Leah Lizarondo On Reimagining Food Systems To Effectively Feed Communities

Leah Lizarondo is the CEO and founder of Food Rescue Hero®, transformative technology that turns food rescues into movements, to have a greater impact on food waste, climate change and hunger in 27 cities and growing.

Her work in food recovery has been featured in NPR, Fast Company, and The Washington Post, among others. Leah has won numerous awards for her work, including the Vital Voices’ Global Leadership Award in 2020 and the We Empower UN SDG challenge in 2019, a global award for women social entrepreneurs. In 2018, she was named "Pittsburgher of the Year" by Pittsburgh City Paper.

Leah received her graduate degree in Public Policy & Technology from Carnegie Mellon University. She is originally from the Philippines and currently lives in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.

Leah discusses Applying systems based thinking to increase food security and How to develop innovative technology that positions social impact at the forefront.

Highlights from the interview (listen to the podcast for full details)

[Indio Myles] - To start off, could you please share a bit about your background and what led to your work in social enterprise?

[Leah Lizarondo] - I grew up in the Philippines and was there until my early twenties. I started my career in consumer goods as a marketing and advertising specialist. Then, I moved to New York in my mid-twenties, and soon after transitioned my career towards technology. My first job in tech was as a brand manager for a consumer goods company. Then, I transitioned into a product manager physician for a tech company, which was very exciting at the time. The tech industry was fairly new, and I was really excited about that. I got more and more interested in technology and then pursued my graduate degree in technology and public policy at Carnegie Mellon in Pittsburgh. This led me from New York to Pittsburgh, where I live now, and I worked in tech consulting for a little bit. I've always been interested in food; and I was actually food writing as a hobby while I was working.

Food Rescue Hero is really a combination of all of those backgrounds: my love for creating movements, building movements, my love for food and my interest in technology.

What really catalysed the founding of Food Rescue Hero was an article that the Natural Resources Defense Council released here in the U.S. in 2012. That report was titled Wasted. It was the first report that made this statistic of 40% of food going to waste in the United States so glaring.

As the CEO and founder of Food Rescue Hero, could you tell us a bit more about this technology platform, it's core purpose and the social impact it's creating?

Food Rescue Hero is a technology platform that functions not exactly but much like food delivery apps. Basically what we do is work with food retailers, these could be grocery stores, events or institutions that may have surplus food at the end of the day that is unsellable but perfectly good. We match it with NGOs and non-profits that serve households, individuals and families experiencing food insecurity. We take this surplus food, match it where it is needed, and then what the technology does is mobilises drivers to take the food where it's available and then deliver it to the non-profit it is matched to. The big difference is our drivers are all volunteers, so all of these thousands of volunteers see where food is available to pick up and where it needs to be dropped off, and then they opt for a route that is convenient to them to pick up and deliver food. Most food rescues can be completed in 30 minutes to an hour, and there's so many available that you can fit one in when you are available and have time.

This technology is now being used in over 25 cities and regions, and we just passed one hundred million pounds of food redirected, and basically a hundred million pounds of food saved from going to landfill.

We made sure that it goes to people who need food. We have over 35,000 volunteers that get push notifications of these food rescues available, and they respond about 99% of the time on average. We miss very little of our rescues. Our food rescue heroes have taken over 350,000 trips to deliver this one hundred million pounds of food.

How significant is the issue of starvation and food insecurity on a global scale?

It is very significant in the United States; about one in seven or one in eight Americans are experiencing food insecurity. The UN has released studies that show if we recover all the food in the world that's going to waste, you'll feed everyone experiencing food insecurity four times over. It's that much food being wasted.

You're a fellow at Acumen, an academy guiding sustainability leaders through creating systems based approaches to food security. If you were going to give them a piece of advice, how might entrepreneurs best address issues at a systems level?

That's the big challenge for any solution; how do we create systems wide change? Systems wide change is extremely difficult, because systems wide change requires other small changes within the system. But I think how entrepreneurs can work towards this is to always have an eye on the bigger picture than maybe the niche they're working on. For us (for instance), when we talk about recovering surplus food from going to waste, tackling an instance of food going to waste or preventing it from going to landfill, we can also look at the adjacent issues we are solving and move further away from that into bigger perspectives.

For us, how can we educate retailers from wasting food in the first place, or when we redirect food and know that 80% of it is fresh food, how do we then educate and advocate for more access to fresh food for those who need food access support?

When we talk about what we do again, we can tackle another problem, which is the difficulty that those who are in poverty experience in terms of mobility. Because we deliver directly to homes and NGOs that are not necessarily food sheds or food pantries, we then make food access more dispersed and closer to those in need. Then we advocate for a perspective on access that hasn't been addressed before. Entrepreneurs can start from one thing, but then fairly easily discover they can influence other parts of the system they are working in.

Where do you see opportunities for entrepreneurs and impact led individuals to create a positive change in the next five years?

There's so many, because there are so many challenges we're facing right now. There's not a shortage of where impact can be created. One of the most difficult things is to actually try to focus a little bit more. When we're tackling food insecurity, we don't aim to tackle everything about food insecurity all at once! There is merit in really homing in on a part of the problem that can be solved by an entrepreneur fairly clearly. For us, it's food surplus at retail, particular with small quantities of food that need to be consumed right away. Then once you understand how that intervention can be scaled, then maybe moving on to an even larger or extending that focus a little bit more is possible.

To focus and actually really discern a smaller part of the problem that an entrepreneur can make a difference in is special.

What inspiring projects or initiatives have you come across recently that are also creating a positive social change?

You mentioned the Acumen Rockefeller Foundation Fellowship, where I had the opportunity to really meet and get to know 20 other people working in the food system space. One of the technologies I truly admire is an initiative out of India called Gramhal, and this technology seeks to work with small holder farmers who may not have the information they need to do their work more efficiently and effectively to minimise their losses and price their harvest. This technology supports these farmers who may have limited access to technology and works within our smartphones. I think that is completely invaluable. The United States and world are made up of many small holder farms that really depend on their harvest for sustenance and their living, so that one really impresses me.

To finish off, what books or resources would you recommend for our listeners to check out?

Right now, one of the things that I am really curious about is how we can all work together to mitigate the impact of climate change, and what I'm reading is called The Ministry for the Future by Kim Robinson. That's one book that I think everyone should read.