Kind’s Foundation Is Investing $20M to Teach Kids Empathy

Daniel Lubetzky, the founder of snack bar giant Kind, is a Mexican immigrant. His father was a Holocaust survivor. So when he started his business in 2004 with the name Kind, he envisioned it as a way to—besides sell food—encourage people around the world to be kinder to each other. As the company slogan puts it, Kind encourages loyalists to “do the kind thing for your body, your taste buds and your world.” For a few years, the company’s foundation has pushed this mission even further, and now it’s pouring a lot of money into a specific project: a technology designed to get kids in schools exposed to different points of view.

“[Kind] does have a social mission, in that it’s not just about making money but also about making nutritionally rich snacks,” Lubetzky says. The idea is that if you feel good, you might be in a position to pay that feeling forward. But that’s a little nebulous. In recent years, Lubetzky has wanted to do more, especially because isolationism and bigotry appear to be on the rise.