Daniel Karsevar

PlantBased Solutions

Daniel Karsevar is a formally trained chef, former restaurateur, business consultant, and product development expert with over 15 years of C-Suite expertise in the food industry. Daniel served as President & COO of Chloe's Fruit, a national vegan CPG brand helping to scale from a storefront location. In 2014 Daniel formed and ran as CEO, Solutiontopia, a consulting agency that launched numerous brands at Natural Products Expo East & West and developed clean label plant-based products for Unilever and other Fortune 500 companies. Daniel currently serves as CEO of PlantBased Solutions, an award-winning business services company helping brands develop, launch and scale plant-based food products. He is also a mentor to many food incubators & accelerators, as well as a contributing industry speaker and writer.

Kate Starr

Flat World Partners

Kate Starr, is the Chief Investment Officer of Flat World Partners, where she drives the investment philosophy, product development, and portfolio management for the firm. Previously, she led the capital deployment team at the Heron Foundation that invests Heron’s approximately $300 million portfolio for impact. Kate started her career as an economics and equities analyst at First Asset Management and moved into research on microfinance in Tanzania. She is a CFA and active member of NYSSA’s Sustainability Committee and advisor to the Sustainability Accounting Standards Board. Kate serves on the investment committee of the Christopher Reynolds Foundation and Impact Assets. She also advises Humanity United’s Worker Innovation Fund. Kate graduated from Indiana University with an Honors degree in English and Italian, and earned a Master’s degree in International Relations and Economics from Johns Hopkins School for Advanced International Studies.

Melanie Bartelme

Mintel

Melanie Zanoza Bartelme is a global food analyst at Mintel, the world’s leading market intelligence agency. She provides insights on global innovation and consumer trends across a number of food categories, with a particular focus on flavor trends. Drawing on her deep passion for food, she previously reported on industry news and trends for the Institute of Food Technologists, where she created a new monthly column devoted to product development innovation.

At Mintel, Melanie co-created the annual US Flavor and Ingredient Trends, which spotlight the cuisine types and ingredients that are growing on restaurant menus and on grocery shelves. She also regularly assesses the state of the food industry by attending trade shows and conferences across the globe and shares her analysis on Mintel’s blog.

Melanie holds a BS in journalism from Northwestern University. In her spare time, she loves to share what she’s eating at home in Chicago or while traveling the globe on her Instagram, @melanietastestheworld.

Noha Waibsnaider

Peeled Snacks

Noha Waibsnaider is a leading food entrepreneur and change maker in the healthy, real food movement. Originally from Israel, Noha grew up on a diet of mostly unprocessed foods and snacking on dried fruit. While working at Unilever in brand management, she learned about the preservatives, chemicals, and processing that fills most of our foods. She realized there was a big gap in the marketplace and an opportunity to create snacks that make people feel good about snacking, with food that tastes great and is naturally nutritious. In 2005, she launched Peeled Snacks: a pioneering clean-label organic food brand with simple, recognizable ingredients. Peeled Snacks makes dried fruit with no added sugar or preservatives, as well as Peas Please and Puffs, savory veggie snacks packed with plant based protein and fiber. With her vision of providing tasty and nourishing snacks everywhere you need a snack, Peeled Snacks are sold in Target, Hudson News, Whole Foods, Wegmans, Giant, Amazon, and many other retailers. The company has been featured in Oprah’s O List and received Healthy Snack awards from Health Magazine and Fitness Magazine.

Noha has been recognized as a White House Champion of Change, Women Presidents Organization’s 50 Fastest, JWI Woman to Watch, Columbia Business School’s Distinguished Alumna, and received the Ecademy Award for Entrepreneurship. In 2007, Noha founded the NY Foodie Companies group to promote sustainable local food businesses in NY, now with 1,200 members. She’s a frequent speaker on social impact and women in business. Noha has an MBA from Columbia Business School and BA in Spanish and Latin American Studies from American University. She lives in Brooklyn with her husband and two kids.

