Published: March 2011

After graduating from Boston College with majors in finance and accounting, Kristin Groos Richmond ’97 joined an investment bank in New York City, which she left in 2000 for Nairobi to cofound a school for special needs children, one of the first in East Africa. While in Kenya, she observed the link between nutrition and students’ performance. “It was so clear when they hadn’t had breakfast or a proper lunch,” she says. “It filtered through their whole day.” In 2002, a stint recruiting public school teachers with a California non-profit exposed her to the other side of childhood nutrition—the high-fat, high-fructose meals served in U.S. schools that contribute to early obesity—and brought out her entrepreneurial side. Recalls Richmond, “I said to myself, someone has to do this better.” She entered the MBA program at the University of California’s Haas School of Business, at Berkeley, to acquire more tools.

Richmond founded Revolution Foods in 2005 with Haas classmate Kirstin Tobey (the business began as a class project). Their product: school meals prepared daily using fresh fruits and vegetables, hormone-free milk, antibiotic-free meats, and no preservatives. The company started preparing lunches for a single public school in Oakland in 2006. Today, Revolution Foods, where Richmond is CEO, provides almost 40,000 meals a day, primarily to public school students, in the Bay Area, Los Angeles, Denver, and Washington, D.C.

Last December brought national recognition to Richmond as President Barack Obama appointed her to the newly convened White House Council for Community Solutions, aimed at identifying “cross-sector” responses to community problems.

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This feature was posted on Wednesday, March 9, 2011 and is filed under Research.