Our Team Members
From our Director to our interns, the Nourish staff is here to serve students; whatever your needs or interests, we want to help. Each member of our staff is very experienced in all aspects of Nourish; however, each team member specializes in different areas. Check our directory below to learn who can best help ou with your project!
Our StaffJames Dillard, Executive Director
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James Edward Dillard is the Executive Director of Nourish International. James joined Nourish in 2007 and was instrumental in expanding Nourish to campuses across the United States through the Chapter Founders campaign.
Prior to joining Nourish, James attended the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill where he majored in Economics and Entrepreneurship. While at UNC, he wrote a column for the award-winning student newspaper, The Daily Tar Heel.
James infrequently attends and has occasionally given remarks as various conferences, including Net Impact’s North America Conference and the Poverty Action Conference.
Jenna Farmer, Chapter Coordinator
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Jenna hails from the wild west of Montana and Idaho, and attended the University of Notre Dame, where she fostered a fervent passion for college football and social justice. Jenna graduated in 2007 with a B.A. in Honors Psychology and Spanish, and a minor in Theology. Upon graduation, Jenna spent a year working as a full-time volunteer in San Juan, Puerto Rico for the Puerto Rico Center for Social Concerns. There, she spearheaded a number of community development initiatives to fight urban poverty on the island, and to improve quality of life in under resourced communities. Jenna also spent a year working for Peer Health Exchange, a nonprofit that trains college student volunteers to teach a comprehensive health curriculum in public high schools. Jenna joined Nourish in July 2009 as Chapter Coordinator, serving as a mentor and connector for chapters.
Bryon Zandt, Marketing Director
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Bryon is a co-founder of Hold'em for Hunger, North Carolina's largest charity poker tournament. He also co-led a team of students to Argentina in partnership with Fundacion Los Robles, an Argentine NGO that educates primary students how to produce their own food. Bryon is also a 2004 Burch Fellow and an Eagle Scout. Bryon earned a BS from the Kenan-Flagler Business School at UNC-Chapel Hill. Bryon also works as a developer at Climate Bridge, company dedicated to fighting climate change by financing and deploying low-carbon technologies around the world.
Carlyn Cowen, Development Director
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Carlyn joined Nourish in 2008 as a summer intern and is currently serving as director of development. She graduated from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill in 2009 with degrees in International Studies and Philosophy. While there, she did her thesis research on community-based development initiatives in Ghana, co-founded the campus speech and debate team and participated on the intercollegiate ethics and bioethics bowl teams. Prior to joining Nourish, Carlyn worked at the Full Belly Project, leading a project to create a resource database of developing country demographics and traveling to the Philippines to work with local project leaders on an economic impact analysis. She also worked at the Southern Coalition for Social Justice as an English-Spanish interpreter.
Ryan Allis
Ryan is the Founder of iContact, an online marketing platform for companies and organizations around the world. Ryan launched iContact at the age of 19 and now serves as the company’s CEO. In its first four years, Ryan took the company from his dorm room to Research Triangle Park, where he now leads 65 employees. Ryan has authored a book, Zero to One Million, describing how to go from a blank slate to 1 million dollars in sales. At 23, Ryan continues to grow iContact in RTP.
Joel Thomas
Prior to Nourish, Joel Thomas worked with Nourish's precursor, Hunger Lunch, at the University of North Carolina. In 2006, Joel led a team to conduct a development projects alongside Fundacion Los Robles in Argentina, where he helped to construct educational food plots which have educated more than 800 students how to construct their own gardens. He has co-authored two award winning business plans, one to launch Nourish International and one for the establishment of a manufacturing facility for appropriate technology in Uganda. He is a member of the Order of the Old Well, the 2006 recipient of the Algernon Sydney Sullivan award, as well as a frequent speaker on social entrepreneurship panels and international student conferences. He is a StartingBloc Fellow, an Eagle Scout, and a member of UNC-Chapel Hill's most prestigious honor society, the Order of the Golden Fleece. Joel has a BS in Biology and a minor in Entrepreneurship from the University of North Carolina.
