Page 16 - Barbecue News Magazine SEPT 2020
P. 16

bbq life
BBQ PROLFILE:
Angela Iversen
 T. Michael Garrison
The Flying BBQ Judge mgarrison8@sbcglobal.net
 This month’s profile presents a lady that has given back to competition BBQ at just about every level. She is a certified BBQ judge. She has cooked with competition teams and ad- vised many new and backyard teams over the years. She is an organizer as well as a consultant to organizers, she has advised reps, organized and advised volunteers at many levels, and just about everything involved with competition BBQ, at all levels. I enjoyed interviewing Angela Iversen this month and learning all the different skill sets she has and how she has given back so much to our BBQ family, at many different levels. Angela was raised on a farm near Bo- livar, Missouri (not far from where I was raised in Kansas). As far back as she can remember, they used wood for just about everything. They heated their home with wood, cooked everything over wood fires, heated their bathwater with wood, made briquets from
their wood, and it was all she knew growing up. They didn’t call it BBQ, it was just the way to cook your food. In fact, that is all she knew until she grew older and learned what the rest of the world did for heat and cooking. She has fond memories of these early years in her life, and both of her parents pro- duced some fantastic meals cooked over open wood fires.
Later in life, Angela moved to Florida and began her adult and married life in Central Florida. It must be in her genes to give back, as that was her
lifestyle. She volunteered in her community giving back to various charities, school functions, and civic events in Cen- tral Florida. Her formal education and profession were ac- counting and was prepared for this by her degree from Southwest Missouri State University. She expanded this ed- ucation to software development, software training, and software implementation. She worked with various afford- able housing organizations throughout her career and de- veloped skills in reporting and compliance with Government requirements. She was very active in the Oviedo Woman’s Civic Club and contributed a lot to their activities. While active there, she met Connie Washam, a very prominent name in Florida BBQ circles. Connie intro- duced Angela to the world of competition BBQ, and Angela was hooked. She wanted to learn more and get more in-
volved. And in typical Angela fash- ion, she wanted to see how she could give back to the BBQ Family. In 2008 she was involved in the or- ganization of a large Festival in Oviedo, and through this activity, she met and worked with numerous civic leaders and community offi- cials. Connie wanted to organize a BBQ judge training event, and An- gela’s response to that was to do that and more. She got the Chamber of Commerce involved, and this idea
began to grow. She re- cruited sev- eral charities to help fund the event and found merchants willing to step up and contribute. This was the beginning of
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