Nicole Patel

NICOLE PATEL is the proprietor of and chocolatier for Delysia Chocolatier. In 2006 while pregnant with her first son, she made a batch of homemade chocolate truffles as last-minute holiday gifts. To the delight of friends and family, she continued to create chocolate treats as a way to relieve stress from her corporate engineering job. In 2008, a chance trip to Becker Vineyards in the Texas Hill Country led to Patel being the first in Texas to make truffles using local wines. Within five years, what started as a hobby turned Delysia into one of the Top Ten Chocolatiers in the Americas, as selected by the International Chocolate Salon and Taste TV. Previously, Patel worked for a technology and communication Fortune 100 company in Austin, as a supply chain and business process improvement expert. She continued to develop her career, receiving her Six Sigma Master Black Belt certification. In her command of the corporate Six Sigma program, Patel was responsible for program development and training for a privately held technology company in Austin through the summer of 2009. Patel graduated from Texas A&M University with both B.S. and M.E. in industrial engineering, with a focus in statistics and process efficiency. @delysia_choc