The push-button microwave hovers over the four-plate stove, which sits atop the capacious oven next to the sink. Beside it, there’s a wide-ranging list of groceries pinned to the wall of the fridge, which features a state-of-the-art ice dispenser producing two perfect cubes with every push of its lever. The setup is sophisticated. Compact enough for, say, a modest New York City apartment, but amply stocked to suit the ambitions of any budding chef.

The twist? The whole compound stands at just over three feet! Everything is within reach of the aproned five-year-olds, who’ll be turning plastic groceries into brilliant concoctions on the easy-assembly countertop. Welcome to Chef’s Kitchen, a recurring holiday bestseller by Melissa Berstein’s much-beloved and wildly successful toy enterprise, Melissa & Doug.

Melissa and her husband Doug founded their now billion-dollar toy company in 1988. The parents of six wanted to spark children’s imaginations, to help them “see the extraordinary in the ordinary” and “unleash a sense of joy.” But long before this principle of unbridled creativity reached their young audience, its first adherents were always the founders, who have fought to keep things that way in the face of growing commercial success and critical business advisors.

For Melissa, the company marks an important leg in her own creative journey, which has been lifelong, intensely personal, and at times, tied to heavy and overwhelming emotions. In a podcast interview with our founder Hitendra Wadhwa last year, she shared, “I have been in an existential meaning crisis my entire life… the despair that in the end, it may not mean anything. For me, salvation came in turning the internal chaos into tangible form, through creating things.” Melissa discovered that by channeling her energy into something positive that would touch others, she could create meaning instead of fearing its absence. 

Before launching her entrepreneurial venture, Melissa sought to channel her energy into poetry, another one of her many talents and natural creative impulses. In reflecting on what it means to prioritize the process as much as the product, not only in her work and her modes of expression but in all areas of life, she explained, “We’ve become so attached to this idea of success and what we’re going to achieve that we’ve lost sight of the verb. We’re living in the noun.” As a self-reminder to pursue success in its evolving, ever-unfinished form, Melissa composed the following verses:

It’s about living in the verb, which is the learning, not the grade.
It’s the crafting, not what’s made. It’s crusading, not the war.
It’s competing, not the score. It’s the acting, not the part.
It’s the painting, not the art. It’s the journey, not the goal,
For engaging fuels the soul.

The “Chef’s Kitchen” was one of the many brilliant concoctions of Melissa’s imagination. In many ways though, it’s also a spot-on description for her vast and vibrant mind. “My brain is like the biggest kitchen in the world. There are a whole bunch of pots simmering on the stove. Some of them are boiling over, they’re the ones closest to me. Some are on the back burner, and they’re just simmering,” she shared with a smile.

Melissa & Doug recently sold for $950 million to Spin Master, a multi-billion-dollar children’s entertainment corporation. But after almost forty years as a flourishing innovator, entrepreneur, and a mother too, Melissa is far from satisfied. She has many more ideas to express, more pots to stir and simmer, more beautiful creations to put out into the world, propelling her to write her memoir and launch her next business, Lifelines. Her relentless quest for meaning, dedication to lifelong growth, and holistic pursuit of success is exactly what we seek to practice here at Mentora.