Rethink Your Purpose Repair The World

at the onset of kovid back in march

my grandmother passed away not of kovid

but the pandemic prevented our

very spread out family from a proper

funeral from coming together to grieve

to remember to pay the incredible

respect

that her legacy deserved and continues

to deserve

she was the last surviving member of the

holocaust in my family

the last first-person narrative the last

true guardian

of our legacy she was my mema and we

were really close

with her i talked about pretty much

everything for the better part of my

life and

she shared so much with me about hers

she was born in 1919 in vienna but she

hadn’t

been in the almost 70 years since hitler

had taken power before we went back and

she had vowed never to return

but with that trip she and i went she

indulged me

a true walking tour of our family’s

history

because i wanted to know i wanted to see

the city that made my

great grandfather a successful

businessman only

to abandon him and so many others when

the nazis came

and when we arrived we walked and walked

and walked

we literally retraced her childhood from

happier times

passing her elementary school catching

the lip is on her horses that she used

to watch as a child

and we ate sauerbratten and schnitzel

and strudel with ice cream

every day that we were there i remember

every moment

observing the pure nostalgia fighting

with

the resentment and grief and anguish of

war

that were at every literal turn she

pointed out the department store that

the family had

owned schools that she and her brother

went to

the now ritzy shopping districts and of

course the house she grew up in

every now and then she would shake her

head and say out loud

no one stood up no one took a stand

i wasn’t sure if she was saying it to me

or

to the city but i was listening

and in an extraordinary turn of events

she had gotten

in touch with a dear childhood friend of

hers and

both of them with the same name lottie

two friends on opposite sides of a war

surviving a lifetime with memories that

nobody

should ever have they sat down to share

a meal together

and i won’t ever forget that watching

them

chat away in a free vienna mima and

latiji

who was offering me bites of lunch from

her own

spoon it was surreal and kind of

conflicting

i mean here i was a second generation

american

granddaughter of survivors breaking

bread and

literally sharing silverware with

someone who would have otherwise just

been

sort of a generalized character in the

history that i had been taught

and this friendship would have been and

in many ways

kind of was just a casualty of war

but that was not just having lunch it

was a moment

of grace of compassion

and some healing it was powerful i still

can’t eat

sherred eggs without being right in that

moment

it’s a forever food memory for sure

a few days after my grandmother passed i

eulogized her over email

and included a passage that she had

written for her father

almost 35 years before but he was an

extraordinary man

not alone in the sense that he was a

success many people have achieved

greater financial gains and wider fame

than he

but what i believe to be more valuable

for us who knew him

and understood him was his deep

compassion for those in need and his

capacity

to love he was proud and he tried to be

just

he was human and he made mistakes he

loved people

he loved god he believed he was his

brother’s keeper

and he lived his life in the spirit

my grandmother believed that too and i

realized in founding

my company that i did as well i started

to think a lot

about people who may have been in a

position

in vienna back then really anywhere who

could help

if they had stood up if they had done

something differently

would that have made a difference and i

think about that

a lot my great grandfather my

grandmother and my great uncle

arriving in the united states in 1938

as refugees throughout their lives they

were determined to give back to the

country that accepted

and welcomed our family at ellis island

the gratitude that i saw from them left

a profound impact

on me and i’ve realized that my own

sense of

patriotism has come back to the life

that they created

here in america for me it’s always come

back to

to feeling so incredibly lucky that our

history our luck

really brought us such an opportunity

when it didn’t

for so many others as i continue to get

older my adult life has really been

a lot about reconnecting to my family

history and realizing what’s important

to me

what i’m passionate about what matters

so about a year ago fast forward

i was sitting in my office and my

colleagues and i were talking about what

a great year

2020 was going to be i know right

we were looking forward to celebrating

10 years of love and spoonfuls the

company that i founded back in 2010.

