Dubai-Based Kathy Johnston Loves Chocolate

New Zealand-born Kathy Johnston is so in love with chocolate, she lies awake at night thinking about it. “For as long as I can remember, I have been obsessed,” she says. But as chief chocolate officer of Dubai-based chocolatier Mirzam, that’s a healthy fixation to have, Nicola Chilton writes for Time magazine.

Johnston joined Mirzam in early 2016 after meeting the company’s founders, who convinced her to work for them, rather than chasing her original dream of moving to Switzerland, chocolate capital of the world, Chilton reports.

Johnston’s love of all things chocolate goes all the way back to her childhood, when she’d build ladders out of kitchen chairs to get at her mother’s hidden chocolate stash and spend her pocket money on imported praline eggs and salted caramel bars. She recalls telling her grandfather, who was the lead mechanic on Sir Edmund Hillary’s 1958 South Pole expedition, that her dream was to have her own chocolate factory.

That dream has come true at Mirzam.

Original article by Nicola Chilton, Time, February 1, 2022.