{"id":991,"date":"2015-10-15T11:00:37","date_gmt":"2015-10-15T11:00:37","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.openhandsinitiative.org\/blog\/?p=991"},"modified":"2023-12-04T14:45:51","modified_gmt":"2023-12-04T14:45:51","slug":"founder-features-the-food-industry","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.openhandsinitiative.org\/blog\/founder-features-the-food-industry\/","title":{"rendered":"Founder Features: The Food Industry"},"content":{"rendered":"

With just one day before the start of the Fellowship for Young Women Entrepreneurs<\/a>, Open Hands Initiative is proud\u00a0to continue highlighting some of the Fellowship\u00a0participants<\/a> in its second\u00a0set of “Founder Features.” This week, Open Hands Initiative introduces Lisa Curtis and Malak Jehad Al-Aiekly, two founders\u00a0passionate about the food, agriculture and commodities industries.<\/p>\n

\"LisaCurtis\"<\/a><\/p>\n

During her time as a Peace Corps volunteer in Niger, Lisa, an American, started to feel symptoms of malnutrition, a condition affecting over 18 million children across West Africa. After a friend suggested she eat the leaves of the local moringa tree as well as kuli-kuli, a peanut\u00a0dish of the Hausa people, Lisa founded\u00a0her company, Kuli Kuli, upon return to the United States. Kuli Kuli is\u00a0dedicated to providing all who seek access with nutritional\u00a0products from the moringa tree, and hopes to combat some of the nutritional challenges facing rural communities in West Africa. Learn more about Lisa and Kuli Kuli<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

As one of the only female grain traders in the MENA region, Malak, a Jordanian, represents four international grain and commodities companies as CEO of Golden Wheat for Grain Trading Ltd. Serving as\u00a0the liaison between these companies and the Jordanian government, Malak founded Golden Wheat to maintain and harness food security in Jordan by supplying grain, which comprises the core of Jordan’s agricultural commodities business. Her latest venture involves\u00a0consulting for the grain silo construction business, which will also contribute greatly to Jordan’s food security. Read more about Malak and her company<\/a>.<\/p>\n

While the\u00a0Fellowship for Young Women Entrepreneurs is a sector agnostic initiative, comprising Jordanian and American founders in fields including health, biotech, e-commerce, food and agriculture, and more, a core tenet of the Fellowship, as with all Open Hands Initiative programs, is to promote understanding and the ability to work\u00a0collectively to improve the livelihood of and between peoples. Both Lisa and Malak exemplify how the food and agriculture industry can serve this social purpose.\u00a0We look forward to welcoming Lisa, Malak, and 18 other American and Jordanian founders to Amman tomorrow for a unique and exciting venture in people-to-people diplomacy.<\/p>\n

Learn more about our impressive roster of Fellowship founders or check out last week’s post<\/a> about Afnan Ali and Joy McBrien.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

With just one day before the start of the Fellowship for Young Women Entrepreneurs, Open Hands Initiative is proud\u00a0to continue highlighting some of the Fellowship\u00a0participants in its second\u00a0set of “Founder Features.” This week, Open Hands Initiative introduces Lisa Curtis and Malak Jehad Al-Aiekly, two founders\u00a0passionate about the food, agriculture and commodities industries. During her time […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":14,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[110,95],"tags":[107,64,108,91,106,103,93,90,109],"class_list":["post-991","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-jordan","category-womens-entrepreneurship","tag-agriculture","tag-citizen-diplomacy","tag-commodities","tag-entrepreneurship","tag-food","tag-founders","tag-startups","tag-women","tag-young"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.openhandsinitiative.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/991","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.openhandsinitiative.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.openhandsinitiative.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.openhandsinitiative.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/14"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.openhandsinitiative.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=991"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/www.openhandsinitiative.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/991\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1645,"href":"https:\/\/www.openhandsinitiative.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/991\/revisions\/1645"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.openhandsinitiative.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=991"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.openhandsinitiative.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=991"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.openhandsinitiative.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=991"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}