The driving force behind the San Francisco Cheese School, who grew it from its modest beginnings in a North Beach flat to an internationally recognized enterprise in Ghirardelli Square, Kiri Fisher passed away from cancer on April 26. She was 45.

A Canadian native who grew up largely in Orinda, California, Fisher had an unquenchable entrepreneurial spirit. After graduating from Scripps College, she launched a publishing business in her mid 20s, built around a San Francisco pocket guide distributed in taxis. The 2008 recession doomed the business, says her husband, Adam Fisher, and the failure was traumatizing.

Her therapist at the time advised her to think of a calming image as she dealt with dissolving the company. “She had this vision of spending time in a field with sheep,” says Adam. “The calming image was of her as a shepherd or a milkmaid.”

A couple of internships convinced her that dairy farming, with no days off, wasn’t for her. Advised to get some retail cheese experience, she went to work for Pasta Shop (now Market Hall Foods) in Oakland. In 2011, she took her next entrepreneurial leap, buying the Cheese School of San Francisco with business partner and cheese educator Daphne Zepos. Launched in 2006 in another location by Sara Vivenzio, the school was operating on the second floor of a small residential flat on Powell Street. I taught there often.

“They were serving wine without a license and had a residential dishwasher that took 45 minutes to do a load,” recalls Adam. “The health department could have shut them down at any time.”

But the sluggish dishwasher was the least of Fisher’s challenges. Within months of purchasing the business, her partner was diagnosed with late-stage lung cancer. Zepos passed away three months later.

“It was terrifying for Kiri,” says Adam. “She was not the cheese expert; she was the business mind. And she was deathly scared of speaking in public. She did it because she had to.”

Fisher managed the transition to a properly licensed business, expanded the class schedule and oversaw the move to new quarters on Valencia Street. Calamity followed her there. The school’s new location was on one of the most flood-prone blocks of San Francisco. After one torrential storm, the kitchen was inundated with waist-high water.

In 2017, recruited by shopping center developers, Fisher opened Fisher’s Cheese & Wine, a cheese-focused café in an upscale, open-air retail venue in Larkspur. It was delightful, with an appealing menu and top-flight cheese counter, but the Marin County community did not respond as she had hoped. While she grappled with disappointing numbers at Fisher’s, another business opportunity emerged—this time at San Francisco’s iconic but struggling Ghirardelli Square.

“Ghirardelli was trying to make itself relevant again,” says Adam, “and top of their list was Kiri Fisher and the Cheese School of San Francisco. Ghirardelli gave her the primo spot in the whole square.”

Moving to Ghirardelli boosted the school’s visibility and the revenue potential from cheese sales, catering and private events. With its dramatic bay view, the classroom was magical—I taught there several times—and classes routinely sold out. Fisher was finally at the helm of a stable and profitable business in the cheese world she loved. And then Covid.

“Her business was like a three-legged stool,” says Adam, “and all three legs were uniquely vulnerable to Covid. The business was destroyed.”

A deal to sell the school to an employee fell through. At home with no income during the pandemic, Fisher began experiencing health issues that doctors initially suggested were stress related. Adam encouraged her to apply for disability insurance, but she told him she wasn’t disabled. “She was so high integrity, I would fault her for it,” says Adam.

Even as she battled cancer, Fisher began pivoting to a new career, earning a real estate license and doing interior design for friends. “She had incredible taste and an ability to make things happen,” says Adam.

The family’s final months together were “like a romantic comedy turned into a horror show,” says Adam, a freelance writer. “It was maximally bad, and she was maximally gracious. My dad, who is a doctor and has seen a lot of people die, said he had never seen anything like it. She was doing emotional work for all her friends, counseling them. She was preparing all of us. It was extraordinary to witness. That light that always shown in her just got so bright at the end.” Fisher also leaves a 10-year-old daughter.

“Kiri was such a creative force in the cheese world,” says Sarah Dvorak, co-founder of Mission Cheese in San Francisco, a business that Covid also felled. “All of it was done with intention and grace, and with a cohesive team that adored her. She was magnetic in so many ways.”

The American Cheese Education Foundation has created the Kiri Fisher Memorial Scholarship to fund membership in the American Cheese Society for an independent entrepreneur in the cheese industry, as well as registration and travel expenses to the society’s annual conference. You may donate here.