Alt Protein Project Alumni: Where are they now?

Turning curiosity into career opportunities

Insights from Vivek Venkatraghvan

Vivek Venkatraghvan graduated from Christ University, Bangalore with a Bachelor of Commerce in Finance and Investment. He spent four years as a Mergers and Acquisitions Consultant at KPMG, a global professional services firm, where he worked on M&A deals across various sectors. While his work focused on e-commerce, IT, manufacturing, and entertainment sectors, Vivek’s curiosity and passion for alternative proteins brewed in the background. He decided to pursue an MBA at Duke University to learn how he might translate his business acumen toward a career in the future of food.  

When asked what experiences stood out to him during his MBA program, Vivek reflected on the time he worked with Orbillion Bio, a cultivated meat company focused on scaling premium Wagyu beef, as part of a unique elective course at Duke. Through the Fuqua Client Consulting Program, MBA students can work as consultants for mentor companies. Upon learning that a cultivated meat company was listed as a mentor in the program, Vivek did not hesitate to express his interest.

“When I saw [the project with Orbillion], I was like, ‘Yep, this is the one I want to do.’ And I highlighted that interest to Duke very clearly. Most people at Duke also knew about my interest in alternative proteins already because I talked about it a lot.”

While this established program teed up an ideal set of circumstances for Vivek, his proactive self-advocacy allowed him to capitalize on this opportunity to further his career goals. Vivek learned that sharing his interests and passions with his network, whether that be a supportive faculty advisor or fellow classmates, can unlock new opportunities down the line. 

Vivek’s project focused on surveying a large number of consumers to gather insights that would inform the company’s go-to-market strategy.

“We asked them questions like how much they’d be willing to pay for cultivated meat, how they would perceive this, what factors they consider when making these purchases, things like that. We also did a couple of more quantitative analyses around potential price points they [Orbillion] could charge.”

This experience allowed Vivek to gain hands-on experience in the industry and deepen his understanding of the types of problems and questions companies are trying to solve. Vivek noted the relevance of this project to the work he is doing today as a Consultant at Bain & Company, where he is often running consumer surveys. Vivek remains passionate about having a future career in alternative proteins. In the meantime, Vivek is always on the lookout for ways to stay involved, such as serving as a panel moderator for the Nucleate Cultivate hackathon and keeping up with the latest developments at conferences like The Future of Protein Production.

Even though Vivek did not need to do any cold outreach to secure the project with Orbillion Bio, he definitely did his fair share to build an alternative protein network and identify the next step in his career path.

One of the ways Vivek built his network and created a new avenue for other students to start building their network in the space was by establishing the Duke Alt Protein Project. As a co-founder of the first alternative protein-focused organization at Duke, Vivek was laser-focused on driving impact in a way that would last beyond his time at the university. In his second year at Duke, Vivek and his team took on a massive endeavor: host the first-ever, alternative protein conference led and designed 100% by students in Durham, North Carolina.

“That was definitely the most rewarding and the most challenging thing I’ve ever done. It was very challenging because that was literally the first year of our existence, and we were still trying to get our legs on the ground. But in addition to that, we also wanted to make sure we did something big that would have an impact.”

Vivek and his team crafted a stellar lineup of industry professionals, including Ethan Brown of Beyond Meat and T.K. Pillan of Veggie Grill, to join their event and discuss what needs to happen over the next decade to make alternative proteins mainstream. Another panel focused on how the public and private sectors can collaborate to make alternative proteins more accessible. To top it all off, Vivek and his team organized a pitch competition in which students pitched business ideas to a judging panel of venture capitalists.

“It was a really special experience because it brought so many great speakers and minds together in Durham, which is a relatively small town. It has a strong food tech community, but it’s definitely not like SF or New York when it comes to food…[the event] helped a lot of people who weren’t aware of alt protein to learn more about it. This conference really helped to open their eyes to the industry.”

