\nTheir inaugural event, the Food Systems Innovation Summit,<\/a>will be held Friday, Nov. 13, at Haas.
\nHeadliners include Alice Waters, BA 67,<\/a>\u00a0founder of Chez Panisse; Dan Barber,<\/a> chef and co-owner of Blue Hill; and John Foraker, MBA 94,<\/a> co-founder and CEO of Once Upon A Farm<\/a>,<\/p>\n
For decades, social impact leader Will Rosenzweig<\/a> has invested in food systems innovation at UC Berkeley and Haas.<\/a>\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cI\u2019ve been here for more than 25 years teaching, working in the field, investing in companies, and basically cultivating a lot of young entrepreneurial leaders to change the food system,\u201d\u00a0said Rosenzweig, co-founder and former CEO of Republic of Tea<\/a>.<\/p>\n Though he will retire from teaching on the professional faculty at Haas after this semester, Rosenzweig\u2019s work will carry forward through the new Collaborative for Food Systems Innovation<\/a>, equipping the next generation of leaders to lead. At the helm of the new collaborative as executive director is Elaine Hsu,<\/a> MBA 19, a climate leader and one of Rosenzweig\u2019s former students.<\/p>\n \u201cFood sits at the center of our biggest challenges, from climate change to public health to social equity,\u201d Hsu said. \u201cThe new collaborative will support the growth of the next generation of leaders who will reimagine and transform the food system to something that serves the health of people, the planet, communities, and the land.\u201d<\/p>\n The Collaborative kicks off with its inaugural event, the Food Systems Innovation Summit<\/a> on Friday, Nov. 13, at Haas. The theme is \u201cReigniting Imagination\u201d and leaders headlining the event include:<\/p>\n Alice Waters, BA 67, <\/a>chef, author, educator, and founder of Chez Panisse<\/a>, credited for launching the farm-to-table movement, and founder of the Edible Schoolyard<\/a> project.<\/p>\n Dan Barber,<\/a> chef and co-owner of Blue Hill, co-founder of Row 7 Seed Company, and author of \u201cThe Third Plate: Field Notes on the Future of Food,\u201d a landmark book that urges Americans to move to a \u201cthird plate\u201d aligned with seasonal productivity, natural livestock rhythms, whole-grains, and small portions of free-range meat.<\/p>\n John Foraker, MBA 94,<\/a> co-founder and CEO of Once Upon A Farm<\/a>, and longtime former CEO of Annie\u2019s<\/a>, who steered the company toward organic offerings.<\/p>\n \u201cOur summit is really about questioning the status quo and inviting food systems leaders, including farmers, product companies, and investors, to engage in conversations around supply chain collaboration, innovative capital structures and how we influence the cultural conversation around health and climate,\u201d said Rosenzweig. <\/p>\n A vast list of food systems accomplishments<\/p>\n Rosenzweig\u2019s career accomplishments are vast, including serving as vice president of juice maker Odwalla during the mid-1990s, and as an advisory Board member at The Culinary Institute of America.<\/a>\u00a0 In 2010, he flew to Oslo to receive the Oslo Business for Peace Award<\/a> for Ethical Leadership in Business. The award, which he called the highlight of his career, is presented in the same hall as the Nobel Peace Prize. \u201cI was in extraordinary company and feel this was\u00a0a significant validation of the path I chose to follow as a business leader,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n Rosenzweig said he fell into teaching in part because of the positive response to the 1992 book \u201cRepublic of Tea: How an Idea Becomes a Business,\u201d which addresses the challenges of building a values-driven startup.\u00a0He co-wrote the book with Mel and Patricia Ziegler<\/a>, his Republic of Tea cofounders, who also founded Banana Republic.<\/p>\n At UC Berkeley Haas, he continued to nurture new ideas<\/a> over the decades. He co-founded the Center For Responsible Business<\/a> and the pioneering Global Social Venture Competition, which was held for 20 years around the world before closing seven years ago.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n His courses have included the pioneering UC Berkeley Edible Education 101, founded in 2011 by Waters and food journalist Michael Pollan<\/a>. Watch Rosenzweig interview Pollan<\/a> about food systems below.