DAVENPORT, IOWA (February 13, 2019) — Entrepreneur, former venture capitalist, founder, and CEO of Happier Inc, and author of Happier Now: How to Stop Chasing Perfection and Embrace Everyday Moments, Nataly Kogan will keynote River Bend Foodbank’s inaugural Women Fighting Hunger event, Thursday, March 28, 2019, 5:30-8:30PM, at Rhythm City Casino, Davenport. With a goal of raising awareness and funds to end childhood hunger in our community, the Women Fighting Hunger event will engage women leaders to champion the issue. Gold sponsors are Bank of America, Northwest Bank & Trust Company, River City Tire & Automotive, and UnityPoint Health-Trinity. Silver sponsors are Eye Surgeons Associates, Lujack Hiline of the Quad Cities, Royal Neighbors of America, the University of Iowa Community Credit Union, and Wells Fargo. Bronze sponsors are Carpetland USA, Ruhl & Ruhl Realtors, and in-kind sponsor, Rhythm City Casino.
The evening will include a Volunteer Hour from 4:30-5:30PM. Participants will have the opportunity to assist with River Bend’s Backpack Program, which supplies more than 3,000 backpacks of food each week throughout the school year to students in need.
“One in five children in our community will suffer from hunger today, a statistic that is equally heartbreaking and unacceptable. These children are our future, yet they’re coming to school hungry, making it nearly impossible to learn,” says Nancy Renkes, River Bend Foodbank Vice President and Chief Partnerships Officer. “River Bend has set a lofty goal to put an end to childhood hunger in our community, and we’re thrilled that women leaders have joined with us in championing this initiative.”
For event keynote Nataly Kogan, hunger is a personal issue. As a child, Kogan's family fled oppression in the Soviet Union and eventually obtained visas to enter the US, after spending time in a refugee camp in Italy. "While attending school in our refugee camp, I remember my mother telling me not to come home before 6:00PM because there was no food for me at home,” says Kogan. “Still to this day, hunger causes a panic in me." From her teenage years as a refugee learning English in the projects outside of Detroit, to becoming a leading venture capitalist in a predominantly male industry while still in her 20s, Kogan has consistently achieved at the highest levels.
A graduate of Wesleyan University, she has held top positions at Manhattan-based firms McKinsey and Co and Hudson Ventures, served as the only female board member at Constant Contact, worked at Microsoft’s state- of-the-art Future of Social Experiences Lab (FUSE), and served as Vice President of Consumer Experiences at WHERE, which she helped sell to PayPal in 2011.
Despite a lifetime of achievements, Kogan found herself vastly unfulfilled. Initially a skeptic of the research demonstrating the positive effects of happiness, positive social interactions, and authenticity in our daily lives, she decided to incorporate the practices of gratitude, kindness, and mindfulness in her own life. This journey led to the launch of Happier Inc, an award-winning global technology and learning platform through which Kogan shares the scientifically proven data, tools and best practices required to reframe the concept of “I’ll be happy when…” to the more powerful “I’m happier now because…”
"In my journey, what I've learned is that genuine emotional wellbeing doesn't come from making everything in our lives perfect and never feeling any difficult emotions,” says Kogan. “It comes from allowing ourselves to feel all that we feel, to accept ourselves in the world as it is, and to cultivate and grow the seeds of genuine joy we all have inside.”
Since launching Happier, Kogan has been featured in the New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Fortune, and Time Magazine, and has appeared as an expert on Dr Oz, Bloomberg TV, and One World with Deepak Chopra. The cost to attend the inaugural Women Fighting Hunger dinner event is $45 for individuals, or $400 for an advance table of 10. All proceeds will support programming and initiatives that feed hungry children. Learn more and register at www.riverbendfoodbank.org/women-fighting-hunger, or call (563) 345-6490.
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About River Bend Foodbank – The Foodbank is the largest hunger relief organization in the Quad Cities and surrounding communities, having distributed over 15.1 million meals in 2018 to hungry people in eastern Iowa and western Illinois. Our mission is to lead the community-wide effort to end hunger in Iowa and Illinois. We do this through food distribution in partnership with our 300 agencies as well as our Mobile Pantries, Senior Pantries, School Pantries, and Backpack Program. The best and easiest way to help is to go online: visit us at riverbendfoodbank.org.
