Ideagen Radio
Ideagen Radio
Food as Medicine: How Sarah Hoit is Transforming Brain Health
Sarah Hoit radiates urgency and hope as she shares her moonshot mission to transform brain health and longevity worldwide. After losing her grandmother and husband to 10-year battles with dementia, Hoit has funneled her personal grief into a global movement through Social Impact Partners, a nonprofit bringing together corporations, youth innovators, and policymakers to tackle what she calls "the largest global health crisis the world has ever known."
The conversation reveals how Hoit's diverse background—from launching AmeriCorps at the White House to founding tech companies—shaped her collaborative approach to solving complex problems. "One plus one is eleven if we try to do it together," she explains, emphasizing how breaking down silos accelerates progress. This philosophy drives the Brain Health Innovation Olympics, where students from 14 countries partner with global corporations to develop actionable solutions for neurodegenerative diseases and mental health challenges.
Most compelling is Hoit's focus on food as medicine. Through partnerships like one with Sodexo (reaching 100 million people daily across 40 countries), she's helping implement a groundbreaking neuroprotective diet developed with Harvard researchers. The revelation that 80% of health outcomes are determined by lifestyle choices—food, exercise, sleep, socialization—offers profound hope. "In families like mine with a familial trail of disease, to understand that literally from in utero through what we do every day completely impacts our outcome... we have far more control than not."
Hoit's work extends beyond nutrition into technology and policy. Her company Vitality IP has developed an AI "digital dietician" personalizing nutrition recommendations, while her advocacy work focuses on bipartisan support for food security and research funding. Whether you're concerned about your own brain health, caring for a loved one with dementia, or interested in joining a movement changing how we approach aging, Hoit's message is clear: through collaboration, innovation, and everyday choices, we have unprecedented power to protect our most vital organ—our brain.
Welcome to the IdeaGen Catalyze Impact podcast. Today we have with us Sarah Hoyt. Sarah, welcome.
Speaker 2:Thank you so much for having me today.
Speaker 1:Thank you so much for having me today. You know, sarah, you're doing so much. You're moving at. You know the only way to describe it is warp speed, and I'd like for you, for our global audience, to describe three key areas that you're working on that culminate in the gigantic impact that you're making across the world.
Speaker 2:Well, thank you so much for having me. I am so thrilled to be part of your program and the work that you're doing. So I am completely focused on health brain health and longevity and I'm doing so in a couple of different ways. I have founded a global nonprofit, social Impact Partners. That is a global brain, health and longevity initiative where we bring corporations, nonprofits, youth leaders, legislators from all over the world to innovate, collaborate and invest in change, and so, from a philanthropic standpoint, I'm incredibly invested there. There I am also running a series, a retail health and longevity series, together with Dan O'Connor from Managing the Future Work at Harvard Business School, where we bring together major corporations twice a year to focus on their impact on health and longevity, with the millions of consumers they serve and employees that they employ, serve and employees that they employ. And as a tech CEO, I have also built a company called Vitality IP, where we're working at the cross section of science and AI and food and health to personalize health for people all over the world.
Speaker 1:Well, as I mentioned, there's no shortage of impact that you're having on humanity, and specifically on brain health and longevity, and so, on that note, sarah, you've dedicated your career, your career, to social impact and innovation. What exactly inspired you to focus on brain health and longevity?
Speaker 2:Well, you know, I think this is a topic that, like most businesses and most things that people choose to focus on, people are personally affected, and I don't know a family out there right now who is not somehow profoundly affected either by neurodegenerative diseases or by the mental health crisis. And one of the things that COVID actually did for the world was shine a light on the fact that we are all in a similar boat when it comes to brain health and to the catastrophic nature of the combination of these diseases. Personally, my family and I faced a number of battles. My grandmother faced a 10-year battle. She was a complete role model to me in my life and I actually founded my first tech company, connected Living, to help people like her and others who had Alzheimer's be able to connect with their families and communicate and stay present to the extent that they could as they were facing the battle, and stay present to the extent that they could as they were facing the battle.
