I Watched My Dad Suffer for 10 Years and It Changed How I See Food Forever
- Aug 28, 2025
- 2 min read
I didn’t set out to be a food entrepreneur. If you’d told me twenty years ago that I’d be working with farmers in eight countries, building a regenerative supply chain from the ground up, I wouldn’t have believed you. But life has a way of igniting purpose in the most unexpected, even painful, ways.
For me, the spark was watching my father suffer from terminal lymphoma for over a decade.
There’s nothing harder than watching someone you love lose control of their body. I remember feeling helpless. As his health declined, I started asking questions. What are we putting in and on our bodies? What does "healthy" even mean in a system that profits off keeping people sick? And why didn’t I know any of this sooner?
It was through those questions that I found my way into the natural products industry. At first, I focused on learning. It started with nutrition labels. Then ingredient lists. Then, a deep dive into our food supply chain. Once I knew how broken our food system was and how disconnected we’d become from the people and land that nourish us, I couldn’t unsee it.
My first company gave me a crash course in consumer-packaged goods. It also showed me the limits of the system. Brokers, middlemen, and rapid growth at all costs. I would travel to the farms and meet the farmers, yet I always felt like something was off, as if I was being shown only what I was meant to see. I knew something was broken.
Years later, when the opportunity to build GoodSAM presented itself, I realized I had a chance to do things differently by going to the source, building direct relationships with farmers, and creating products rooted in regeneration, not extraction. I didn’t hesitate.
People often ask me what GoodSAM stands for. It’s short for Good Samaritan. I’m not religious, but that story about helping a stranger, about seeing someone in need and stepping in, is universal and felt like the right anchor. We are all connected, and I believe that what we do for someone halfway around the world comes back to us. That food should nourish everyone along the chain, not just the person eating it.
My father didn’t get to see this chapter of my life. But he’s in it. Every time I visit a farm, every time we pay fair prices, every time a consumer chooses one of our products, they're choosing something better.
This isn’t about one moment. It’s about what you do with the fire when it’s lit. You can ignore it. Or you can let it guide you, even when the path is hard, even when the world tells you to quit or that you can’t build a profitable business by doing things ethically. I’ve chosen to follow it. And I hope others will too.
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Photo credit: GoodSAM Foods
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