David Postolski

Gearhart Law

David Postolski, a partner at Gearhart Law, is a registered patent attorney and Intellectual Property attorney. With over 15 years’ experience, David specializes in assisting inventors, creators, artists, start-ups, entrepreneurs, early stage companies and emerging companies with their U.S and International intellectual property strategy, protection, enforcement and monetization. David is also a Professor at Parsons School of Design where he teaches master level students about IP, ethics and other regulatory considerations in starting business ventures and products around design. David also teaches IP and Entrepreneurship at Montclair State University and the French Culinary Institute.  David is the current chair of the Professional Issues Division of the ABA Section of Intellectual Property law as well as a member of the CLE Board, Sponsorship Board, and founder of the International Action Group.

Kara Rubin

JUST Foods

Kara is driven by a fascination with food and how it is grown, raised and distributed; a deeply held desire to bring better, cleaner food to more and more people; and nearly 15 years of strategic and operational food retail experience. Kara has deep roots guiding retail strategy and working with brands ranging across the category spectrum.

Kara is a food and retail industry veteran who is the Vice President of Brand & Product Strategy at JUST Goods, Inc., producer of sustainably packaged and responsibly sourced consumer products, including JUST water. Prior to joining JUST, she spent a decade leading one of the largest regional business units for Whole Foods Market in the United States. Kara has also done independent strategic advisory work with clean-label brands and natural-channel retailers.

Holding degrees from both Duke University and the University of Michigan Business School (now the Stephen M. Ross School of Business),Kara  serves on the Corporate Advisory Council of Just Capital, a nonprofit that measures corporate performance based on the public’s definition of just behavior.  She’s been an advisor to the Rockefeller Foundation on the topic of food waste and she is a guest lecturer at the NYU College of Food, Nutrition and Public Health and the Institute for Culinary Education.

Wendy Nunnelley

Global Consumer Goods SVP

Wendy Nunnelley is a beverage industry executive and an angel investor in more than 20 early-stage companies, primarily in consumer goods and services. She was most recently a Vice President at The Coca-Cola Company, with experience in strategy, planning, operations, business development, and revenue management, including pricing/promotion. Before Coke, she was a consultant at The Boston Consulting Group. She has been on the board of the most active angel investor network in the US and advises several early-stage companies. 

John Foraker

Co-Founder & CEO of Once Upon A Farm

John is the Co-founder and CEO of Once Upon A Farm, a company with the mission of providing yummy and nutritious “farm-to-family” foods to kids of all ages. Company information can be found at www.onceuponafarmorganics.com

Prior to his new start-up, John spent more than 30 years in the natural and organic food industry running businesses with a sharp focus on sustainability and social responsibility. John was the longtime leader of Annie’s, Inc., a leading natural & organic food brand, in the US from 1999 to 2017. As CEO of Annie’s, he took the company public in 2012 under the symbol BNNY before General Mills acquired the business in 2014 for $820 million. For the following three years John ran the Annie’s operating unit and also advised General Mills’ small business incubator 301, Inc. He was recognized as an Ernst & Young Entrepreneur of the Year® 2015 in Northern California.

In August 2017, he transitioned into a new role as Chairman of the Bunny, where he continues to work with General Mills to drive leadership in company culture, organic and regenerative agriculture, and strategy support.

Foraker received a B.S. in agricultural economics from UC Davis and an MBA from UC Berkeley. 

Jason Jones

Vital Farms

Jason is an entrepreneur and executive with a passion for upgrading our food industry from the inside. His fortes include conceptualizing disruptive brands and products, and assembling the capability to drive rapid growth. He was founding President of Vital Farms Inc, at one time the #1 fastest growing food & beverage company per Inc Magazine. Vital changed grocery shelves nationwide through their pioneering approach to quality food through animal welfare. 

Bryan Janeczko

Wicked Start Innovation

Executive leadership in building startups and emerging food-based brands. Bryan is an innovator and entrepreneur seeking out extraordinary opportunities to fuel transformational experiences. Core competencies includes business model innovation, white space product development, go-to market strategies, and building operations infrastructure that drives scalability. Performance driven with a track record of results in start-ups, large corporate entities, and business incubators. 