Speaker 2:And while I was running that tech company, my husband was diagnosed with early onset Alzheimer's, and my children and I just faced also a 10-year battle where we lost him two years ago, what turned out to be Lewy body and frontal temporal dementia. So my family, like many, has been profoundly impacted. We lost my husband at quite a young age and one of the things you will learn as we talk today that we all know is this journey to health is actually birth to death, and there's so much we can do to impact it, and we're trying to make sure that no other families are in the situation that we have found ourselves in.
Speaker 1:Thank you for sharing that. I know it's, to say the least, challenging what you've been through and certainly that, I'm sure, informs and affects all of the work that you're doing today, forms and affects all of the work that you're doing today. And so, sarah, from the White House to the private sector, you've worked in a diverse set of leadership roles. How exactly have these roles and experiences shaped your approach to driving meaningful, impactful change?
Speaker 2:Well, I've been so lucky in my career.
Speaker 2:I have chosen all along the way to do things that meant something to me and that I hope would change the course of either health or service for this country. My first big rollout was actually national service, was AmeriCorps, and I think one of the biggest lessons that I have learned is the incredible power of collaboration, the saying that you know, one plus one is three, one plus one is 11. If we try to do it together, if we find all of the resources and we bring people together, we can get so much more done. So one of the greatest joys of my life was actually rolling out national service, and I do believe in serving the country, and when you have a chance to be a part of it, you're never the same again.
Speaker 2:But I think that lesson has multiplied through everything I have tried to do. Instead of working in silos, if people can actually come together for the problem they're trying to solve, we'll get there much faster, and so even that principle has led forward to the entire structure of our global nonprofit, which is focused on global collaboration, innovation and then investing and taking action together to combat neurodegenerative diseases and to embrace the science of a brain, healthy life. So I think those are my. The ability to work together with others and that we get there faster is probably one of my biggest lessons in all of the work I've been privileged to be a part of.
Speaker 1:What an incredible journey, and so Social Impact Partners launched the Global Brain Health Initiative as a moonshot effort to tackle brain disorders. Can you share exactly what makes this initiative unique and why right now, at this moment, is the time for such an incredibly bold movement?
Speaker 2:Yeah, thank you. Well, we are in an incredibly unique moment in time, I believe. Sometimes the world comes together around a topic. Under the surface before surfaced the crisis of our aging population, the catastrophic numbers that no country can support in terms of dementia and all of the dementias and neurodegenerative diseases. But another disease was exposed to and the whole mental health crisis really also became very, very visible, and the two diseases combined have a significant it is the largest global health crisis the world has ever known, and so this is a time that people are willing to talk about it and they are willing to come together, and I think that, rather than just talk, what we very much wanted to do is take action, and I took a playbook out of national service, which is why don't we start asking a younger generation to help us?
Speaker 2:So we created these global innovation Olympics. We've had 14 countries involved, hundreds of youth leaders, business schools, med schools, engineering schools, and we put the questions out there in terms of helping us design, from technologies to food, interventions to science. What are the things we can do to most directly combat neurodegenerative diseases and the mental health crisis and then to embrace a brain, healthy life, and in that exercise, we've had over 250 corporate and nonprofit leaders also come together who are never in the conversation right, and they are the judges in this competition as these young leaders come together with all these ideas. We've had over 300 right now, idea fragments that have turned into over 30 actionable plans that we are moving forward, both as early stage organizations and changing strategy for major global corporations. And there's some real leaders out there where the changes they're making are going to affect millions of people already of people already Incredible, absolutely incredible.
Speaker 1:And so the Brain Health Innovation Olympics is engaging young minds in solving brain health challenges. What are some of the? Just a few of the, because there's so many most exciting ideas and or solutions you've seen emerge from this incredibly exciting program.
