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