Birmingham, Alabama – The Kirchner Food Fellowship, an initiative of the Kirchner Impact Foundation, today announced its 2016-2017 Kirchner Food Fellows. The program’s third cohort will gather in September to commence their year of work with the innovative, live-fire impact investment program.

Kate Collins is a dual MBA-MPA student at MIT Sloan and Harvard Kennedy School of Government. Kate’s interest in agriculture developed while working as a development consultant in Malawi, where she developed public private partnerships between multinational commodities companies and smallholder farmers. Kate’s undergraduate study was at Johns Hopkins University.

Sydney Herndon is commencing a Masters of Development Practice (MDP) at Emory University where her research will focus on the social and cultural impacts of small and medium sized social enterprises. She has spent the past three years working in Rome, Italy at the headquarters of the World Food Programme, a UN organization committed to improving global food security by providing assistance during conflicts and disasters. Sydney’s undergraduate study was at Auburn University.

Faridah Ibrahim is an MPA in Development Practice candidate at Columbia University’s School of International & Public Affairs (SIPA). At SIPA her study is focused on innovative methods of using agriculture to reduce poverty in Africa. Prior to SIPA, she worked at an African agricultural impact investment firm, where she worked to improve the productivity and incomes of thousands of rural smallholder farmers. Faridah’s undergraduate study was at American University of Nigeria.

“The newly selected fellows combine diverse and complementary skillsets and experiences that will be extremely beneficial as they coalesce into an effective investment team,” stated Steve Dauphin, Director. “We were once again fortunate to have an extremely strong applicant pool and are appreciative of all those who participated in the demanding application process – very little separated the top candidates.”

The fellowship program’s 2015-2016 cohort also recently completed an investment in Till Mobile Corporation a leader in the supply chain management sector, providing a software solution that identifies gaps in supply chain data and uses mobile voice and text to fill those gaps. Till joins Lucky Iron Fish, Inc., Green Zebra Grocery, Inc., and Kuli Kuli, Inc. as part of the Fellowship programs portfolio.

Kirchner Food Fellowship
Kirchner Food Fellowship believes millennials are uniquely qualified to find, fund and assist promising conscious agricultural businesses. The program takes a traditional merchant banking approach to diagnose problems and apply solutions, whether they be indigenous or imported. The program provides capital and unprecedented hands on training in deployment of capital for university students including assembly of investment teams, applying a problem-based learning and solutions model along with a unique process and domain approach. The goal is to shorten deployment time frames and increase the likelihood of investment success. www.fundthefood.com

Steve Dauphin
Director | Kirchner Food Fellowship
205.602.9845
sdauphin@fundthefood.com