Recognized as one of Zagat’s 30 under 30, Tim West is a Slow Food chef turned Social Entrepreneur. Having learned from his grandfather, Arch West (inventor of Doritos), he graduated from the Culinary Institute of America in 2005. He has cooked his way from the St. Regis Hotel in New York, to the Facebook headquarters in California, where he entered the world of food and technology entrepreneurship.
Before arriving in California, Tim worked and studied Sustainable Food Systems and Social Food Movements at the University of Massachusetts. In 2009, he started the UMass Permaculture project and organized a team to write their Climate Action Plan to achieve carbon neutrality in food.
In 2012, Tim won the StartupBus competition with custom cereal concept Cerealize; this experience helped him realize that he can feed more people with a cell phone and a computer than a chef knife and a flame. Inspired by his experiences (and frustrated with how some of the worlds brightest minds were spending their time building games that throw birds at walls), Tim co-created Food Hackathon - with the purpose of building networks, cross-pollinating ideas, and creating products and tools that spark innovation and investment in the food+tech ecosystem.
