David Schwartz

David grew up in a low-income neighborhood where the school food was so bad that he and his friends would often go all day without eating and spend whatever little money they had on fast food after the last bell rang. When his family later moved to a nearby affluent suburb, he was shocked by the disparities between his two communities—how access to healthy foods in the inner city was so devastatingly low, and the diabetes rates so high. David created The Real Food Challenge to shift $1 billion of college food purchases toward local, sustainable, humane and fair trade sources by 2020. To date, over 35,000 students have taken part, and David and his team have trained over 1,700 student leaders at over 300 schools, all working together to build a healthy, fair, and green food economy.