2024 ReFED Food Waste Solutions Summit
June 11-13, 2024 | Baltimore, MD
Ida Posner
Founder & Managing Partner | Board Member at ReFED
Hawthorne Food Ventures
Bio:
Ida is the fourth-generation leader of her family business, which invests in food and rail businesses globally. She is the Founder and Managing Partner of Hawthorne Food Ventures, a venture capital fund that invests in startups reducing food waste. She is also Vice President of Railroad Development Corporation, a global railway investment and management company with holdings across Iowa, Peru, Germany, and France. Ida serves on the boards of the Iowa Interstate Railroad, RDC-Deutschland, Eurorail, RailPulse, and Barnana. Additionally, Ida serves as a Strategic Advisor to the Posner Foundation of Pittsburgh. Ida holds an MBA from Columbia Business School and a B.S.E. from Princeton University in Civil & Environmental Engineering.
Schedule
Wednesday, May 20
9:00am - 10:30am
“Progress in Action: Scaling Solutions to Food Waste”
Mainstage
Ten years ago, ReFED's Roadmap to Reduce U.S. Food Waste set an ambitious vision for transforming the way America produces, manages, and thinks about food waste. Since then, the field has grown, solutions have scaled, and momentum has built in ways both measurable and inspiring. But with urgency still high and much work remaining, this opening session is as much about what comes next as it is about how far we've come. ReFED President Dana Gunders will set the stage with a look at the field's most meaningful accomplishments from the past year and the bright spots ahead on the horizon. A panel of founders/CEOs will share candid reflections on what it took to grow their solutions from early-stage ideas into mainstream impact—offering hard-won lessons on how innovation and investment align for success. And the session will close on a high note with the announcement of the newest grantees of the ReFED Catalytic Grant Fund, celebrating the next wave of solutions poised to move the needle in the decade ahead.