Launching Food and Ag Ventures Post-Sloan

Meet three Sloan alumni who launched Food & Ag ventures post-Sloan: Andrea Xu (Umamicart, MBA '20), Merritt Jenkins (Kodama Systems, MBA '21), and Joshua Reed-Diawuoh (Gria Food Co, MBA '20). Find out more about their entrepreneurship journeys and their thoughts about food & ag!

This event is co-organized with the MIT Sustainability Initiative. 

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Andrea Xu (Umamicart, MBA '20): 

Umamicart is an online grocery store delivering hundreds of your favorite Asian products and ingredients - from Asian veggies, to fresh fruits, to pantry staples and favorite cuts of meat. Our curated selection includes both traditional staples and up-and-coming Asian-American owned brands. Umamicart celebrates the endlessly diverse, unique and evolving Asian-American culture and cuisine. 

Andrea is a first-gen, third-culture kid. She was born and raised in Spain to Chinese parents who immigrated there as adults. Ten years ago, she made her own move to New York. Her life across three continents are varied, but share one common thread: meals incorporating delicious and often unconventional combinations of food. Whether you grew up with these flavors, or are embarking on new culinary adventures, Andrea's hope is the same: to bring you and your loved ones to the table, revisiting childhood favorites, or creating memories over new flavors.

Joshua Reed-Diawuoh (Gria Food Co., MBA '20):

GRIA Food Co. is a U.S.-based African food company dedicated to bringing premium snacks from the continent straight to customers around the world. GRIA is building an integrated supply chain that sources directly from their farms/distributors and brings customers the best produce grown in Africa.

Joshua was born and raised in Boston, the son of parents who instilled in him great pride in his Ghanaian heritage. GRIA took root over years of trips back to Ghana to visit family and learn more about the agriculture sector. His work experience in agricultural development and studies in MIT focused on sustainability and agricultural innovation helped to shape the vision for the company. Taking a broader systems approach to GRIA, he's creating an integrated food company that works with its own partner farms and processing sites in West Africa that employ sustainable agricultural practices and cut out intermediaries along the value chain.
 

Merritt Jenkins (Kodama Systems, MBA '21):

Kodama Systems is a venture-backed startup developing hardware and software to restore forests across the western U.S. for fire resilience and carbon sequestration.

Merritt spent his childhood in the forests of Pennsylvania and grew up fascinated by ecology. His academic background is robotics in agriculture, and he has technical experience in indoor farming, plant phenotyping, and soil analysis. He believes that forestry is the next frontier for precision technologies that transformed the agriculture industry, and plans for Kodama Systems to play a key role in that transformation.

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