Thursday, October 18, 2018

2:00 - 2:45 PM

Track I: Transforming the Food Culture and Food Industry, Ahmanson Hall

Food Innovators, Disruptors & Influencers: The Industry Change Agents and Start-Up Pioneers

Sam Polk, Co-Founder & CEO, Everytable, Founder, Feast

Ren Ostry, founder, Trashfish

Dhinakar S. Kompala, Ph.D., Founder & CEO, Sudhin Biopharma Co.

Rohit Shukla, CEO, Larta Institute

Moderator - Lee Schneider, Editor-In-Chief, Red Cup Agency, podcast producer and author of Future of Food

Speakers to be announced

Sam Polk is the co-founder and CEO of Everytable, a social enterprise restaurant concept making healthy food affordable for all, and founder of Feast, a Los Angeles non-profit that advances wellness in underserved communities through the power of healthy food and human connection. In a prior life, Sam was a senior trader at one of the largest hedge funds in the world. He is the author of the memoir For The Love of Money (Scribner, 2016) and the viral front-page New York Times OpEd of the same title. His writing has been published in The Los Angeles Times, The Orange County Register, The Huffington Post and CNBC.com. He serves on the Leadership Board of The Los Angeles Food Policy Council, the Advisory Board of Conscious Capitalism Los Angeles, and the Advisory Board of the Resnick Center for Food Law & Policy at UCLA. He is a graduate of Columbia University and holds the Chartered Financial Analyst (CFA) designation.

Ren Ostry is the director and owner of Trashfish. Ostry brings to Trashfish a prominent industry following thanks to years of experience in sustainable food practices and seafood distribution across the US. She's been featured in L.A. Weekly, Vice, and was recently nominated for 2018 Forbes 30 Under 30 in Food & Wine. Ostry is committed to a triple bottom line approach in sustainability, making sure people and the environment are never left out of the economic equation. Her favorite seafood dish is whole fried rockfish with lots of market fresh veggies.

Dhinakar S. Kompala, Ph.D., Founder & CEO, Sudhin Biopharma Co.: Sudhin Biopharma goal: To become a global biopharmaceutical company, using the most efficient biological manufacturing platform technologies to make affordable biological medicines and other beneficial products. Dhinakar Kompala obtained his B. Tech. in Chemical Engineering from Indian Institute of Technology, Madras, India in 1979 and his M.S. and Ph.D. in Chemical Engineering from Purdue University, USA in 1982 and 1984 respectively. He served on the faculty of the Department of Chemical and Biological Engineering at the University of Colorado, Boulder since 1985. He was a recipient of Presidential Young Investigator award from National Science Foundation in 1988. Dhinakar’s research expertise is in bioprocess engineering, recombinant mammalian and microbial cell cultures, bioreactor design and operating strategies, metabolic engineering, and modeling of biological growth and production processes. He trained over 30 graduate and postdoctoral researchers, most of whom have joined the biotechnology industry. He served on editorial boards of the Journal of Biotechnology, International Journal of Biological Sciences and as Section Editor of BMC Biotechnology. Dhinakar was co-founder of a biotech startup company, Richcore Lifesciences Private Limited, in Bangalore, India in July 2008. He served as the Chief Scientific Officer, Director of R&D, and on the Board of Directors of this growing company until November 2012. Taking a phased early retirement from the University of Colorado in May 2014, Dhinakar is now devoting full time to his new biotech startup, Sudhin Biopharma Company in Superior, CO and its subsidiary R&D operations at Sudhin Biotech Private Limited in Chennai, India.

Rohit Shukla is the founder and CEO of Larta Institute, an internationally-recognized technology accelerator whose mission is to transform ideas into enterprises that feed, fuel and heal the world. Since its founding in 1993, the Los Angeles-based organization has helped more than 10,000 companies commercialize their innovations in science and technology, particularly in agriculture and the life sciences. Larta, in partnership with the Donald Danforth Plant Science Center in St. Louis, founded the Ag Innovation Showcase, which brings together emerging technologies, thought leaders, and entrepreneurs who seek to address problems in food, nutrition, and farming. The Ag Innovation Showcase celebrated its 10th year this past September. Shukla previously served nearly six years as Director of High Technology Business at the Los Angeles County Economic Development Corporation. Before that, he was Executive Director of the Presidents’ Roundtable, a California-based network of chief executives from Fortune 500 U.S. aerospace and defense electronics companies. In 2008, he was appointed by the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development to advise and lead a multi-country study of IP policies and practices and IP as it affects the growth of small and medium-sized enterprises. He also has established regional commercialization initiatives and provided technology commercialization policy advice to the governments of Australia, Israel, Malaysia and New Zealand, among others. In 2014, he was appointed to the National Advisory Council on Innovation and Entrepreneurship which advises the U.S. Department of Commerce on issues related to accelerating innovation, expanding entrepreneurship, and developing a globally competitive workforce. Additionally, Shukla has taught ENTREPRENEURSHIP to managers and start-up companies, and developed and taught the first graduate course on startup management at Pepperdine University’s Graziadio School of Business and Management in Malibu, California. Shukla has extensive experience creating commercialization assistance programs for major U.S. federal agencies, including National Institutes of Health (NIH), United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) and the National Science Foundation (NSF) and foreign governments in Asia, Europe and the Middle East. An internationally-recognized thought leader on innovation, commercialization, enterprise, and technology-led economic development, he has written extensively on venture capital, sector-led wireless innovation, telecommunications in life sciences, entrepreneurship, research-based enterprises, commercialization and government policy. Shukla earned his bachelor’s degree in political science from the University of Mumbai in India. Later, he earned a master’s degree in social and political sciences from Cambridge University in England and a master’s degree in communications arts and sciences from Loyola Marymount University in Los Angeles.

Lee Schneider is Editor-In-Chief at Red Cup Agency, a digital publisher of podcasts and ebooks. The award-winning agency is known for its work with leaders in food, fitness, and education startups. He is the producer and host on the Future of Food Podcast, and is writing a book about food activists and innovation called Future of Food. He has produced many podcasts, including the Cult/Tech Podcast, the TechSmart Podcast*, and EdTech NOW. His upcoming podcast for Fall of 2018 is called Baby Crazy. He is an instructor at the USC School of Architecture, teaching a media course for graduate-level architecture and design students. Lee has more than 20 years of experience in journalism. He has been a writer for Good Morning America, a producer for Dateline NBC, and a producer and executive producer on many hours of programming for The History Channel, The Learning Channel, A&E, the Travel Channel, The Food Network, Bravo, and others. He is the author of Be More Popular: Culture-Building for Startups, an Amazon Kindle #1 bestseller, Los Angeles: Chronicle of a Startup Town, Powerful Online Delivery Systems: Free and Low-Cost Platforms for Creative Companies and Individuals,  The Angel Playbook: An Essential Guide for Entrepreneurs and Angel Investors, and ACE YOUR EBOOK. His next book, about parenting, is titled Baby Crazy: Confessions of a Three-Time Father. Fun facts: In the 1980s, he was a writer on the iconic cartoon series ThunderCats. He is the father of three and married to a goddess.