Daniel Lubetzky

Serial Social Entrepreneur, CEO & Founder , KIND Healthy Snacks

About This Expert

Daniel Lubetzky is a serial social entrepreneur known for integrating social objectives with sustainable market-driven forces into new business models. He is the CEO and Founder of KIND Healthy Snacks and the KIND Movement. He is also founder of PeaceWorks Inc., and the PeaceWorks Foundation’s OneVoice Movement, and co-founder of Maiyet.

The evolution of these unorthodox entities reflects Mr. Lubetzky’s upbringing. The son of a Holocaust survivor and a Mexican Jew, Mr. Lubetzky was born in 1968 and raised in Mexico City, where he began his education in Hebrew, English, Spanish and Yiddish. As a teenager, he moved with his family to the U.S. During his college years, Mr. Lubetzky created a retail watch operation, Da’Leky Times. He studied abroad in both Israel and France, where he added French to his languages. While in the Middle East, he began developing relationships with Israeli and Palestinian friends. At Trinity University in San Antonio, Texas, the seeds of PeaceWorks were planted as Mr. Lubetzky wrote his 268-page thesis, “The Influence of Economic Factors in Resolving the Arab-Israeli Conflict.” After receiving his B.A. degree, magna cum laude, in 1990, Mr. Lubetzky worked in Tokyo for a summer with Japan Counselors, a strategic marketing firm. In 1991, Mr. Lubetzky summered as a clerk for The Honorable Thomas R. Phillips, Chief Justice for the Supreme Court of Texas.

Mr. Lubetzky earned his J.D. from Stanford Law School in 1993 and worked briefly at Sullivan & Cromwell and at McKinsey & Company. While deciding whether to go into legal practice or consulting, Mr. Lubetzky was awarded the Haas Koshland Fellowship to write about legislative means to foster joint ventures between Arabs and Israelis. He conducted his research in the Middle East and subsequently published “Incentives for Peace and Profits: Federal Legislation to Encourage U.S. Enterprises to Invest in Arab-Israeli Joint Ventures” in the Michigan Journal of International Law.

While carrying out his research in Israel, Mr. Lubetzky discovered a delicious sundried tomato product that, along with plans for Arab-Israeli economic cooperation, provided the foundation for PeaceWorks Inc. in1994.
PeaceWorks is a “not-ONLY-for-profit”™ business corporation pursuing both peace and profit. Its flagship brand – Meditalia –is made through cooperative ventures among neighbors striving to co-exist in the Middle East.

In the fall of 2000, Mr. Lubetzky began to research creative ways to amplify the voice of ordinary citizens in the Middle East, culminating with the creation of the PeaceWorks Foundation’s OneVoice Movement in 2002. With offices in Ramallah, Tel Aviv, Gaza, London and New York, the OneVoice Movement now has over 650,000 Palestinian, Israeli and international signatories, including over 2,000 Youth Leaders with chapters in every Israeli and Palestinian University, and across cities, villages and refugee camps. The Movement’s Boards include over 60 dignitaries, religious authorities, business leaders, scholars and celebrities across an unprecedented spectrum of politics, ethnic backgrounds and religious beliefs, all standing as OneVoice against violent extremism and for a two-state solution. OneVoice is also responsible for the One Million Voices campaign, the Who Am I?video project, the Imagine 2018 contest, and its provocative Goal 2018 campaign.

In 2003, unhappy with unhealthy or unappetizing snacking choices, and concerned with the rising obesity and diabetes epidemic in America, Daniel launched KIND Snacks with the value proposition of being “KIND to your body, your taste buds and the world.”® KIND has since become the fastest-growing healthy snack in the nutrition bar category, available in 60,000 stores, and recognized with theBest Product of the Year Award in the natural food industry (NPEE) and scores of awards. Its KIND PLUS Fruit and Nut bars are the first to deliver functional nutrition through “wholesome ingredients you can see and pronounce.”® And its KIND Healthy Grains Clusters are snackable hand-crafted artisanal blends of nature’s most healthful whole grains and super foods. KIND’s marketing efforts – including its Do The KIND Thing campaign – are designed to simultaneously foster unexpected acts of kindness.

In 2010, drawing lessons from PeaceWorks, he co-founded Maiyet, a new luxury fashion venture committed to forging partnerships with artisans in some of the world’s developing economies to create product that is unique and luxurious, while promoting self-sufficiency and entrepreneurship.

Mr. Lubetzky has published numerous articles and lectured at the World Economic Forum, the World Bank, the United Nations and several Universities.

In 1997, Mr. Lubetzky, then 28 years old, was selected by the World Economic Forum as one of 100Global Leaders for Tomorrow (GLT). In 2003, Mr. Lubetzky received the Outstanding Alumnus Awardfrom his alma mater, Trinity University. In 2004, the World Association of NGOs bestowed him with itsPeace, Reconciliation and Security Award. In 2005, Mr. Lubetzky was honored with the Catholic Theological Union’s PeaceMakers Award, and the OneVoice movement received the King Hussein Humanitarian Leadership Prize from Queen Noor. In 2006, Mr. Lubetzky was named Young Leaders Forum Fellow by the National Committee for United States-China Relations, and the Monitor Group & Fast Company Magazine recognized him with its Social Capitalist Award as one of “43 Entrepreneurs Who Are Changing the World.” In 2007, the World Economic Forum again recognized Mr. Lubetzky as a Young Global Leader. In 2008, he received the Skoll Award for Social Entrepreneurship, accompanied by a $1,000,000 grant to the PeaceWorks Foundation. And in 2009, BusinessWeek Magazine named him among “America’s Most Promising Social Entrepreneurs” and TIME Magazine named him among “25 Responsibility Pioneers” of social innovation. In 2010, Mr. Lubetzky was selected as Entrepreneur of the Year by Entrepreneur Magazine.