Speaker 2:Well, there's so many, but I will give you one in particular. In the first year of competition, the two winning plans from Dartmouth College and Harvard Business School were food as medicine plans, and Canada won this last year also with an early intervention food a plan and a re-imagining of the pharmacy. Out of this plan, one of the judges, one of the major corporations at the table, is Sodexo, who serve 40 countries 100 million people a day food 40 countries, 100 million people a day food. And as a result of the work done, we have now sponsored a white paper on nutrition in the brain which people can download. They can come to our site and please download it. It actually has a new neuroprotective diet.
Speaker 2:In the white paper we worked together with Dr Bowman, who's renowned from McCant Center for Brain Health, mass General and Harvard. We looked at all the existing diets, saw opportunities in new science and ways that, as we really look at nutrients, crossing the blood-brain barrier. How can we do this best? And we are now. Sodexo, as a major global social impact company, is now releasing a vibrant minds program that will begin to impact not only all of the people they serve food to all over the world.
Speaker 2:But the white paper is public.
Speaker 2:This is for everyone to be able to now take this information and try to live their lives differently.
Speaker 2:It's an incredible example of youth and science and corporate and nonprofit coming together around this, around an idea, and then taking our superpowers and our areas of influence to really get it out to an extraordinary number of people. We actually released it in our big meeting in DC, this white paper, and are trying to make it as accessible to everybody to be able to eat in a neuroprotective way. So that's one of many examples. Others include early startups that Arizona State University this year and Calgary also had some fabulous ideas around bringing arts and music programs into senior living and engaging in an intergenerational intervention, and those projects are already launching. So, from smaller projects just starting up, where the students take it and run, to the innovations that are being brought to the judges and the larger corporations who are part of our mission, change is happening everywhere and it's collaborative. It's action oriented and meant to have everybody walk out of the experience taking what they've learned to influence those around them out of the experience, taking what they've learned to influence those around them.
Speaker 1:You know, sarah, so inspiring, and so you mentioned food. What role exactly does food play as medicine in brain health, and how is everyday matters addressing this absolutely vital component?
Speaker 2:this absolutely vital component. So you know food, what we put in our body and how we live our lives. So food and exercise and sleep and socialization, and all of these pillars of brain health actually determine 80% of our health outcomes. And when you know that it's, it's stunning. It's stunning information because in families like mine, where there's a familial trail right and numerous people are affected by a disease, to understand that literally from in utero through to what we do every single day, completely impacts our outcome, that we have far more control than not, and that's profound. And so and so much of it also comes back to inflammation in the body and how different disease states are are linked.
Speaker 2:So, from obesity to diabetes to brain health, um, when, when, when the body is is consuming food that is not healthy or creating inflammation, it causes a number of different illnesses, and so food is a major impact to our overall health and certainly to our brain health. And when you read the Vibrant Minds paper we've just put out, you'll see in detail kind of which foods and the neuroprotective diet and even how we eat. You know the difference of of actually sitting down and appreciating the meal, all these things that you know your mother told you to do right, or the importance of a of a meal together really make a difference. There's actually science behind you know how we eat and the experience of it actually absorbing more of the nutrients when we eat in that way, versus just rushing in, not even looking at what we're eating and racing off. So it's not only what we eat, but kind of how we go about it that produces the healthiest outcome.
Speaker 1:And so your work with Connected Living helped bridge the digital divide for seniors. Sarah, what lessons did you learn about technology's role in aging and community connection during this process?
Speaker 2:You know, as a tech entrepreneur, my whole career. The interesting thing is, technology actually allows you. It's high tech, high touch, right In the senior market. Everyone told us back in 2007 that the seniors wouldn't connect. Knock yourselves out. The big guys didn't do it. It's not going to work. So well, you know what? We've got? An isolation crisis.
Speaker 2:We have an entire aging population, many of whom are living alone and isolated, and so we tried, and the end of the story you actually know the end of the story is the seniors are connected and they do want to connect and they want to connect around life and love and stories and lifelong learning, and so often, with an aging population, we treat them as if they're sick or dying or inept or well.