While the impetus for the event was to create something that the entire Research Triangle Area community could benefit from, Vivek also walked away with a deep sense of accomplishment, countless new connections, and invaluable industry and academia insights that he can take into the rest of his career.

How giving back to your community can open new paths

Insights from Paul Steinhardt

Curiosity has been a driving force throughout Paul Steinhardt’s career thus far. After graduating with a B.S. in Biology from the University of Hamburg, Paul continued to explore various areas and professional passions that sparked his interest. It was his time as a project manager for the DLD Conference, one of Europe’s major innovation conferences that explores how new technologies fundamentally change life, society, and business, that fostered his curiosity about the food system into an action plan. Propelled by this newfound interest and his care for the environment, Paul enrolled in the Master’s in Food Systems program at EIT Food where he could dig deeper into topics including circular food systems, consumer practices and public engagement, sustainable food production, food safety, transparency and traceability, management of food system innovations, and protein diversification. 

During the first year of his Master’s program, Paul was brainstorming with his faculty advisor about starting a guest speaker webinar series that offered students a way to learn about innovative food concepts outside of the classroom. This was something he felt confident doing given the event coordination skills he had developed while working at the DLD Conference. Given their common self-starter motivation and desire to create something for the community, Paul’s faculty advisor encouraged him to connect with Adrian, a fellow classmate interested in jumpstarting an alternative protein student organization. After some LinkedIn messaging, Paul and Adrian dove head first into building their executive team and launching the Alt Protein Project at EIT Food, more colloquially known as APPatEIT (pronounced “appetite”).

“Sometimes you don’t even know that something is going to be that important in your life the moment you’re doing it. You’ll just notice later that actually this moment was a crucial part of my life. It’s the Alt Protein Project for me, for sure.”

Of the APP’s five objectives, the APPatEIT team honed in on Education to build a unique pathway designed to address EIT Food’s unique pan-European university consortium community. The other objectives – Awareness, Community, Research, and Innovation motivated many of the group’s other activities, like hosting a sensory taste testing workshop and organizing a strong team of committees to continue their group’s efforts even after the founding members graduated. After months of planning, Paul and the APPatEIT team launched their Alt Protein Fundamentals Programme (APFP), a fully student-led, multi-week educational program designed to dive into both the technical and sociopolitical issues within the field. The programme was multi-purpose as it allowed them to onboard new members and also demonstrate to their university that there is a strong student desire for full-credit, faculty-taught courses on alternative proteins. Reflecting on the programme’s evolution, Paul had no idea it would turn into such a community effort and long-standing initiative the group continues to run today.

“Every time we ran the programme, we asked ‘Who wants to facilitate? Who wants to participate?” Then we’d meet every week and it was cool because everybody chipped in something. Everybody truly got to know each other a bit better on these community calls.”

After building a solid understanding of the food industry and a robust professional network at EIT Food, Paul joined Neggst, a startup focused on plant-based egg alternatives. As a Business Developer Manager, Paul gained sales experience and further developed his science communications skills as he met with clients and discussed the benefits of alternative proteins. Even though Paul was new to sales, he was primed to succeed because of the skills he had built as a group leader and APFP facilitator.

“It not only takes time to find the right path, it also takes courage. That’s one strong recommendation I have for everyone in this field, to think big and be bold.”

Paul continues to be a bold, curious leader in many ways. He has started sharing his visionary leadership with the next generation of students in the APP, now serving as one of the community’s alumni mentors. In this role, Paul supports student groups by providing strategic guidance, solutions to challenges, and experiential advice as someone who has been in their shoes. When asked why he elected to become a mentor, Paul shared the following:

“I got so much and I really appreciated the effort that GFI has put into us, so I wanted to give it back. That’s the main motivator for me.”

Through giving back to the community that nurtured his growth, Paul perfectly exemplifies the qualities of all APP leaders and demonstrates our shared community values:

• We are forward-thinking.
• We are inclusive.
• We are counterfactual impact-driven.
• We share knowledge freely.
• We are creating an animal-free food system.