Good Food For Good was founded in 2013 by entrepreneur and mother Richa with a simple idea: making it easy for everyone to eat well and do good. With an MBA & over fifteen years of experience in retail, fashion and food marketing, after becoming a new mom working as a marketing executive, she constantly found it challenging to feed her family good on busy nights. She grew frustrated with all the compromises she was expected to make for convenience. Driven to make a difference through food, she started Good Food For Good using only ingredients you would add if you were cooking yourself. ”I grew up in a family” where my mum cooked fresh food, three times a day. So even just grabbing a pizza for dinner, as a working mom, I had so much guilt over not being able to cook healthy food for my kids. Anything that my mother did for me was the best that I wanted to do for my own child.” Today, she is actively working on building better, healthier experiences for people with a goal to feed ONE MILLION by 2020.

A native of Singapore, Nona first started her career as a management consultant in London. After a long stint there, she moved to the San Francisco Bay Area in 2005. In 2006, she started the first online meal delivery business before it was trendy and created the first food-based detox program in 2010. While running her business, Nona was also a competitive fencer for many years, representing Singapore. During training, she craved convenient, nutritious food that could fuel her performance, and which reminded her of home. Finding limited options. In 2014 she pivoted and launched her eponymous brand, Nona’s Singaporean food heritage drives the brand’s obsession with authentic flavor and serves as the platform for its continual exploration of the delicious cuisines found throughout Asia. She is also a certified nutrition consultant and is active in both the local community and the food industry. She was the president of the San Francisco Professional Food Society and is currently a Board Director of the Specialty Food Association.

UNiTE Food was born out of my own frustration in wellness. None of the flavors of “healthy” food seemed to resonate with my own cultural heritage. So I wanted to fix that. UNiTE will strive for inclusion in the bar aisle and natural products community. We will prove that diversity id delicious and provide edible excursions for those who want to join the journey. The fine print: I’m an Experienced Founder skilled in Team Building, Operations, Account Management, Leadership, and Strategic Planning.

Jomaree Pinkard ’s career journey has taken him from helping to develop and implement The Salvation Army’s September 11 World Trade Center Recovery Program to consulting for the NFL. In 2012, he became the Co-Founder and CEO of a minority-led craft cocktail company, Hella Cocktail Co. In eight years, he and his partners have grown a hobby into a nationally distributed premium-quality food manufacturer producing a line of nonalcoholic cocktail mixers, soda syrups, and cocktail bitters that make it easier and more accessible to craft delicious drinks at home or behind the bar. Jomaree is a graduate of the University of Virginia’s McIntire School of Commerce and also earned his MBA from The Wharton School of Business at the University of Pennsylvania.

Ryan Pintado-Vertner is the Founder & Principal at Smoketown, a boutique consultancy that helps mission-driven consumer brands maximize their growth and ROI while having a transformative social and environmental impact. Their work includes sales & marketing ROI optimization; brand strategy, innovation & consumer research; outsourced marketing leadership; purpose & mission refinement and activation; and go-to-market strategy. Ryan is a lifelong activist, a fifth-generation innovator, and a 13-year veteran of the CPG industry, in addition to holding an MBA from the University of California’s Haas School of Business. Beyond Smoketown, he is on the Executive Board of Flock (a new regenerative food and agriculture fund and accelerator) and Naturally Chicago (a network of natural product companies in Chicagoland).

Chris Oates is the Founder and CEO of WAJU Water, the first beverage to harness and upcycle the pure water found naturally in real fruit and transform that into superior hydration. Prior to founding WAJU, Chris spent over a decade as a beverage executive at two of the world’s largest beverage companies, most recently as Head of Emerging Beverage Innovation. There, he developed a knack for seeing what trends were around the corner and developing new health and wellness products that embody those trends. Chris holds an MBA from Kellogg School of Management and a bachelor’s from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

Sarah is a veteran brand builder in the natural and specialty foods industry. In her 23-year career, she has helped launch brands for Clif Bar Inc., Kashi, Ozery Bakery, and ThinkThin. She pioneered the whole bean snack category with her company, The Good Bean Inc and through the recent acquisition of the Beanitos brand, Sarah now leads the largest bean-based portfolio in the country. Born and raised in India, Sarah has been dedicated to celebrating the diversity of food culture and sustainable agriculture, and to nurturing female leadership in the food industry. Sarah hopes to contribute her inclusive, global perspective on innovation and leadership, and to help nurture these critical values within our industry.