Tackling The Food Waste Crisis with Tessa Clarke

Your 40 Minute Mentor today is Tessa Clarke Co-Founder and CEO of the food-sharing app Olio.

We throw away around one third of the food we buy, while 800 million people go to bed hungry every night. That’s 1 in 9 people on the planet who are starving or malnourished. Every one of them could be sufficiently fed on less than a quarter of the food that is wasted in the USA, UK and Europe each year. Tessa is on a mission to to change this.

In just 5 years Olio has built up almost 2.5 million users in 54 countries and 50,000 ambassadors, who are all cutting waste in their communities by sharing their spare food with their neighbours.

Tessa’s success as a founder is built on a high-flying career that’s taken her from consulting to publishing and included four years as MD of eCommerce at Dyson, where she worked directly with founder James Dyson.

It was a pleasure to chat to Tessa and learn more about her career journey and what it takes to found and grow a successful social enterprise, like Olio. She shared so many interesting insights in this episode, including:

• The leadership lessons she learnt from James Dyson, and how she has scaled Olio into the successful business it is today.

• How Olio’s clear and simple mission and purpose is key for recruiting and retaining a high-performing team.

• And how investors are short-changing the world by not backing diverse founders; and what we can do to change that.

Tessa is a fantastic leader who is so passionate about Olio’s mission, which is incredibly inspiring.

So if you’re looking for easy to implement ways to decrease your own food waste or perhaps you’re thinking about joining or starting your own mission-driven business, you’ll definitely want to listen to the great advice Tessa shares in today’s episode.

We’d love to hear your thoughts on this episode, so please do get in touch at james@jbmc.co.uk

If you want to find out more about Tessa, check out her LinkedIn profile – https://www.linkedin.com/in/tecook/

If you want to find out more about Olio, have a look at their website and download the app – https://olioex.com/

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