2026 ReFED Food Waste Solutions Summit

Eliza Blank is the CEO of The Farmlink Project, a national nonprofit that reroutes surplus produce from farms to families facing food insecurity. She brings more than a decade of experience building and scaling a consumer brand to the work of getting fresh food where it's needed most.

Before Farmlink, Eliza founded The Sill in 2012, one of the first direct-to-consumer houseplant companies. She bootstrapped the business for its first five years, then raised over $25M in venture capital to expand beyond .com into 12 retail stores across seven markets. Under her leadership, The Sill grew from a scrappy startup into a recognizable lifestyle brand, known for making plants approachable and building genuine community around them. She also spun off a plant-maintenance business, extending the brand's reach into commercial spaces. Over 12 years as CEO, she developed deep expertise in logistics, brand-building, and customer experience.

Eliza's work has led to advisory roles, speaking engagements, and features across major media. But what drives her isn't scale for its own sake. It's finding ideas that meet a real need and building the systems to deliver on them.

At Farmlink, she's applying that same playbook to a different problem: the gap between food surplus and food access. The organization partners with farms, distributors, and hunger-relief networks to move millions of pounds of fresh produce that would otherwise go to waste.

For Eliza, the throughline is clear. Whether it's plants or produce, she builds things that connect people to what helps them thrive.