Lifeway Foods
Julie Smolyansky became the youngest female CEO of a publicly held firm when she took over Lifeway Foods at the age of 27 in 2002. Since then, Julie has continued the company’s growth trajectory with creative product development and marketing, bringing an Eastern European product into the U.S. mainstream. Under her leadership, Lifeway has grown into the category dominating leader in the U.S. kefir market, taking annual revenue from $12M in 2002 to a projected $185-$186.5M in 2024. During her tenure, the Company has expanded distribution throughout the United States, Mexico, France, and Ireland as well as portions of Central and South America and the Caribbean. She has been named to Fortune Business ‘40 under 40,’ Fortune’s 55 Most Influential Women on Twitter and Fast Company’s Most Creative People in Business 1000.
She is a graduate with a bachelor’s degree from the University of Illinois at Chicago. Julie serves as a member of the United Nations Foundation Global Entrepreneurs Council and was part of the 2015 class of Young Global Leaders of the World Economic Forum. She has produced several documentaries, including “The Homestretch,” “Honor Diaries" and “The Hunting Ground.” In 2013 Julie co‐founded a non‐profit, Test400k, an organization dedicated to advocating ending the backlog of 400,000 untested rape kits in the United States. She will release her first book, The Kefir Cookbook: An Ancient Healing Superfood for Modern Life, Recipes from My Family Table and Around the World in March of 2018. She lives in Chicago and is the mother of two girls.
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Lifeway Foods
The Lifeway Foods story begins in 1986 with kefir, a milk-based cultured drink that is popular in Eastern Europe and is said to be more nutritional than yogurt. That year, Russian immigrant Michael Smolyansky began manufacturing kefir in his basement to bring the taste of his native country to the U.S. After Michael Smolyansky passed away in 2002, his daughter Julie Smolyansky assumed the role of President, while his son Edward Smolyansky assumed the role of Chief Financial Officer and Treasurer. Today, Lifeway is the country’s leading manufacturer of kefir, with multiple flavors and varieties that include lowfat, whole milk and organic versions as well as a children’s line, and a provider of other probiotic natural and organic dairy products for health-conscious consumers.