Sarah Dorey

PFM Sales Consulting

Sarah Dorey started at IGNITE Sales Management in 2014.  She came to the company with strong experience across multiple categories (dry, frozen and dairy) and many key retailers (Walmart and Target particularly). A 14-year, award-winning career with General Mills included building expertise in category management, account management, product marketing, trade marketing, merchandising strategy and analysis, and channel management.  Since joining IGNITE, she’s worked or consulted with over 30 clients in this fast growing space in food.  Her passion is ensuring that a brand is maximizing it’s selling capabilities while being very strategic about the resources they use. Sarah is also the founder of PFM Sales Consulting, where she is a Senior sales advisor to companies in the natural and organic food industry.

Her family plays the most important role in her life and a husband and three little girls keep her busy — and being a busy mom has only amplified her awareness of convenient, healthier alternatives for her family in the grocery aisles. When she does find spare time, it’s typically cooking, reading, or getting active outside.

Bill Buford

Author

Bill Buford is a renowned author, editor, and journalist. He is the founder of Granta in England, one of the world’s most successful literary magazines, and Granta Books. In 1995, he joined The New Yorker as Fiction Editor and staff writer, and, for the last 21 years. has been writing about food, food culture, and French and Italian culinary history for the magazine. He is the author of two bestsellers, Heat, about his time in Italian restaurants (and one very famous Tuscan butcher shop), and Dirt, about the five years he lived in Lyon, France, training to be a chef and investigating the origins of French cuisine. (He is also the author of Among the Thugs, a conspicuously non-culinary study of English soccer hooligans, which is nevertheless surprisingly popular among line cooks everywhere.) His books have been translated into 16 languages. He is broadcaster, mainly in the UK, an editor, an anthologist, and has made a two-part film for the BBC about the French kitchen called “A Fat Man in a White Hat.” You can find his how-to-cook French videos—directed by his son (and insufferable clown) Frederick, and filmed by his other son (and very bossy cinematographer) George—at NewYorker.com.

Michel Nischan

Wholesome Crave

Michel Nischan is a four-time James Beard Award winning chef with over 30 years of leadership advocating for a more healthful, sustainable food system. He is Founder and Executive Chairman of Wholesome Wave, Founder and CEO of Wholesome Crave, and Founder and Partner with the late actor Paul Newman of the former Dressing Room Restaurant. Nischan, whose parents were farmers, began his career at 19, cooking breakfast at a truck stop. He quickly realized that the ingredients coming in the back door fell far short of the farm-fresh harvests he’d grown up on, and began a life-long career championing the farm-to-table concept, decades before it had a name.

Leading Wholesome Wave, his national non-profit built to address nutrition insecurity in vulnerable populations, Nischan, his late partner Gus Schumacher, and their field partners were instrumental in securing $100M for Food Insecurity Nutrition Incentive (FINI) grants for the food equity field in the 2014 Federal Farm Bill. In 2018, FINI was expanded to $250M in the 2018 Farm Bill to become a permanent part of all future farm bills. The Gus Schumacher Nutrition Incentive Program permanently expands affordable access to fruits and vegetables for low-income Americans, while creating a legacy for Wholesome Wave and Michel’s late co-founder.

Inspired by Paul’s philanthropic impact through his Newman’s Own model, Nischan created Wholesome Crave in 2018 as a for-profit plant-based food business designed to provide top-line sustaining revenues to Wholesome Wave. He's also the author of three cookbooks on sustainable food systems and social equity through food. A lifetime Ashoka fellow, he serves as a director on the board of the Jacques Pepin Foundation and on the advisory boards of Chef’s Collaborative, Modern Farmer, Good Food Media Network and The Culinary Institute of America. Nischan co-founded the James Beard Boot Camp for Policy and Change.

The James Beard Foundation honored Nischan as the 2015 Humanitarian of The Year for his ground-breaking work with Wholesome Wave.  

Andrew Reynolds

Andrew Reynolds is Co-Founder and Managing Partner of Reynolds & Company Venture Partners (RCV partners).  Andrew founded RCV partners in 2010 because he saw the need and opportunity to provide capital and professional support to emerging consumer product and service companies.  Andrew views early stage emerging brands through a unique lens.  Not only from an investing point of view but also from an operational perspective gained from his time as President of Icebox Water where he helped build every aspect of the business, from supply chain, operations, sales and finance. 