then the idea for love and spoonfuls was

really just to understand more about why

there was so much food

being produced and then thrown away

while poverty and hunger were daily

realities for

so many people what i found in that

was an opportunity to respond and

challenge some of the old ideas with a

little bit of a new one

that hunger wasn’t a problem of supply

it’s a problem of distribution

and so now 10 years later 11 spoonfuls

is a distribution and logistics company

working in the social service space

having rescued and distributed over 17

million pounds

of fresh healthy food that would have

otherwise gone to waste

feeding 30 000 people each week in

communities that are hit the hardest by

the economic

social and health injustices and

inequalities that

exist in our communities sometimes it

feels like 10 years and sometimes it

feels like 10 minutes and there is

always more

to do but 10 years itself is a long time

and looking back a decade ago i was sort

of at a crossroads

in both my personal and my professional

life

looking for some clarity looking for

some direction

i was turning 30 i was sober about a

decade having

cleaned up from an alcohol and heroin

addiction i had just moved back from

boston

after thinking i would never live here

again

friends that i had grown up with had

moved away

the city itself was completely new to me

i was starting over in really all kinds

of ways and

was open to new things even a career

change

but never in a million years had i

thought about starting my own business

and especially

not a non-profit i founded love in

spoonfuls

because i really just believe that when

you can solve a problem

you should at least try and here i

believe that access to healthy food is a

basic human right

i also think that with so many

unsolvable problems in the world

wasting food isn’t one of them so the

space between those two ideas is really

what love and spoonfuls addresses

we work to be creative and thoughtful

and effective in our response to the

unique challenges

of food rescue and food insecurity

in hebrew we call this ideal tikun alam

which essentially means to repair the

world in this case

we take fresh healthy and perishable

food that would otherwise be tossed

and upcycle it into the social service

stream why

do we do this each year about 40 percent

of all food that’s produced in the

united states and that’s roughly

63 million tons of food

is wasted and around the world that’s

about a third of our global food supply

so 11 spoonfuls began truly as a

business meant to be helpful

and i’m incredibly proud of what it’s

become

really the team that’s helped to build

it

being in business is usually about your

customer

your end user and in that way it’s no

different for us

but what’s included here even

prioritized

is our culture who we are our guts

so for us it’s not just what we’re doing

but it’s how we’re doing it

and i think that that’s about just

trying to create a better system

and a better way of doing things

creating value

many years ago totally inspired by one

of our board members we created a

community bill of rights

for our team and then one for our

partners

the ability to do that really

is what makes love and spoonfuls the

kind of company it’s become

so i’m a ceo who also happens to

be the founder and my journey in both

roles over the last few years has been

largely focused on

the how of doing things much less

on the what it is that we do so

now more than ever the world really

demands the highest

standard of that how and it’s so

important to us

at spoonfuls to keep the folks that

we’re serving and

our employees right at the forefront

rather than just

seeing this work as another day in

business

you know business as usual we pay a

living wage

offer access to wellness both physical

and mental a work-life balance

well maybe that was pre-covered we

supported our front line

with an in-office food market hazard pay

mental health days all to say trying to

riff on

being the change that you want to see in

the world

you can’t really give away what you

don’t have you know

for me i learned how to stay sober from

folks who freely

offered their experience and their

example to me literally gave me

who they were as examples of what i

hoped to become and for my colleagues

and i trying to inject some equity

into the community really can’t happen

if we’re not cultivating it

internally so being able to celebrate 10

years

developing and nurturing who we are as a

company was something that we had been

reflecting on

and were really excited about

and then 2020 kovid

george floyd and the resurgence of the

black lives matter movement

so here we are literally standing

hopefully in a mask at the intersection

of two viruses that threaten life as we

know it

in terms of covid we’ve all been forced

to navigate

our days differently my wife now works

exclusively from home

until further notice i’m literally the

only person that she sees

at love and spoonfuls our offices are

taped up and divided and

marked with instructions that reinforce

the limits on where and how

to interact with each other our waiting

list

has basically doubled the need is

greater than ever

and the effects on our community and

this country will still be here

long after covet isn’t our communities

and businesses

are struggling and reinventing

themselves every few weeks

it seems just to try and survive a day

at a time

and in many ways we might want life to

just

go back to business as usual to the way

it was the way we remember it in early

march

but in terms of where and who we are as

a nation

as a national and even global community

i hope that we never do

this moment is relentless as it should

be

but it’s overwhelming there’s so much to

be done

so much that’s overdue how do we even

begin

and as a white woman who comes from

tremendous privilege beyond my color

i’m asking myself where do i begin how

do i stand up

one of the very first things that an

early sponsor told me

almost 20 years ago now remains true

today

walk from where you stand and use what

you have

so the question for me from that moment

has always been

and even now is more important than ever

where

am i going what do i have and how do i

use it

so whether you’ve acknowledged it or not

we’re all faced

with not just needing to be better but

with

the responsibility to actively

participate in

and advocate for if not directly work to

create

social justice to be actively

anti-racist

actively vocal that black lives don’t

just

matter but the black lives need to be

honored valued recognized

and stood up for i think of my

grandmother

standing in vienna 70 years after she

escaped hitler

and sort of quietly pleading with

history

out loud saying no one stood up

and i know that i’m not the only one

with a history and a legacy

like this i think we’ve all seen

or i hope we’ve all seen the footage

from lafayette park

of rachel parsons at the beginning of

june

everyone has a way to stand up and

sometimes it’s literally

just standing up or kneeling or whatever

you can do

but everyone all of us has tools

and it’s not a question of if we use

them

it’s how and it’s when and i really

believe that it has to be now

i don’t have any extraordinary ability

beyond what i can do

as one of many but what i do have is a

choice

and i do have the ability not just as a

founder but as a ceo

to conduct business in a way that

matches the collective principles

and values and ideals of those around me

to commit to doing what hasn’t been done

and to improve on what has

the privilege and opportunities that

i’ve had and that i continue

to have are a direct result of

not only my color but of my family’s

legacy

which has afforded me life as an

american

and i consider myself a patriot i always

have

and to me that means and represents a

responsibility to do more

and once they were here my

great-grandfather and his children

my mema and my great uncle henry they

spent their lives

working to repay what they felt they

owed

for their immigration here to the united

states to build our family

on the american dream their gratitude

was present in

every choice that they ever made

they never forgot how and why

they came here had someone stood up back

then

in vienna or really anywhere there are

families that would be bigger

and for every time mima wondered why

nobody stood up

i promise her now that i will our

neighbors

those who we know those who we don’t

know

but those of us who need us to be an

ally

to take a stand to make a better choice

they need us to do it we are each

other’s keeper

and it is time so thank you for

coming to my actual ted talk