Fueling the FoodRX Movement

Ashley Tyrner has gone from being a single mom on food stamps to the founder and CEO of FarmboxRx, a national brand that aims to break down barriers to health equity through nutrition and health literacy. Having appeared in various national news publications including, TIME, Forbes, CNN, BBC, and TODAY Show, Ashley is an advocate for advancing access and educational resources to underserved populations. From creating partnerships for Michelle Obama’s Let's Move Campaign to speaking around the country on health care, wellness, food access, and entrepreneurship, Ashley has a clear conviction that everyone deserves the right to eat healthy. Ashley works tirelessly to disrupt the food policy and health care space by delivering customizable member engagement programs via food solutions with FarmboxRx that support sustainable, scalable, and long-lasting quality outcomes for Healthcare Organizations.

Ben Goodwin co-founded OLIPOP in 2018, alongside business partner David Lester. Ben, who forwent an environmental science degree in favor of his entrepreneurial spirit, has a passion for health and wellness that stems from personal experience. After a childhood on the standard American diet, Ben had an epiphany at just 14 years of age--losing 50 pounds with the implementation of daily exercise and more mindful eating habits. These positive changes resulted in a deep curiosity about nutrition's effect on physical and mental health, making Ben a relentless scholar of the human microbiome and ways to leverage it for overall wellness.Ben has now been an entrepreneur and product developer in the digestive beverage field for more than a decade, striving to create drinks that optimize for both taste and digestive health benefits. Some of his more notable projects include involvement in the launching of national kombucha brand Kombucha Botanica at age 20 and the formulation, launch, and selling of Obi Probiotic Soda in 2016. This knowledge and experience then became the basis for Ben’s 18 months of research and development for the creation of a prebiotic sparkling beverage now known as OLIPOP, in September of 2018. Driven by his mission to maximize human health by creating accessible, clinically-backed products, Ben brings vision and scientific rigor to OLIPOP. Ask him about oligosaccharides—OLIPOP’s namesake, btw—and watch his face light up as he tells you everything you need to know. To bring the brand to life, Ben has spent hundreds of hours researching and developing the effective-yet-tasty formula that powers OLIPOP and the human microbiome. He has dedicated countless hours aligning with academic researchers, medical professionals, dietitians, and other luminaries in their fields to establish not just a new product, but a new category.Ben just may be the most interesting person in the world of microbes. He wields a deep knowledge base of psychology, nutrition, food science, fermentation, entrepreneurialism, personal development, and philosophy. When not tinkering with OLIPOP products in his Washington home, you can find Ben posting DJ sets on FWD.DJ, the curated electronic music site he founded in 2007.

Smriti KirubanandanMS,MPH,FAHM,CNSr.Healthcare & Marketing Strategist| Board Member | Public Health Advisor | Certified Raw Vegan Chef & Nutritionist Health News Contributor| Executive ProducerSmriti has a strong background in robotics and public health and currently serves as a Senior Healthcare Strategist for TATA Consultancy Services, where she focuses on driving significant transformations within the healthcare ecosystem, concentrating on customer experience, Intelligent automation, digital analytics, and insights, and is determined to make healthcare more accessible and affordable. She is also the Head of Strategic Marketing for Healthcare and Lifescience, North America, where she drives brand development, thought leadership, and market research. Smriti serves on the Board of the World Food Bank and as a Vice Chair for the American College of Healthcare Executives, Southern California.An empathetic and innovative strategic policy advisor has helped organizations globally to build the capacity to empower people to engage in wellness programs and is responsible for educating small farmers in Africa to lift them out of poverty to improve food & nutrition insecurity, impacting 2 million people per year. In 2022, Smriti was appointed to serve the Los Angeles County food equity round table as a Nutrition & Policy Advisor to design and strategize programs to address food insecurity by educating and improving access and affordability to nutritious food. Smriti is also the founder of HLTH Forward Podcast- a space that hosts healthcare leaders, policymakers, and artists such as Bryan Adams, Dr. Joneigh Khaldun of CVS Health, and many others to discuss the challenges in the system and what we could do collectively to move healthcare forward.Smriti has shared her thought leadership by speaking at The Adama Carolla show, SXSW, HLTH, and other national forums. She is a health news contributor at Medcity News and is featured on Washington Post, ABC News, Huffington Post, Times of India, The Hindu, VegNews, Medium, and Yahoo News.Smriti holds her Bachelor of Science in Robotics, Master in Engineering Management from the University of Southern California, and Masters in Public Health from the University of California, Los Angeles and is currently in Fellowship with the American College of Healthcare Executives. 

As a previous luxury Hotel Executive, Mr. Gierlinger brings a unique perspective to the patient experience dialogue. However, it was his personal patient experience spending three months in hospitals that motivates him to challenge and disrupt the status quo in healthcare. As Senior Vice President & Chief Experience Officer for Northwell Health, New York’s largest integrated healthcare system and one of the largest in the country, Mr. Gierlinger is driving culture transformation grounded in patient centeredness and empathy. Mr. Gierlinger came to Northwell Health from the Henry Ford Health System in Detroit where he served as Vice President, Hospitality and Service Culture, responsible for creating a superior and consistent service experience for patients, visitors and employees. Mr. Gierlinger worked closely with leadership to drive culture change around improving the customer experience in every encounter across the system. Prior to that, he was an Administrator, Hospitality Services, for Henry Ford West Bloomfield Hospital, responsible for all aspects of non-clinical operations, the Wellness & Integrative Health Center, retail shops, café, and the customer experience. Additionally, he was an integral part of the team, leading the efforts to achieve the acclaimed Malcom Baldridge National Quality Award.  Mr. Gierlinger began his career in the luxury hotel business, holding a series of leadership positions with the Ritz-Carlton Hotel Company. He played a key role in the openings of several Ritz-Carlton hotels in Germany, Japan, Indonesia and the United States, responsible for executing and implementing Ritz-Carlton service standards, training staff, and leading teams of educators. Mr. Gierlinger is an Executive Board member at The Beryl Institute, and a Founding Council member of the Institute of Innovation. He received a bachelor’s degree in hospitality business administration from the Bavaria Hotel Management Academy, Altoetting, Germany.

Sam Kass is the former Senior Policy Advisor for Nutrition in the Obama administration, Executive Director of Michelle Obama’s Let’s Move! Campaign and the Obama family chef. He is a Partner in Acre Venture Partners. After cooking for the Obamas in Chicago for two years, Sam joined the White House kitchen staff in 2009. During his White House tenure, he took on several additional roles including Executive Director of First Lady Michelle Obama’s “Let’s Move!” campaign and Senior White House Policy Advisor for Nutrition. Sam is the first person in the history of the White House to have a position in the Executive Office of the President and the Residence. As one of the First Lady’s longest-serving advisors, he helped the First Lady create the first major vegetable garden at the White House since Eleanor Roosevelt’s victory garden. Currently Sam is a Partner at Acre Venture Partners. Acre is a venture capital fund investing in the future of food with a mission to improve human and environmental health in the food system. The fund focuses on early stage, highly disruptive impactful companies in the food system focused on agriculture, supply chain and consumer. In 2011, Fast Company included Sam in their list of 100 Most Creative People, and in 2012, he helped create the American Chef Corps, which is dedicated to promoting diplomacy through culinary initiatives. He is an MIT Media Lab fellow and a World Economic Forum Young Global Leader. He is a graduate of the University of Chicago.Sam is the author of Eat a Little Better: Great Flavor, Good Health, Better World, which was published by Clarkson Potter on April 17, 2018.