<\/p>\n The course, a hybrid public lecture series and undergraduate class that Rosenzweig co-taught, became one of the Berkeley campus\u2019 most popular electives focused on food systems, entrepreneurship, and ethics.\u00a0<\/p>\n Don Moore<\/a>, who serves as faculty director of the new Collaborative, said he was inspired to support Rosenzweig\u2019s generations of work mentoring \u201cgenerations of Haas students motivated to build food systems that better serve the welfare of people, communities, and the planet.\u201d<\/p>\n This fall, Rosenzweig is co-teaching \u201cSystems Change for a Small Planet,\u201d a graduate class that digs into the worldviews and broken systems behind the planet\u2019s biggest crises, and \u201cFood Systems Innovation Studio,\u201d which is split into two tracks\u2014\u201dfood serious\u201d and \u201cfood curious\u201d\u2014for students to pursue their own ideas.\u00a0<\/p>\n Aligning values with a professional path<\/p>\n Over the years Rosenzweig has mentored startups including Revolution Foods<\/a>, now the largest K-12 school meal vendor in California, co-founded by Kristin Richmond and Kirsten Tobey,<\/a> both MBA 06; Indiegogo<\/a>, one of the world\u2019s first crowdfunding sites, co-founded in 2006 by Danae Ringelmann and Eric Schell<\/a>, both MBA 08; and Diaspora Spice Co.<\/a>, where Pooja Bag<\/a>, MBA 22, joined as an intern and rose to director of sales before joining Ramen Bae<\/a>.<\/p>\n While this will be his last semester of teaching at Haas, it won\u2019t be the end of his involvement with Berkeley. \u201cFood has become such an important topic that\u2019s drawing students who want to align their values with their professional paths,\u201d he said. \u201cFood connects us all.\u201d<\/p>\n His partnership with Hsu reflects their shared commitment to mentor students who become a critical part of the Haas sustainability ecosystem. Hsu currently serves as curriculum director of FARMpreneurs<\/a>, which brings graduate level executive education to farmer entrepreneurs. She was also the first employee and head of operations at Planet FWD,<\/a> which launched Moonshot Snacks<\/a>, a maker of climate-friendly crackers that sold to<\/a> Patagonia Provisions in 2023.<\/p>\n \u201cI\u2019m excited to bring all of that experience back to this work to help cultivate a new generation of students who will be the change makers within the food system,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The new Collaborative for Food Systems Innovation will equip the next generation of leaders who will reimagine and…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":478992,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[34],"tags":[85508,1979,143,145,144,1673],"class_list":["post-478991","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-oakland","tag-full-time-mba","tag-latest-news","tag-oakland","tag-oakland-headlines","tag-oakland-news","tag-sustainability"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/478991","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=478991"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/478991\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/478992"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=478991"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=478991"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=478991"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"man](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/09\/will-rosenzweig.jpg\")
Will Rosenzweig has taught hundreds of students at UC Berkeley and Haas for 25 years.<\/p>\n![\"man](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/09\/1790656448_906_image0.jpeg\")
In 2010, Rosenzweig received the Oslo Business for Peace Award<\/a> for Ethical Leadership in Business.<\/p>\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/09\/Will-Aaron-and-Jessica-1.jpg\")
L-R: Rosenzweig with former students who took his Food Systems Innovation Studio course: Aaron Hall, PhD 20, (Materials Science & Engineering) and Jessica Heiges, PhD 22, (Environmental Science, Policy & Management). Photo: Jim Block<\/p>\n![\"smiling](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/09\/1776289368746.png\")
Elaine Hsu, MBA 19, executive director of the Collaborative for Food Systems Innovation. was Rosenzweig\u2019s former student.<\/p>\n