Robyn O'Brien

Robyn O’Brien is a co-founder and Managing Director at rePlant Capital, a financial services firm scaling climate solutions on farm. She is also a Fulbright scholar, best-selling author and widely recognized speaker on global food systems. In 2020, she was recognized on Forbes Impact 50 List for her work at the intersection of agriculture and climate.

Robyn has been called “food’s Erin Brockovich” by Bloomberg and the New York Times. Her work has inspired millions and her TEDx talk has been translated into Chinese, French, Spanish, Hebrew, Greek and other languages. She advises food policy at the local, state, federal and global level.

Robyn is also an adjunct professor at Rice University’s Jones School of Business. She is a recognized global speaker and mother of four.

With a twenty year background in food and finance, Robyn O’Brien triggered an allergic reaction in the food industry when she asked: “Are we allergic to food or what’s been done to it?”

She has been called “food’s Erin Brockovich” by Bloomberg and the New York Times. Originally from a conservative Texas family, Robyn earned an MBA on a full scholarship from Rice University, graduating as the top woman in her class before going to work as a financial analyst that covered the food industry. She graduated Summa Cum Laude from Washington and Lee, where she was also Phi Beta Kappa and is an adjunct professor at Rice University.

For the last fifteen years, she has led a food awakening among consumers, corporations and political leaders.

Armed with data and analytics, food companies and policy makers respond to Robyn’s work. Robyn highlights the actions needed at the local, national and global levels to secure a smarter food system.

She has presented to multinational corporations like Bloomberg, Compass Food Group, Chipotle, General Mills, Nestle, Target and others. Robyn has also worked with and advised grocery stores, farming associations and startups in the food industry. She sheds light on how the changing landscape of food and health are impacting the food industry and our economy.

While working as an equity analyst, she was specifically assigned to cover the food industry where she had the opportunity to meet with the management teams from Kroger, Costco, Whole Foods and other companies on a regular basis. She also met with Goldman Sachs’ Henry Paulson, Ebay’s Meg Whitman and Martha Stewart as they were taking their companies public.

Over the last two decades, she has worked on a team that managed $20 billion in assets, created a non profit to protect children, built a strategic advisory firm, a popular podcast called TakeOut with Ashley and Robyn and is a best-selling author, public speaker, strategist and mother of four. Her latest venture is her most important, scaling climate solutions in the food industry.

Robyn brings insight and detailed analysis to her research on the health of the American food system as documented in her first book, The Unhealthy Truth.

She wrote a very popular column for Prevention called Inspired Bites while serving as the Executive Director of the AllergyKids Foundation.

Robyn has been named by SHAPE Magazine as a “Women To Shape the World,” by Forbes Woman as one of “20 Inspiring Women to Follow on Twitter,”and by The Discovery Channel as one of its 15 Top Visionaries. Her TEDx talks have been widely received, and she recently spoke at Tony Robbins’ financial conference, addressing “The New Food Economy.”

Recruited by institutions like Enron and the oil and gas industry, Robyn grew up in Houston before moving to Colorado and is the founder of the AllergyKids Foundation and Do Good, a strategic advisory firm.

Her focus is on restoring the health of American families in order to address the burden that disease in placing on our economy. All of her initiatives and work address the needs of the 1 in 3 American children that now has allergies, autism, ADHD and asthma and the growing number of American children with cancer.

On Mother’s Day 2009, Random House published her acclaimed book, The Unhealthy Truth: How Our Food Is Making Us Sick and What We Can Do About It and today, Robyn is regarded as a food and health expert and sought after speaker who lectures and writes extensively, addressing the economic burden that disease is placing on our families, our companies and our country.

She is a collaborator, recognizing that solutions must address shareholders and stakeholders concerns if they are to solve the problems we face. Named after a farmer from New Zealand, she is focused on supply chain issues and the financial structure of the farming system.

While she is often sought out by investment teams and capital groups, she remains committed to working with food companies, farmers and families and building a new food economy and is proud to have co-founded at rePlant Capital where she works as Managing Director.

Since giving her first TEDx talk in 2011 in which she discusses research she conducted almost ten years ago, the World Health Organization now reports that the U.S. ranks 7th out of almost 200 countries worldwide in cancer rates and has declared glyphosate, an ingredient used on genetically modified crops, a “probable carcinogen.” Pediatric cancer and food allergy rates are still increasing in the United States, and her TEDx talk made Robyn a lightning rod for those resistant to seeing the status quo change.

Robyn firmly believes that while we can’t change the beginning of our stories, we can change the end. Two decades into this work, she is living testimony to the fact that hope is the knowledge that change is possible, even when it seems hard to imagine.

Teaching Interests:

• Entrepreneurship
• Women in Leadership
• Finance
• Health