Darren Gest

Biography

Darren Gest is a Principal at Deloitte and serves as the firm’s Consumer Industry Human Capital Practice Leader. He advises Boards, CXOs, and executive teams on their most complex workforce and organizational challenges, with a focus on transformation across the Food & Beverage, Retail, Distribution, Consumer Products, and Hospitality sectors. Darren’s expertise spans HR Strategy, AI and Agentic Workforce Engineering, Enterprise Operating Model Design, HR Technology, and Talent Management—helping organizations modernize how work gets done and build future-ready capabilities.

He also serves as a co-author for the James Beard Foundation’s Independent Restaurant Report and is a co-founder of Chicago Chefs Cook, a 501(c)(3) that mobilizes the culinary community for humanitarian causes. Darren holds a Bachelor of Business Administration from The George Washington University in Washington, D.C., and a Master of Business Administration from Vanderbilt University in Nashville, Tennessee. He lives in Chicago, Illinois, with his wife and two sons.