Eva Goulbourne didn’t study food systems in college – she studied the Cold War, intercontinental ballistic missiles, and art history – but her lifelong obsession with food would eventually shape a career that’s taken her across the globe and put her at the center of the global food systems transformation conversation.
I recently caught up with Eva for an episode of The Spoon Podcast to talk about her journey and hear more about her vision for her new podcast, Everything But the Carbon Sink.
“I started subscribing to Martha Stewart Living Magazine when I was about seven or eight,” Goulbourne told me. “What can’t you learn about food systems from Martha Stewart?” That early curiosity became a foundation for what she describes as a “very long-term relationship with food,” one that she would eventually channel into a mission-driven career.
After a short stint at the U.S. State Department, Goulbourne took a job focused on financial services for tobacco farmers in Kenya and Malawi. “That was again like a continued access point to agriculture [and] international development,” she said. The project, funded by Nike Foundation, MasterCard Foundation, and Gates Foundation, introduced her to the role of philanthropy in market development — a theme that would shape her later work.
Her next big step came with the World Economic Forum, where she landed a role on the food security and agriculture team. “That was really, like I was saying, I was off to the races in terms of having access and understanding and helping to facilitate entire regional projects with agribusinesses, the largest retailers in the world, seed companies, fertilizer companies, ministers of agriculture and development banks.”
Goulbourne describes this period (the era after the launch of the UN Sustainable Development Goals) as a pivotal moment when “purpose and profit could very much actually win.” She witnessed corporate leaders, such as Unilever’s Paul Polman, bring ‘net positive’ thinking to global food policy discussions.
But eventually, she wanted to go deeper. “I was really itching to become an expert… I couldn’t be the Jane of all trades.” That itch led her to ReFED, where she became employee number one and helped turn a landmark food waste report into a full-fledged organization. “We didn’t know if anybody was gonna read this thing,” she recalled. “And boy, we didn’t know… hoping that people would receive it well.”
The report was a hit, and Goulbourne stayed on to help raise over a million dollars in philanthropic funding to grow ReFED. But after a few years, a new motivation emerged: motherhood. “I found out I was pregnant… and immediately had this maternal instinct to do more and do something to now protect the planet, the environment, society… So that’s why Littlefoot is called Littlefoot.”
With her consulting firm, Littlefoot Ventures, Eva has guided food brands, startups, and philanthropists through everything from food loss strategies to regenerative ag and capital deployment. “I sort of call food waste a chameleon issue,” she said. “My party trick is that it doesn’t matter what part of the food supply chain you mention, I can convince you and have some access point back to food waste.”
It’s this broad view is that makes Eva such a great podcast host. Her new podcast, Everything but the Carbon Sink, focuses on the intersection of food, climate, and finance , as well as the tough and thorny challenges that prevent progress.
Eva calls these thorny issues no one wants to talk about the ‘ugly baby’ problems.
“For Everything but the Carbon Sink, I decided to have the podcast be focused on this intersection of food… to climate… and then finance, because to answer your question about the ugly baby, how do we pay for this stuff? Why is it so damn hard?”
One thing I noticed about Eva is she works with pretty much every continsituency in the food system innovation. Through her consulting work and now her podcast, Goulbourne is trying to help stakeholders across sectors, from venture capitalists to philanthropists, understand that substantial systems change requires coordinated investment. “You can’t VC your way out of this problem,” she said. “Our food system runs on harvest seasons and weather, and we’re working against and with the climate crisis.”
If you are interested in food system innovation, reducing food waste, or building a career in mission-based investing and fundraising, you are going to want to listen to this episode and subscribe to Eva’s podcast on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts.
You can also watch our conversation below.
