Julie Smolyansky

After the sudden loss of her father and Lifeway founder Michael Smolyansky in 2002, Julie Smolyansky became the youngest female CEO of a publicly traded company when she took over Lifeway Foods at the age of 27. Since then, Julie has propelled the business forward with innovative product development and marketing, bringing kefir into the U.S. mainstream, growing the company from $6 million to almost $200 million in 2024, and expanding distribution to Mexico, Ireland, France, South Africa, UAE, various regions of Central and South America, and the Caribbean. Julie has been named to Fortune’s 40 Under 40, recognized among Fortune’s 55 Most Influential Women on Twitter, featured as one of the Best Instagrammers on the 40 Under 40 list, was honored as a 2020 Champion of Wellness by VeryWell, was recently named the winner of a Gold Stevie® Award in the Female Executive of the Year – Consumer category, in the 18th annual Stevie Awards for Women in Business, and won Gold Globee for the 17th Annual 2024 Globee® Awards for Achievement (Women in Business).

A University of Illinois at Chicago graduate, Julie is an emeritus member of the United Nations Foundation Global Entrepreneurs Council and a 2015 Young Global Leader of the World Economic Forum. She has produced documentaries such as “The Homestretch,” “Honor Diaries,” “The Hunting Ground,” “On the Record,” and “October H8TE.” In 2013, Julie co-founded Test400k, a non-profit organization advocating to end the backlog of 400,000 untested rape kits in the U.S. Julie released her first book, The Kefir Cookbook: An Ancient Healing Superfood for Modern Life, Recipes from My Family Table and Around the World, in March 2018. She is the mother of two girls.