Jessica Kirshenblat-Gooderham Joins Regrow as VP of Customer Success

Hi, I’m Jessica!

In short, I believe in the power of individuals to drive change. I’m on a pursuit of transforming the way we do business with sustainability, technology, and people to make the world a better place for a longer time.  

With that, I’m thrilled to join Regrow in tackling one of the biggest opportunities in climate and social impact - agriculture and food systems. Conveniently, strategies for building better food systems for business and for the earth also better sustain us as people, farmers, and communities around the world. I couldn’t imagine a better place to invest myself. 

My journey to Regrow begins with my interests in the food systems at a young age. Food was a big part of my family’s world - both culturally and economically. I am the daughter of first generation Canadians, and the granddaughter of multi-generations of butchers. Both my grandfathers continued this tradition by opening businesses in their new country. I understood the benefits and realities of industrialized systems in post-war economies, as well as its later impacts that lead to my personal choice of a plant-based diet. As a business student in a time where sustainability was not part of the vocabulary, I focused on the integration between business and sustainability as a core principle, not a ‘nice to have’.  However, it wasn’t until I began working in the world of food that the intricacies of all these relationships in our food systems and in my life, began to resurface. 

Earlier in my career, I filled my sustainability plate by building and leading an internal sustainability team, focused on education and engagement at General Mills. At the same time, through working with retailers like Walmart and Loblaw, I became aware of a need to bridge the gap between sustainability and business operations, to whom both were very important. 

I sought out further opportunities to use these partnerships to go beyond mutual value, toward additional value for the planet through the power of sustainability in supply chains. While at EcoVadis, I was working directly with people to integrate sustainability solutions into their business operations and transform supplier relationships.

I continuously observed 2 things: 1. Great leadership can drive exponential results, and 2. The ability for established businesses to adopt, implement and scale tech solutions at the pace at which they are developing is a challenge. So while on the one hand, the convergence of technology and sustainability was enabling access to data and insights like never before, on the other hand, it was happening faster than could be absorbed and implemented in an impactful way for many organizations. 

My guiding principle is that if we can impact those two factors, we really can drive exponential return.

I aim to look back at the work we are doing today in resilient agriculture and see direct results of a transformed climate change trajectory, and a nourished people and planet. I am looking forward to working with Regrowers, our customers, community partners, and thought leaders, to be the people that mobilize the change.