In his time as Managing Partner of RCV Partners he has overseen the construction of the RCV portfolio to nineteen companies aiding those founders when possible as they scale their businesses.  Andrew currently is a Board Observer of Drizly and is an Advisor to previous FoodFutureCo participant, 4P Foods and the AdVentures Academy, an organization that provides hands-on adventure training programs with the goal of deepening the engagement of entrepreneurs, investors and the ecosystem surrounding courageous, game-changing founders. Prior to forming RCV Partners, Andrew was on the private placement investment banking team of Provident Group where he conducted capital raises, valuation and advisory work for their clients.  

Andrew holds an M.B.A. from ESADE business school in Barcelona, Spain and a B.A. in History and Studio art from Denison University.    

Urvashi Rangan

Food Safety & Sustainability Coordinator

Urvashi Rangan, Ph.D. leads and directs the Consumer Safety and Sustainability Group for Consumer Reports. She is responsible for managing risk analysis, policy assessments, label evaluations and consumer advice for tests, reports, and related advocacy work. Urvashi joined Consumers Union in 1999 and developed the ratings system, database, and Web site, Eco-labels.org for evaluating environmental and food labels. In 2005, she managed the launch of GreenerChoices,org, which covers green aspects over a wide range of products and services.

Dr. Rangan serves as a primary, national spokesperson for Consumer Reports in the areas of sustainable practices and safety issues. She advocates for credible labeling in the marketplace, and has successfully publicized the benefits of organic production. She was also involved in the Sigma Delta Chi award winning food and supplement magazine reports which highlighted public health concerns. Dr. Rangan received her Ph.D. in Environmental Health Sciences from Johns Hopkins University and was a National Institute of Health fellow from 1990-97.

Sarah Smith

Institute for the Future

Sarah is a Research Director with IFTF's Food Futures Lab. She works with many of the world’s largest food, health, and CPG companies to challenge their assumptions and identify emerging trends and discontinuities that will transform the global marketplace and global food system. She is a frequent public speaker, facilitates food innovation workshops, and equips a vast network of global food changemakers with the foresight necessary to start making better futures today.  As a designer, Sarah helps people imagine new stories about the future of food by creating artifacts from the future, which provoke public imagination about what kind of futures we really want to live (and therefore, eat).  She has been featured in National Geographic's The Plate, The Washington Post, Vice Munchies, Business Insider, and many other food industry publications. She draws from her experience in a range of disciplines—international studies, graphic design, creative writing, and the food service industry—to explore how emerging technologies and social practices will change the way people and communities seek and create well-being. Sarah holds a BA in International Studies and Visual Communication from Loyola University Chicago.

Eric O’Brien

Fall Line Capital

Eric O’Brien is Co-Founder and Managing Director of Fall Line Capital, bringing over 18 years of professional investment, financial services and operating experience to the firm. Prior to forming Fall Line with Clay Mitchell in 2011, Eric spent 12 years at Lightspeed Venture Partners, a top tier Silicon Valley venture capital firm with over $3 billion of assets under management.  At Lightspeed, he was a Managing Director responsible for early and growth stage investments in technology and services companies in the U.S. and China.

Eric has a track record of identifying and executing effectively against emerging market opportunities. In 2004, he identified a strategic opportunity for Lightspeed to expand its activities to China, where very few U.S. venture capital firms had established themselves at the time. Prior to Lightspeed, Eric was an Associate at InterWest Partners, a Silicon Valley venture capital firm where he focused on communications, internet and consumer investments. Eric holds an AB degree in Economics magna cum laude from Harvard College and an MBA from the Stanford Graduate School of Business.

Michael Moss

Michael Moss is the author of the #1 New York Times bestseller SALT SUGAR FAT: How the Food Giants Hooked Us, a Pulitzer Prize-winning investigative reporter formerly with the Times, keynote speaker, and occasional guest on shows like CBS This Morning, Dr. Oz, CNN The Lead, ATC and Jon Stewart's the Daily Show.

His writing focuses on the food industry in context of health, safety, nutrition, politics, marketing, corporate interests, and, finally, the power of individuals to gain control of what and how they eat. He has been a reporter at The Wall Street Journal and an adjunct professor at the Columbia School of Journalism. He continues to report on the processed food industry and is currently at work on HOOKED: Food and Free Will, for Random House.

