When I was 3 years old, my family and I moved from Copenhagen to the Danish country side. We moved into my mom’s childhood home, which was nestled between two small farms. With that move, my childhood became immersed in a farm to table life, years before this concept had really started to gain traction. For me, during this time, the journey from the farm to the table was short. On weekends, I’d run next door with a jug and milk a cow by hand. My mom and I would turn the raw milk into butter that we’d eat on freshly baked bread. My mom isn’t very keen on cooking, but she loves to bake. So we would spend countless hours in our country kitchen baking breads and cakes. Baking with my mom and helping out on the farm was healing and joyful.

The milk from the neighbour farm went to the little local dairy where my dad worked. From here, we’d buy cheese from a tiny shop at the side of the dairy. Driving through the fields an villages between my school and our home, each farm would have a little booth with an honesty box where you could pick up potatoes, cucumbers, tomatoes, cabbages, root veg, strawberries, cherries, apples, plumbs, or whatever was in season. Many of my school friends lived on farms, so I’d often be sent home from play dates with a selection of produce. Through the eyes of a child, it was a very idyllic and peaceful farming life.

Even the harsher side of farming seemed to have a level of humanity. I remember being at a friend’s farm on a day they were slaughtering chickens. We would sit with the chicken in our laps, petting them. Then my friend’s dad would chop off their heads with an axe on and old tree stump and they would run around headless for a surprisingly long time. This seems somewhat barbaric to me now, but as a child, this was just part of living in the country. And at least the chickens had lived a happy life, literally roaming free on acres of farmland and only experience a few moments of stress right at the very end. It’s a world apart from the horrific conditions of the modern battery farms we have today.

When I was 10, we moved to the seaside about an hour north of Copenhagen. I continued to think of farming as I had experienced it as a child. Something that went hand-in-hand with nature. Where the food we ate followed the seasons, where animals where loved, respected and cared for, and where kindness prevailed.

As a young teenager, I didn’t give that much thought to the food I ate. My mom and I still baked together on occasion and my family began a tradition of spending Friday afternoons in the kitchen together, taking hours and hours to cook simple meals. It wasn’t so much about the end result as it was about spending time together.

Since neither of my parents where particularly interested in cooking, I started taking over the grocery shopping and cooking as my household chore. I quickly found that I preferred this to laundry or vacuuming.

After college, I moved out and eventually got a place at Copenhagen Business School. The university is a world leader in research into the concepts of ‘corporate social responsibility’ (CSR) and ‘creating shared value’ (CSV). So every course I took, from ‘supply chain management’ to ‘entrepreneurship in the creative industries’, was taught through the lens of environmental and social responsibility in business.

During my time at university, I was in a really bad accident, became quite ill and ended up spending my final year of study living with my parents again. Between studying, I got obsessed with watching Master Chef Australia. So, once I started to recover, I took over my old chore again and began cooking dinner for my family – but this time, with a little Master Chef flair. I found the connection to food healing. It was something I could be in control of and find joy in as I recovered from the accident.

It was when I was writing my thesis, about unethical marketing practices in the Western fashion market, that I came across the documentary ‘The True Cost’. The harrowing documentary about the human and environmental impact of the fashion industry included a segment about the effects of chemical use on cotton farms in India and the US. This lead me down a path of learning about how farming had changed from that idyllic world I grew up in - and my view of food was changed forever.

After finishing my business degree, I moved to the UK with a determination to take action against the broken food system. My first action was to change to a plant-based diet. My second was to start working in the food industry, determined to work my way up to a place of influence.

Things were going great on my journey. Then the world was hit by Covid 19. During that nightmarish, still-can’t-quite-believe-that-actually-happened time of the Covid 19 lockdowns, I used my daily, legally allotted fresh air allowance to walk around the wheat fields near my house. On these walks, I gave a lot of thought to the connections being made between pandemic outbreaks and modern food production. Everything at that time felt so overwhelming and doomed. But then I started to learn about regenerative farming. I watched ‘Kiss the Ground’ and read ‘Silent Spring’ and ‘Sitopia’. Regenerative farming became a beacon of light in a system that seemed beyond repair. But regenerative farming was still quite a niche interest – especially at a time where we were all living from day-to-day trying to survive.

5 years on from the start of the pandemic and I had achieved great success in helping the niche, clean-label cooking sauces brand, The Spice Tailor, reach main-stream status and complete disruption of its category. After the £44 mil sale of the brand to the large food manufacturer, Premier Foods, I had a happy and comfortable job working on their marketing team.

Then, one day in November 2024, my phone rang and my world was turned upside down when my mom shared the gut-wrenching news that she had been diagnosed with cancer. My mom is strong beyond words and continues to inspire me every day with her fight and determination. 6 months on at the time of writing, I am beyond happy to say that she has fought the cancer and made a full recovery. But the experience has left an irreversible mark on my family and I. It has reiterated to me the importance of fighting for what I believe in. As the saying goes: “If not me who, if not now when?”

I am now continuing my journey to help purpose-driven food founders to drive real change in the broken food system. Using my experience of growing a niche brand into a global category mega-star, I am determined to make a positive difference.

If you are a founder on a mission to fix things in the food industry and need a passionate marketing leader to help you achieve your goals, let’s talk.

My food mission

My food story