Speaker 2:Of course, they didn't connect, if that's the way that we're speaking to them. This is a generation with such incredible wisdom and when you bring them life and family and fun and community with the technology, it works. It's why we called it connected living, and so, and clearly then, through the pandemic, anybody who wasn't at that point connected found a way to be connected, because it was our only way and, sadly, in our family in the end, too and my husband in the end had to be in full memory care. Sometimes, with COVID, the only way that we were able to connect was via that technology when we were not allowed to go visit us and so many families. And so in the end, after the pandemic, this tech wave with an older population really really took hold, and you know so I have seen, and that technology innovation has continued to emerge not as the bad guy but as a way for us to pull the pieces together faster and actually bring personalization and community to others.
Speaker 1:And so AI and emerging technologies are moving so incredibly fast and they're transforming literally transforming healthcare. Sarah, how do you see these advancements shaping the future of brain health and senior care?
Speaker 2:I am incredibly excited about it and, like any new technology, there can be fear. There's the fear of what you can do with it if unregulated. In all of those pieces we can take on board and say we need to have guardrails. I am incredibly excited about the opportunity and, in fact, my newest project is a company called Vitality IP. It's personal and we have developed an engine, an AI engine, a digital dietician that really integrates your personal data, cutting edge medical research with the AI to revolutionize nutrition and health decision making. So, for instance, this new neuroprotective diet. In the engine we can actually spit out the recipes, the ingredients, the shopping list, how you could actually take into account maybe other medications that you're taking, additional supplementation you might need and all these things that are really difficult for people to figure out, and so the technology really empowers the individual to achieve their health goals and have personal recommendations.
Speaker 2:I think the other thing that the technology can do is free up the people to actually have more personal interactions.
Speaker 2:So where in the past, a dietician might have been spending hours creating menus and interventions that can be created very easily through the AI, now they can actually free up their time to have individual meetings and conversations with family members, with people who want to talk to them, and less of the behind the scenes work.
Speaker 2:I do also believe, as we're looking at solutions, as we're looking at science breakthroughs, that the AI is also going to allow us to have earlier detection and prevention. Putting the clues together in a way that we can have a pattern and a path. Putting the clues together in a way that we can have a pattern and a path. So I like anything new this is we are sitting in a moment that is almost the same as the beginning of the internet. So much is going to happen in the next 12 months. Nothing will be the same and our ability to now take this wave and really do something good with it and create for the first time, I believe, true personalization and health and have some of these breakthroughs is really upon us, and I'm excited to be very much a part of it.
Speaker 1:You know, sarah, how much inspiration can you provide. On one podcast episode, we'll need to bring you back, obviously. On one podcast episode, we'll need to bring you back, obviously. But at the 2025 Brain Health Innovation Olympics, what are some of the focus areas? You know subsets, really of AI and early detection and cognition that relate to lifespan, and what breakthroughs or innovations are you hoping to see come out of this competition?
Speaker 2:You know, I think, what's so exciting about the competition and thank you for coming back to this, because if people do one thing from this podcast is to please come join our Global Brain Health Initiative. It's such an exciting way to get involved, which everybody can. Whether it's such an exciting way to get involved, which everybody can, whether it's purely getting the information and donating and becoming a member or participating as a judge or an organization in the Olympics, or joining us in our DC strategy meetings, or being one of the corporations who partners with us and comes to our meetings at the Harvard Faculty Club to talk about how we can change our businesses and serve our customers differently. I hope everyone gets involved. The topics are everything from the science to the technology, to epigenetics, how we live our life, all these interventions from sleep and food and exercise wearables.
