2024 ReFED Food Waste Solutions Summit

With 20+ years of experience as a senior executive, Yuka possesses skills from several domains that are rarely found in the same person: justice, equity diversity, and inclusion (JEDI); nonprofit leadership; organizational management; policy/government; innovation strategy; entrepreneurship; and education. After co-founding two tech-startups, she led the tech-based economic development agency of the State of Hawaii, where she oversaw tech park development and incubation, created innovation policy frameworks, and implemented entrepreneurship and other business programs, including Innovate HI, as NIST’s Manufacturing Extension Partnership Center Director for Hawaii. Most recently, based on her executive consulting work on JEDI, and her experience with Astia, a non-profit operating globally to level the playing field for women entrepreneurs, she developed an inclusive leadership curriculum for Stanford Continuing Studies. She is currently the Executive Director of Food Shift, shifting the way people think and interact with food by uplifting communities through rescued produce: reducing waste, creating jobs, and nourishing our neighbors. As hunger is not caused by lack of food, but lack of financial security, we address root causes, providing practical solutions that are “for the people, by the people, and with the people”.  US wastes 35% of its produced food that ties up significant amount of resources including over 20% of drinkable water. Because food waste in landfills causes methane, our mission puts us in the intersection of food and racial justice as well as climate change. Yuka was born and raised in Japan, educated in Canada and the U.S. Having spent most of her professional life in Hawaii, she moved to San Francisco Bay Area via Denmark.