Mark Laabs
Mark Laabs, a native of Memphis Tennessee, graduated from UNC as a Robertson Scholar in 2006. During his tenure at UNC, Mark wrote an honors thesis concerning the dynamics of social change and was inducted into the Golden Fleece, UNC’s most prestigious honor society, for his exemplary work in developing SLICE, a platform which enables every student organization on UNC’s campus to have a functioning website under one system. Upon graduating, Mark went on to work for McKinsey & Company. In his spare time, Mark has worked to launch a joint program for social innovation in the Triangle, focusing on supporting fledgling social ventures so that they can become robust engines that drive social change.
Jud Bowman
Jud is the President & CEO of PocketGear, and led the acquisition of PocketGear from Motricity in June 2008. Prior to PocketGear, Jud co-founded Motricity in September 1999 and was instrumental in raising $400 million of venture capital and growing Motricity to more than $100 million in annual revenues and 500 employees globally. As Motricity's Chief Technology Officer, Jud was the chief architect of one of the industry's leading mobile content delivery platforms that delivers more than $1 billion of content to mobile phones per year and was named the 2006 Best Service Delivery Platform by the GSM Association, Best Content Service Delivery Platform by Mobile Entertainment magazine and honored by Frost & Sullivan as the Premium Mobile Content Platform of the Year in 2005.
Jud has spoken at conferences across 4 continents, including CTIA Wireless, CES, the Red Herring 100 Conference, European Technology Roundtable Exhibition (ETRE) in Athens, The Forum on Global Leadership, Wireless Strategy, Mobile Internet Summit and PCIA GlobalXchange, and is a frequent guest speaker at Duke University's Fuqua School of Business and University of North Carolina's Kenan-Flagler Business School. Jud has also spoken at venture capital and investment banking conferences, including the Goldman Sachs Internet Conference, Lehman Brothers Worldwide Wireless and Wireline Conference, and Pacific Crest Technology Forum. Jud has been featured in over 500 national media publications, including profiles in the Wall Street Journal, BusinessWeek, CNN/CNNfn, Red Herring, Financial Times, Wireless Week and a cover story in the December 2002 issue of Wireless Review.
Jud has been named as one of the world's "Top 100 Young Innovators" by MIT's Technology Review and one of "Tech's Best Young Entrepreneurs" by BusinessWeek in 2007. He was also recognized as a winner of the Carolinas' Ernst & Young "Entrepreneur of the Year" award in 2001. Jud is currently on leave from Stanford University, where he has been named a President's Scholar, and is a graduate of the North Carolina School of Science and Mathematics.
Buck Goldstein
Buck Goldstein is the University Entrepreneur in Residence and a Senior Lecturer in the Department of Economics. Prior to returning to the University, Goldstein co-founded Information America, an online information company which was publicly traded and subsequently acquired by the Thomson Corporation. Subsequently, he was a partner in Mellon Ventures, the venture capital arm of Mellon Bank. He is a Phi Beta Kappa graduate of UNC and an honors graduate of the UNC Law School.
Sindhura Citineni
In March 2002, Sindhura founded Hunger Lunch, a student organization based in UNC Chapel Hill undergraduate campus from a model adopted from Kelly Folgeman, a UNC medical student, Class of 2003. Sindhura led a team of passionate Hunger Lunch members to participate and win 2nd place in the Carolina Challenge business competition that formed the expanded vision and a new name, Nourish International. She has won several awards and fellowships associated with her work associated with Nourish such as the Burch Fellowship, Robert E. Bryan Fellowship, Carolina Undergraduate Health Fellowship, Marion Dixon BSBA Scholarship, and recruited as a member into the Order of the Golden Fleece, UNC’s most prestigious honor society. Sindhura is also the recipient of UNC Kenan-Flagler Business School’s Outstanding Young Alumni of the Year Award (2007-2008).