Speaker 2:Also, there's a major emphasis on workforce intervention. Our workforce has completely changed and the numbers are out there that over 9% of global GDP is impacted by workforce issues right now, both the mental health crisis and people having to care for family members because of the dementia crisis. So this is something that affects all of us and we're trying to keep the Olympics open enough that the students who are coming into the competition can pick the areas of their superpowers and interests, drive those ideas forward with the judges' recommendations and then we can come up with our winning 10 concepts each year that really get driven forward. So we hope everybody joins us, and that website is wwwsocialimpactpartners.
Speaker 1:You got it. As you heard Sarah say, please visit that website and get engaged wherever you can and whenever you can. And that leads us, Sarah, to policy advocacy, which is a major pillar of the Global Brain Health Initiative, including the Brain Health and Longevity Strategy, which includes a meeting in DC. What are some of the most critical policy challenges and changes needed to drive true progress in this space?
Speaker 2:You know, I think we can always focus on the things that don't work and that we can't agree on, but I do believe this is an area that we can all agree on, we thinking about the fact that there are so many people in our country who do not have access to healthy food, to any food, let alone healthy food, because that costs more healthy food, to any food, let alone healthy food, because that costs more access to fresh fruits and vegetables, access to food without lots of pesticides. So something we can all agree upon is that healthier food and better food and access to food is super, super important, as are so many of our vital programs that we have through the government, like SNAP and WIC and others that need to be supported so that you know places where there's poverty, the disease states are far higher because they have not had access to the healthy food that other people have. Also, we have to continue to fund our research. We have so many people on both sides of the aisle who have supported for so long funding brain health research, alzheimer's research, neurodegenerative disease research, and we can't. We have to be the nation that continues to support our scientists and moves forward the work that everyone has done for so long.
Speaker 2:This has been a very underfunded piece of work in health, and you know, some of us like to say the rest of our body is here to keep our brain warm, it is our most vital organ, and it has not had the same degree of investment, and so we had made major strides and we need to keep those going. We all need to fight for the fact that this is something that affects every single one of our families on both sides of the aisle, and so I'm hoping that, even in a world in which there isn't agreement that these two topics of understanding that we have to fight for brain health and fight for funds to combat neurodegenerative diseases, and that we also have to make sure we support healthy food for everyone is is something that we can continue to to get agreement on sarah, completely agree with you, and so, as we conclude this interview, I had one last question.
Speaker 1:Again, we'll have to continue um. You've been involved in Argentum's Women in Leadership Committee. Why, sarah, is mentorship so crucial in leadership development, especially in healthcare and innovation?
Speaker 2:You know I have always felt that you know you flip the chart right. The strongest piece of any team is the new blood coming in and to being willing to listen to everyone at all stages, the place in their career that they would like to be. We all know the numbers and for so long in boardrooms, in the CEO suite, in any facet in politics, that women have not occupied the same percentage as men in those positions. And there's a long way to go, and so many of us have worked hard to not only be leaders ourselves but show the path for others and to have a voice for that mission. And so within the senior living industry and an industry I worked in in healthcare, we have a group that really has been fostering that and it's made a major impact.
Speaker 1:Sarah Hoyt, co-founder of Social Impact Partners and co-founder of Vitality IP and so many other things. I can't keep up with you, Sarah, but you're changing the world, You're having an impact and you're working on literally the world's most vexing issues. For that we want to send a note of thanks and again ask you to share. If folks from our network across the world would like to get more information or get more involved with your work, how can they do that?
Speaker 2:Well, I hope. I hope everybody gets involved with your work. How can they do that? Well, I hope everybody gets involved with Social Impact Partners. Our website is wwwsocialimpactpartners. It is a global initiative. It's about innovation, it's about collaboration, it's about dreaming bigger and solving a world problem together, and there's a place for everyone in it, whether you're a student who wants to have a career in change, whether you are somebody who runs a corporation or a nonprofit that's interested in health and longevity. We are all working together to change things rapidly, and it's happening, so we invite you to join us.
Speaker 1:Thank you so much for your inspiration today, sarah, thank you for all you're doing and, most importantly, thank you for your leadership.
Speaker 2:Thank you. Thank you for sharing this topic.