Julia Collins is a serial entrepreneur who realized food was her calling as a young girl in San Francisco where it was the epicenter of her community. She’s spent her career building food companies, having launched brands such as Mexicue, Murray’s Cheese Bar and Harlem Jazz Enterprises—the company responsible for the award-winning restaurant, The Cecil. She later went on to co-found Zume Pizza where she became the first Black woman to co-found a unicorn company after Zume was valued at 2.25 billion dollars.

When she became a mother, she knew she needed to find a way to bring delicious food to people in a way that helped heal the planet for everyone, including her son. Today, Collins leads Planet FWD, a company on a mission to tackle climate change by making it easier to bring climate-friendly products to market. The company is building a software platform for regenerative agriculture to provide other food brands the resources that they need to create their own climate-friendly products alongside Planet FWD’s own climate-friendly snack brand, Moonshot.

Collins received her BA from Harvard College in 2001 and her MBA at the Stanford Graduate School of Business in 2009. In addition, Collins sits on the advisory council for Launch with GS, serves on the All Raise operating committee and is an EIR for Cleo Capital. She is an active angel investor focused on funding female entrepreneurs and BIPOC founders.

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