Nourish International Staff
From our Director to our interns, the Nourish staff is here to serve students; whatever your needs or interests, we want to help. Each member of our staff is very experienced in all aspects of Nourish; however, each team member specializes in different areas. Check our directory below to learn who can best help you with your project!
Joel Thomas, Director
send Joel an email
Prior to Nourish, Joel Thomas worked with Nourish's precursor, Hunger Lunch,
at the University of North Carolina. In 2006, Joel led a team to conduct
a development projects alongside Fundacion Los Robles in Argentina, where he
helped to construct educational food plots which have educated more than 800
students how to construct their own gardens. He has co-authored two award
winning business plans, one to launch Nourish International and one for the
establishment of a manufacturing facility for appropriate technology in Uganda. He
is a member of the Order of the Old Well, the 2006 recipient of the Algernon
Sydney Sullivan award, as well as a frequent speaker on social entrepreneurship
panels and international student conferences. He is a StartingBloc Fellow,
an Eagle Scout, and a member of UNC-Chapel Hill's most prestigious honor society,
the Order of the Golden Fleece. Joel has a BS in Biology and a minor
in Entrepreneurship from the University of North Carolina.
James Dillard, Assistant Director
send James an email
Prior to joining Nourish, James Dillard attended the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, where he majored in Economics and minored in Entrepreneurship. During his career at UNC, he wrote for the award winning student newspaper, The Daily Tar Heel, as a columnist and a staff writer. During his summers, he worked with Plextronics, a printed electronics company and YBZG (now Localnoodles) as a marketing intern.
Bryon Zandt, Marketing Director
send Bryon an email
Bryon is a co-founder of Hold'em for Hunger, North Carolina's largest charity
poker tournament. He also co-led a team of students to Argentina in partnership
with Fundacion Los Robles, an Argentine NGO that educates primary students
how to produce their own food. Bryon is also a 2004 Burch Fellow and
an Eagle Scout. Bryon earned a BS from the Kenan-Flagler Business School
at UNC-Chapel Hill.
Bryon also works as senior web coder at Cuberis, an award-winning design firm in Durham, NC.
NI Board of Directors
Mark Laabs
Mark Laabs, a native of Memphis Tennessee, graduated from UNC as a Robertson Scholar in 2006. During his tenure at UNC, Mark wrote an honors thesis concerning the dynamics of social change and was inducted into the Golden Fleece, UNC’s most prestigious honor society, for his exemplary work in developing SLICE, a platform which enables every student organization on UNC’s campus to have a functioning website under one system. Upon graduating, Mark went on to work for McKinsey & Company. In his spare time, Mark has worked to launch a joint program for social innovation in the Triangle, focusing on supporting fledgling social ventures so that they can become robust engines that drive social change.
Pathik Rami
Pathik is the managing partner for The Imaginate Group, a privately owned group of real estate and asset-backed finance assets at age 25. Pathik holds degrees in economics and industrial engineering from Northwestern University, and has successfully navigated the group since inception in 2004 through 6 real estate and business transactions grossing $8.5 million. The group has built a streamlined and scalable real estate and short term finance operation that has, to date, organically grown with significant expertise and infrastructure advantages. The group is proud of its successful organic growth over the past three years, and plans to triple in size over the next 3 years by capitalizing on opportunities already in its' opportunity pipeline.
Pathik has offered a unique investment approach for Nourish Donors through the Imaginate Group, enabling donors to become investors in The Imaginate Group, earning 8% interest for donors and 4% interest for Nourish(or all 12% interest for Nourish). Pathik is also interested in developing strategic partnerships with prominent NGO’s such as the Clinton Global Initiatives and its derivatives.
Buck Goldstein
Buck Goldstein is the University Entrepreneur in Residence and a Senior Lecturer in the Department of Economics. Prior to returning to the University, Goldstein co-founded Information America, an online information company which was publicly traded and subsequently acquired by the Thomson Corporation. Subsequently, he was a partner in Mellon Ventures, the venture capital arm of Mellon Bank. He is a Phi Beta Kappa graduate of UNC and an honors graduate of the UNC Law School.
Sindhura Citineni
In March 2002, Sindhura founded Hunger Lunch, a student organization based in UNC Chapel Hill undergraduate campus from a model adopted from Kelly Folgeman, a UNC medical student, Class of 2003. Sindhura led a team of passionate Hunger Lunch members to participate and win 2nd place in the Carolina Challenge business competition that formed the expanded vision and a new name, Nourish International. She has won several awards and fellowships associated with her work associated with Nourish such as the Burch Fellowship, Robert E. Bryan Fellowship, Carolina Undergraduate Health Fellowship, Marion Dixon BSBA Scholarship, and recruited as a member into the Order of the Golden Fleece, UNC’s most prestigious honor society. Sindhura is also the recipient of UNC Kenan-Flagler Business School’s Outstanding Young Alumni of the Year Award (2007-2008).
Upon graduating with a B.S. in Business Administration from Kenan Flagler Business School in 2004 and started working as an Americorps Public Ally at Triangle Residential Option for Substance Abusers(TROSA) as an Interim Education Program Director. After her term at TROSA she worked as the first full time staff for Nourish International. Citineni is currently a dental student (class of 2010) at UNC Chapel Hill School of Dentistry and continues to actively serve on the Board of Directors of Nourish with the primarily role of fundraising.
Josh Lee
Josh Lee was a Morehead Scholarship recipient at UNC Chapel Hill, Class of 2004. As an undergraduate, Josh played on the Varsity Wrestling Team all four years and served as the academic team captain his senior year.
Tommy Thekkekandam
Thomas Thekkekandam is a founding member of Nourish since its inception as Hunger Lunch in 2003. Thomas worked extensively on the business plan and presented at the Carolina Challenge business competition winning 2nd prize. Thomas was a Morehead Scholarship recipient, Carolina’s most prestigious four-year merit scholarship, and the nationally renowned Jack Kent Cooke Scholarship recipient for his JD/MBA dual degree at Duke University (Class of 2010). Thomas worked as a Market Research Analyst for 1½ years at The Link Group, an international market research firm, and worked as an Assistant Director of NC Fund for Public Interest Research (NC PIRG). Thomas was part of the Varsity Wrestling Team and Crew Team., and was inducted into UNC’s Order of the Old Well.
Ryan Allis
Ryan is the Founder of iContact, an online marketing platform for companies and organizations around the world. Ryan launched iContact at the age of 19 and now serves as the company’s CEO. In its first four years, Ryan took the company from his dorm room to Research Triangle Park, where he now leads 65 employees. Ryan has authored a book, Zero to One Million, describing how to go from a blank slate to 1 million dollars in sales. At 23, Ryan continues to grow iContact in RTP.
Virginia Carson
A 1971 graduate of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, Virginia Carson came back to head the Campus Y after 25 years as a corporate lawyer and business owner. A student leader of the Campus Y during the turbulent years of civil rights, Vietnam War protests, and early feminist issues, Ms. Carson went on to law school at Columbia University. She practiced communications and corporate finance law in Washington, D. C. from 1974 until 1989, finishing her work in the Washington office of Skadden, Arps, Slate, Meagher & Flom. After law practice, she organized Capital Kids' Radio Company to purchase and operate radio stations in Washington and Baltimore. The company inaugurated a music-based format for children and parents, combining news and features written for children with music that the family could enjoy together. The Radio Zone format won national and local awards for the quality of its programming.
NI Board of Advisors
- Robert Broad
- Kelly Boone
- Geoff Cramer
- Erik Daubert
- Bob Jolls
- Chaz Littlejohn
- Tim Minor