NextBillion - An Initiative of the William Davidson Institute at the University of Michigan

Thursday, June 8, 2017

Annie Ryu graduated summa cum laude from Harvard University. Now, the 26-year-old social entrepreneur’s life centers around jackfruit, a large, green, studded fruit native to Southeast Asia. In the face of climate change, the fruit’s nutritional properties make it a viable (and more sustainable) alternative to imperiled staple crops like wheat and corn—as well as a popular meat substitute. As Ryu sees it “replacing meat with a fruit that grows on trees, is superabundant, thrives without agricultural inputs, and is nutritious and satisfying to the consumer—this is a fundamentally scalable solution to multiple global problems.”

The exotic fruit-based career path came as something of a surprise even to Ryu herself. Growing up in the affluent city of Rochester, Minnesota—where many residents are employed by the Mayo Clinic, which is headquartered there—she had assumed she would become a doctor. So much so, she says, that “prior to attending college, I actually could not have defined entrepreneurship.”