EDITOR’S NOTE: This is one of a series of Saturday profiles of area residents and their stories. To suggest a profile, contact features editor Burton Cole at bcole@tribtoday. com.

CANFIELD — To First National Bank executive Jacci Ciavarella, banking and baking have much in common, and she is making a career of both.

Ciavarella spends her days at the bank crafting financial plans for her customers and nights in her Canfield kitchen as Sassy Jacci, cooking up delicious dishes for a growing group of fans and followers.

“The name came from people who know me,” she said. “I’m sassy, they say. I’m spunky. So Sassy Jacci became the name of my baking service.”

Both careers are, for Ciavarella, labors of love.

“I absolutely love helping my customers at the bank. I love making a difference in their lives, helping them chart their course so they can meet their dreams and to retire in comfort. I enjoy being able to refinance debt for them to free up cash and have money to spend every month, especially for food because for so many, that is a struggle.”

As Sassy Jacci, Ciavarella is driven by similar altruistic motives.

“When my kids were younger and we were struggling, even when we didn’t have money for Christmas presents or birthday presents, the one thing I could do for them was to cook for them. I could make sure that no matter what, they had good food, and that’s what I did.”

Life for Ciavarella was often challenging in her early years. Born in Poland and married to a military man at 18 just after graduating from Struthers High School in 1984, she was by the age of 26 a divorced single mother raising four children on her own.

Her first foray into professional cooking came after her first husband’s discharge from the military. They returned to Ohio to open a bakery in New Middletown.

Many years later, Ciavarella is re-married to Bob Brownlie and living in Canfield. Together, they have seven grandchildren. After serving for eight years as Huntington Bank branch manager, she is now a branch manager for First National Bank.

She formalized her cooking hobby as Sassy Jacci in October 2018. It is a family affair.

“My husband is an amazing supporter. He shoots videos of me cooking every week faithfully and eats the food every week faithfully, too.”

Those videos, posted on her website, have become the basis for her grand ambition — to have her own show on The Food Network. In fact, in her mind, that has already been pre-ordained.

“They’re going to know me, they’re going to find me, they’re going to say, ‘Where have you been? We need you.’ And they’re going to take me.”

So there.

Ciavarella is a self-taught chef. She has no formal training. Her only experience as a professional cook came with the bakery in New Middletown.

“It’s a passion,” she said. “People are creative in different ways. My sister’s very artsy, for example. She can paint a picture and I can’t. My creativity is my food.”

Currently, her social media page page and website and word-of-mouth are Ciavarella’s principal marketing channels. She regularly posts her original recipes and the videos her husband shoots on her website. Her most-watched video has now accrued over 2,000 views.

Her original recipes include eggplant meatballs, twisted stuffed pepper and Sassy Jacci’s own Meat Marinade.

A YouTube channel is Ciavarella’s next frontier.

“I fell that I once I transition over to YouTube, it’s going to explode.”

In the meantime, Sassy Jacci has become an online dealer for Pampered Chef Kitchen Products and participated in the best-selling “Five Ingredients” challenge based on the books by best-selling chef and author Jamie Oliver.

“I did my own Five Ingredient episode,” she said. “For a week I had a post on my Facebook page asking people to list their own five ingredients. I picked one and the five ingredients were chicken, sausage, pasta, lemon and cheese. I had that person come over and I made the most amazing stuffed shells for her. She raved about it.”

Though Ciavarella is a forward-thinking businesswoman, embracing new technologies and new adventures in cooking, she still longs for days of old. This, perhaps, is a reason for her growing success.

“I should’ve been born in the 1930s or ’40s when the Italian woman had their babushkas and their aprons and made homemade bread dough and homemade pasta because that’s what I do now,” she said.

“I do it out of love. I do it because when I feed people, that’s me showing that I love them.”

Her website, called “Cooking with Sassy Jacci,” is www.sassy jacci.com.

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