David McIerney

Fresh Direct

David McInerney is a co-founder of FreshDirect.com, the leading online grocer in the U.S. In strategically setting the direction for food at FreshDirect, David helps educate and provide higher quality fresh food to millions in New York and Philadelphia. Every year, he spends the majority of his time visiting and building relationships with local and global farmers, ranchers, and fishermen, giving him a rare view across the entire sustainable food spectrum.

David started his food career while studying and working in Burgundy under renowned chef Bernard Loiseau at his Michelin 3-Star restaurant La Cote d’Or and later under legendary New York Chef David Bouley. Since then, he has been on a “tastes-great” crusade for the past twenty years, inspiring and educating others at TEDx Manhattan “Changing The Way We Eat," and many other influential events. He has dedicated his life to changing the way consumers eat, and how the industry sources fresh, healthy, sustainable foods.

Chef Laurent Gras

LGras Consulting

Laurent Gras is recognized as one of the most talented chefs cooking today, having attained three Michelin Stars at three different restaurants, on two continents. He has been voted “Best New Chef” from Food & Wine Magazine, his eateries gaining the title of “Best New Restaurant” from Esquire Magazine, James Beard Foundation and CS Magazine. Echoes of the same sentiment come from his colleagues, like chef David Chang who wrote, “Gras is, I think, ounce-for-ounce the best cook in the world.”

Born and raised on the Côte d’Azur in France, Gras worked alongside the best chefs, and decided to design his own restaurant from the ground up. In 2007, Laurent opened L2O in Chicago, and earned three Michelin stars in the first Chicago edition of the guidebook. Laurent’s creativity extends to his groundbreaking L2O blog and innovative online cookbook, ‘Laurent Gras: My Provence.’ Today he brings all of his experience together at Laurent Gras Consulting, a New York-based culinary agency offering services in concept and menu development, kitchen design and retail products, serving clients around the globe.

Jeff Furman

Ben and Jerry's

Jeff Furman serves as Chair of the Board of Directors at Ben & Jerry’s. Jeff helped write the first business plan for the original store at the gas station in Burlington, and has been involved in almost all aspects of the business since. He is a strong advocate for progressive values in business leadership, and has a deep connection to NGO groups dedicated to creating a more just world. Jeff founded Social Ventures, Inc., a non-profit focused on health, environment, race and class issues, and dozens of other social causes.

Chef Ann Cooper

Chef Ann Foundation

Chef Ann Cooper is a celebrated author, chef, educator and enduring advocate for better food for all children. A graduate of the Culinary Institute of America, Ann has been a chef for more than 40 years, over 17 of those in school food programs. She currently serves as the Food Services Director for the Boulder Valley School District. Known as the “Renegade Lunch Lady”, Ann has been honored by The National Resources Defense Council, selected as a Kellogg Food and Society Policy Fellow, and awarded an honorary doctorate from SUNY Cobleskill for her work. In 2016, Ann was named “One of the Top 50 Food Activists” by the Academy of Culinary Nutrition. In 2009, Ann founded the nonprofit Chef Ann Foundation (CAF) to focus on solutions to the school food crisis. CAF provides tools, training, resources and funding to support schools transitioning to scratch-cooked meals made with whole, healthy food.

Chef Dan Barber

Blue Hill

Dan Barber is a chef and owner of several restaurants including Blue Hill in Manhattan and Blue Hill at Stone Barns in Pocantico Hills, New York. Food and Wine Magazine named him one of the Best New Chefs in 2002. In May 2009, he was named to Time Magazine of the book, The Third Plate (The Penguin Press). His opinions on food and agricultural policy have appeared in the New York Times, along with many other publications.

Appointed by President Barack Obama to serve on the President’s Council on Physical Fitness, Sports and Nutrition, Dan continues the work that he began as a member of Stone Barns Center for Food and Agriculture’s board of directors: to blur the line between the dining experience and the educational, bringing the principles of good farming directly to the table. Barber has received multiple James Beard awards including Best Chef: New York City (2006) and the country’s Outstanding Chef (2009). In 2009 he was named one of Time magazine’s 100 most influential people in the world.