Julie Smolyansky Biography

When Julie Smolyansky took over as CEO of Lifeway Foods in 2002, she was the youngest female CEO of a publicly traded company at the age of 27. Her refugee parents founded the company over 30 years ago with the goal of bringing Kefir, an Eastern European product, into the mainstream of the United States. Under her leadership, the company's revenue has increased to more than $100 million today, up from $12 million when she took over. Julie has worked to end domestic violence and sexual assault for nearly 30 years, creating and teaching the first teen dating violence curriculum in Chicagoland with the YWCA while still in high school. She started her career as an in-home family counsellor in the DCFS system before leaving the work field of psychology to work in her family's business. She is a certificated rape crisis counsellor who previously served on the board of Resilience, formerly known as the Rape Victim Advocates in Chicago. Her journey has taken her to Uganda to work with survivors in a refugee camp, to Bangladesh to work with mothers and teen girls, and most recently, she was part of a delegation invited to help rape victims and war survivors gain a seat at the negotiation table during the Colombian peace negotiations. Julie has produced a number of social justice films, including the Emmy-winning and Oscar-nominated documentary "The Hunting Ground." In addition to her work on "The Hunting Ground," she shared the stage with 49 other survivors at the 2016 Oscars during Lady Gaga's iconic performance of "Til It Happens to You," which was written for the film. Julie cofounded Test400k, a non-profit dedicated to clearing the backlog of 400,000 untested rape kits in the United States, in 2013. She also collaborated with the Obama administration on the "It's On Us" initiative, a public awareness campaign aimed at preventing sexual assault on college campuses. Julie has been named to Fortune Business's '40 Under 40,' Fortune's 55 Most Influential Women on Twitter, Fortune's 'Best Instagrammers of the 40 Under 40,' and Fast Company's Most Creative People in Business 1000. Julie is an emeritus member of the United Nations Foundation Global Entrepreneurial Council and was a member of the World Economic Forum's 2015 Young Global Leaders class. In March of 2018, she published her first book, The Kefir Cookbook: An Ancient Healing Superfood for Modern Life, Recipes from My Family Table and Around the World. She is the mother of two daughters and lives in Chicago.

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