Upon graduating with a B.S. in Business Administration from Kenan Flagler Business School in 2004 and started working as an Americorps Public Ally at Triangle Residential Option for Substance Abusers(TROSA) as an Interim Education Program Director. After her term at TROSA she worked as the first full time staff for Nourish International. Citineni is currently a dental student (class of 2010) at UNC Chapel Hill School of Dentistry and continues to actively serve on the Board of Directors of Nourish with the primarily role of fundraising.
Thomas Thekkekandam
Thomas Thekkekandam is a founding member of Nourish since its inception as Hunger Lunch in 2003. Thomas worked extensively on the business plan and presented at the Carolina Challenge business competition winning 2nd prize. Thomas was a Morehead Scholarship recipient, Carolina’s most prestigious four-year merit scholarship, and the nationally renowned Jack Kent Cooke Scholarship recipient for his JD/MBA dual degree at Duke University (Class of 2010). Thomas worked as a Market Research Analyst for 1½ years at The Link Group, an international market research firm, and worked as an Assistant Director of NC Fund for Public Interest Research (NC PIRG). Thomas was part of the Varsity Wrestling Team and Crew Team., and was inducted into UNC’s Order of the Old Well.
Neil Bagchi
Neil Bagchi currently serves as President of Incanus Advisors and Director of Southeast Business Development at Nair & Co., an integrated solution for human resources, finance, tax and legal needs for international businesses. Neil graduated from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill Law School in 2004 after receiving a BA with honors in Political Science at UNC. Neil was Founder of the Entrepreneurial Law Association, which provides free legal assistance to low income entrepreneurs, and a member of the Pro Bono board for three years. As an undergraduate, Neil was awarded the Morehead Scholarship, UNC’s most prestigious undergraduate scholarship. He was also President of Students for the Advancement of Race Relations and Captain of the UNC-Rugby team.
Upon graduating from law school, Neil worked in corporate finance at Hutchison & Mason where he was a market leader in representing local emerging growth companies. He was nationally ranked in terms of venture deals completed. Neil has worked as an international group associate at Kennedy Covington, where he started and headed the first India-focused law firm in the Southeast. Neil was awarded the 2007 Attorney of the Year award by IndUS Business Journal, the largest Indian business publication in the US. He has authored articles for Tech Journal South and the IndUS Business Journal and chapters in Thompson West's "US Corporate Counsel's Guide to Doing Business in India" and "Transnational Joint Ventures". Neil is excited about the opportunity to further his global work by serving as a Nourish Board member.
Chris Bingham
Chris Bingham is an entrepreneur who pursues opportunities that allow for creative freedom. He has developed skills around managing people, innovative marketing, building relationships, and strong financial management. Chris seeks challenging and unique opportunities with organizations that conduct business with the highest integrity. Continued personal and professional development and education are of the utmost importance.
He co-founded Riley Life after the wondrous birth of his daughter, Riley (hence the name). Chris has spent many dues-paying years under several other leaders, learning both their strengths and weaknesses. Upon receiving his MBA from the University of North Carolina, he became fully equipped to be the lean, mean, CEO machine that we know and love. He has a heart for helping people and a passion for pleasing customers.
Marcia Angle
Marcia Angle joins the Nourish Board with 17 years of experience as medical director of the International Training in Health Program (intrahealth.org), overseeing the quality of training provided by IntraHealth in dozens of developing countries, especially in sub-Saharan Africa. Her publications have been focused on reproductive health in the developing world, and include training manuals and clinical guidelines done in collaboration with the World Health Organization. Dr. Angle also served for 15 years as medical director of the Orange County Health Dept. Since 2002, she has been an adjunct professor at Duke's Nicholas School of the Environment (teaching environmental epidemiology). Marcia holds a BA from Harvard, an MD from Duke, an MPH from UNC, and completed residencies in both family medicine (at Duke) and preventive medicine (at UNC). She currently sits on the advisory boards of the UNC Gillings School of Global Public Health and Duke Gardens.
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