Robert Egger is the founder and former CEO of the D.C. Central Kitchen, which he led for 24 years 7 days a week. It's celebrating 30 years in business with an annual revenue of $12 million a year as a self-sustaining social enterprise. He has been a leader in the food recovery/job training/social enterprise movement since 1989. His organizations have used donated food to produce over 40 million meals, and helped thousands of otherwise disenfranchised men and women gain full-time employment - Transforming the non-profit from a vehicle of service to one of empowerment and independence. With recent graduates from another of his enterprises, their 80 graduates generated $2 million in revenue and another $225,000 in payroll taxes, preventing a potential recitivism rate of incarceration at close to $50,000 per head - that would have cost taxpayers $4 million. It's a business model that just makes sense, one that all mayor's and their cities could benefit from. It's the new inevitable way of doing business in a 21st century community.
He is an award winning author with his most notable book entitled "Begging for Change" and a sought after speaker on subjects ranging from innovation, leadership, the role of nonprofits and social enterprise. His work has inspired others to see opportunity where we often don’t, courage where there is fear, resource where there is waste and hope where there is all too often despair. His goal is to move forward a vision for a new way of doing business that he calls “just smart”. By marrying and utilizing strategic intelligent design and civil justice policy making, it promotes greater partnerships in both the profit and nonprofit sectors, together and collectively which builds and sustains a deeper richer fabric to the very landscape of our collective and individual lives. It's a visionary and inspired intersection where money meets purpose and connection and in so doing literally redefines the very meaning of the word profit - from which all seem to benefit and ignites the greatest in human potential.