Daniel Lubetzky, Founder and Chairman
The son of a Holocaust survivor and a Mexican Jew, Daniel was born in 1968 and raised in Mexico City where he began his education in Hebrew, English, Spanish, and Yiddish. As a teenager, he moved with his family to the U.S. and soon began is entrepreneurial ventures. During his college years he studied abroad in Israel and began developing relationships with Israeli and Palestinian friends. At Trinity University in San Antonio, Texas, the seeds of PeaceWorks were planted as Daniel wrote his 268-page thesis, “The Influence of Economic Factors in Resolving the Arab-Israeli Conflict.”
Daniel earned his J.D. from Stanford Law School in 1993. While deciding whether to go into legal practice or consulting, Daniel was awarded the Haas Koshland Fellowship to write about legislative means to foster joint ventures between Arabs and Israelis. He conducted his research in the Middle East and subsequently published “Incentives for Peace and Profits: Federal Legislation to Encourage U.S. Enterprises to Invest in Arab-Israeli Joint Ventures” in the Michigan Journal of International Law. In 1994, while carrying out his research in Israel, Daniel discovered a delicious sundried tomato product that, along with plans for Arab-Israeli economic cooperation, provided the foundation for PeaceWorks, Inc. PeaceWorks is a "not-ONLY-for-profit"™ business corporation pursuing both peace and profit. Its flagship brand– Meditalia –is made through cooperative ventures among neighbors striving to co-exist in the Middle East. In the fall of 2000, Daniel began to research creative ways to amplify the voice of ordinary citizens in the Middle East, culminating with the creation of the PeaceWorks Foundation’s OneVoice Movement in 2002. With offices in Ramallah, Tel Aviv, London and New York, the OneVoice Movement now has over 700,000 Palestinian, Israeli and international signatories, including over 2,000 Youth Leaders with chapters in every Israeli and Palestinian University, and across cities, villages and refugee camps. The Movement’s Boards include over 60 dignitaries, religious authorities, business leaders, scholars and celebrities across an unprecedented spectrum of politics, ethnic backgrounds and religious beliefs, all standing as One Voice against violent extremism and for a two-state solution.
In 2003, unhappy with unhealthy or unappetizing snacking choices on his travels, and concerned with the rising obesity and diabetes epidemic in America, Daniel launched KIND Snacks. Maker of nutritious and delicious snack foods, KIND is the fastest-growing U.S. snack company, and through the KIND Movement has inspired more than one million kind acts. In parallel with his other ventures, in 2010, Daniel co-founded Maiyet, a luxury fashion company committed to forging partnerships with artisans in some of the world’s developing economies to create product that is unique and luxurious, while promoting self-sufficiency and entrepreneurship.
Daniel’s commitment to creating economically sustainable and socially impactful business has been lauded by BusinessWeek, Time, Advertising Age and Entrepreneur. Daniel has also been recognized by the World Economic Forum and the Skoll Foundation, and in 2015 President Barack Obama and Commerce Secretary Penny Pritzker named him a Presidential Ambassador for Global Entrepreneurship (PAGE). He is also the author of the New York Times bestseller Do the KIND Thing.