Ina Garten
Founder, Barefoot Contessa
Saturday, April 5th, 2014
Photo: Quentin Bacon Ina Garten is a cookbook author and the star of Barefoot Contessa: Back to Basics, which airs on the Food Network.
She is also the cofounder of a line of baking mixes, called Barefoot Contessa Pantry, which is sold in specialty food stores throughout North America.
Ina speaks to Jessica Harris about how she switched careers— from working in the White House Office of Management and Budget to launching her culinary profession— from scratch.
Artisanal chocolate has experienced a revolution, especially in the United States; but only a handful of producers actually go through the entire process of producing chocolate from the bean. Michael and Rick Mast were the first culinary craft men in New York City to make the “bean to bar” unchartered chocolate journey. The two brothers from Iowa decided to walk away from their respective careers in film and music to start a simple, nostalgic chocolate company in Brooklyn dedicated to American Craft Chocolate.
During his senior year in college, David discovered that building literacy skills in a child’s early years was vitally influential to their future success. Seeking a way to address this, he co-founded 
Microfinance lending, the practice of making small loans to individuals who would otherwise not qualify for traditional loans, has been a proven method of nurturing entrepreneurship in developing countries. As a college student, Alex read about the work of Noble Prize winning Dr. Muhammad Yunus and his efforts in microfinance. Eager to contribute, he moved to Bangladesh soon after graduating and worked under Dr. Yunus to learn the intricacies of microfinance lending. In 1997, Alex branched off and founded the Grameen Foundation in order to expand microfinance efforts globally.
Jessica meets Stephen McDonnell, the founder of Applegate Farms. Applegate is a natural meat company that has been a leader in the natural meat movement since the mid 1980s. Applegate supports over 200 family farms, dedicated to the humane treatment of animals, and the company’s meat is sold in delis and markets such as Whole Foods and Trader Joe’s across the United States.
Andy Levine connects music bands to their fans in an unlikely venue: at sea. Since 2001 Andy has been creating and marketing musical experiences for music fans, working with artists like John Mayer, Lynyrd Skynyrd, and Barenaked Ladies, among others. 
The ability to buy and sell products online was one of the internet’s key innovations, but how do you convince people who are not used to e-commerce to trust that their money is arriving into the right hands? There were several companies in the late 1990s working to make online buying and selling easy and secure. PayPal was the most successful among them. Co-founded by Peter Thiel, PayPal enabled people to transact simply by using their email accounts. In 2002 eBay bought PayPal for $1.5Billion.
Imagine if every citizen in the United States didn’t know how to read. That’s 300MM people. That’s about the number of illiterate citizens in India, a nation of over a billion people.
