangler. “Texas Instruments can be a demanding environment. I knew I missed so much of what my children were doing. And I had to be there for her. “

Cajun roots

Spangler is originally from southern Louisiana and grew up in “Cajun country”. At home she prefers to cook gumbo and lobster etouffee.

In 1995, Spangler and her then 90-year-old grandmother published a cookbook titled Cook til Done, Recipes from a Cajun Kitchen, in homage to the long line of female Cajun cooks in their family. The book sold 1,200 copies in Louisiana.

Several years after she left TI, Spangler’s husband encouraged her to go back to school to pursue her passion for cooking.

In 2009 she enrolled at the Art Institute of Dallas for her associate degree in culinary arts. She said that she often felt like the “mother” in class because many of her colleagues were college-aged students.

The cooking industry is also dominated by men, with around 58.2% of professional chefs being men, according to 2019 census data.

She took class at 6:30 am so that she could spend time with her children. In just three years she became a qualified chef.

She accepted a position as head chef at Family Gateway’s Annette G. Strauss Family Center and cooked two meals a day for 100 to 150 people.

“I applied online and 10 minutes later the Family Gateway manager called me and said, ‘Are you real?'” Spangler said with a laugh.

She spent a year cooking for families affected by homelessness. “The service to the less well served communities is very important to me,” said Spangler.

In search of her next adventure, she spent some time making money. One day a friend turned to her to be the cook for a tasting at a silent auction. She began doing regular tastings for 10 to 12 people at a store in Addison called EVOO and VIN for extra virgin olive oil and vinegar.

The tasting department of infused dark basal vinegars at Infused Oils and Vinegars.(Lynda M. González / photographer)

She fell in love with the product and bought the store from its former owner in 2017. Spangler said she didn’t see any profit from the business until a year and a half after the purchase. She renamed it Infused Oils and Vinegars and later moved the store to its current location.

A career that continues

Spangler runs the shop together with manager Kristi Doss, who has been with the company since the original owner. Spangler and Doss suggest recipes and offer tastings in the store.

“I think a lot of your specialty stores are proudly run by women who help make people’s lives a little easier,” said Doss.

The store generates just under $ 300,000 in annual sales.

Spangler said she tends to be attracted to other female-owned vendors. She has met many women in the business world through her involvement with the Dallas Executives Association, where she is the new Vice President.

The store was closed from March 16 to May 1 due to pandemic restrictions, but was enforced on Friday with income from online sales and weekly refills of oil and vinegar products.

Spangler says pedestrian traffic feels like it did before the pandemic.

“We had problems,” said Spangler. “And now people find us. We build a community. We’re building a presence in Dallas, Texas. “

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