Julie Smolyansky: President & CEO of Lifeway Foods

Episode 653

On this episode of The Kara Goldin Show, we’re joined by Julie Smolyansky, the powerhouse President and CEO of Lifeway Foods. At just 27 years old, Julie became the youngest female CEO of a publicly traded company, stepping in after her father’s sudden passing. Since then, she has transformed Lifeway Foods from a $6 million family business into a nearly $200 million global leader, making kefir a mainstream health essential.
During our conversation, Julie shares how she scaled Lifeway, the power of probiotics in gut health, and what’s next for the brand. We dive into the challenges of educating consumers, expanding into global markets, and staying ahead in the wellness space. Julie also opens up about her work as a documentary producer and advocate, tackling important social issues and driving meaningful change.
Whether you're an entrepreneur, a wellness enthusiast, or someone passionate about mission-driven leadership, this episode is packed with insights and inspiration. Tune in to hear Julie’s incredible journey and learn why gut health is the future. Now on The Kara Goldin Show.

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Transcript

Kara Goldin 0:00
I am unwilling to give up that I will start over from scratch as many times as it takes to get where I want to be. I want to be you. Just want to make sure you will get knocked down. But just make sure you don’t get knocked out, knocked out. So your only choice should be go focus on what you can control. Control. Hi everyone, and welcome to the Kara Goldin show. Join me each week for inspiring conversations with some of the world’s greatest leaders. We’ll talk with founders, entrepreneurs, CEOs and really, some of the most interesting people of our time. Can’t wait to get started. Let’s go. Let’s go. Hi everyone, and welcome back to the Kara Goldin show. I am so excited to have our next guest here, Julie Smolyansky, who is the president, CEO and chairwoman of Lifeway Foods, and a friend. So I’m very, very excited to have her here with us today. So at just 27 she became the youngest female CEO of a publicly traded company, taking over after her father’s passing, and since then, she’s transformed Lifeway into a global powerhouse in the Kiefer market and just so incredible everything that you’ve done. Julia is also a passionate advocate, documentary, producer and author, championing gut health and social change. And I cannot wait to talk to her more about everything that she’s doing today and overall, just the journey of building this incredible brand. So Julie, welcome so excited to see you. Thank

Julie Smolyansky 1:45
you so much for having me. Kara, it’s so great to be with you, one of my favorite people in the world. Oh,

Kara Goldin 1:52
you’re so sweet. Well, super excited. So let’s start at the beginning, when Lifeway Foods was first starting out, can you tell the story? I know you’ve shared this before with me, but I love the family story behind it,

Julie Smolyansky 2:09
sure. Well, I gotta go back a little bit earlier to the than to the founding. So my parents and I were refugees from the former Soviet Union through what’s known as Ukraine today, but it was the Soviet Union at the time. So I was born in Kyiv at the height of the Cold War in 1975 and when I was born, my dad looked at me, and he made a promise to me that he would get me out of this communist country, which was then the Soviet Union, and he faced a lot of oppression, anti semitism, just systemic, systemic oppression. And he just felt that there would be no future for me, especially as a woman, you know, in a in a country that he really valued democracy and various values that the United States offered. He read the Constitution, he was amazed with it, and loved the idea of checks and balances. And, you know, really, he was like frustrated when he had a couple albums of Led Zeppelin and The Beatles, and that was contraband in the Soviet Union. And he was a young man in his 20s listening to this music and thinking, you know, it’s crazy that he was able. He could have been arrested just for possessing these albums. And he that really, like frustrated him. And so anyways, we he made this promise to me, and on the day that I turned one, he hatched the plan to, I mean, he had been planning it all along, but we basically defected a week after I turned one, and we were in exile in Rome for three months waiting for our green card to come in, to be allowed to be settled in the United States. We were the first 48 families that were settled in Chicago during this first wave of exodus from the Soviet Union. And so, you know, he he walked over, he was an engineer, a mechanical engineer. He walked around the alleys of Chicago looking for broken electronics that he could fix and then sell for, you know, some money to live the first few weeks until he was able to get a real job as a draftsman that was far below what his skill set was as a mechanical engineer, but it’s the, you know, start from start again from the beginning, when you start a new life as an immigrant. My mother learned English watching General Hospital and dynasty, and that’s how she she picked up the language. And you know, we started with $116 in our pocket and a warm, sunny day in Chicago, August of 1976 and you know, my mother walked into the first grocery store, and they both, my parents started crying. They couldn’t believe all the food that was there. They grew up in scarcity in the Soviet Union, and while there was a very limited food, it was very different than the American palate that she tasted, that they both tasted. And the Slavic foods that they were used to. And so she said, you know, all these other immigrants will start leaving the Soviet Union, and they’re going to come to the States, to Chicago and see that they’re not going to have their foods that they’re used to, their native food. So she opened up the first Ukrainian, Russian, European, Eastern, you know, Slavic Deli in Chicago, and then she ended up with five of them. She became a very, you know, savvy importer and distributor of Eastern European food. She actually was the first to import Nutella, which just celebrated or marked its founders passing. But, but, you know, nine decades now of Nutella, Nutella did not exist in the States until my parents were in Rome for three months, and tried it for the first time, and realized that all of these Soviets that were mass exodus departure from Italy were going to come to the States and not have their Nutella that they had just fallen in love with in Italy. So she imported the very first cases of Nutella. I write about that in my book, The Kiefer cookbook, and have, like, this cute little smoothie inspired by Nutella. But so, so that’s how we started in the food industry. And she be, at this point, became, you know, importing and distributing combined containers from Europe. And they were going to trade shows all the time, both of my parents, and this was 85 and they’re in Germany at a trade show, and buy three bottles of kefir at the local grocery store, and my dad immediately drank one bottle outside of the store. And he said, America has everything, but it doesn’t have kefir. And she said, Well, you’re an engineer. Why don’t you build a plant, design the plant, make the product, and I’ll sell it through my distribution system. And that’s how Lifeway was born. Six months later, he incorporated the company, you know, the very first batches he made in our basement in Skokie, Illinois, right outside of Chicago. I mean, I vividly remember being 11 years old and him, you know, giving me the very first spoons, the very first first, drops of Lifeway Kaffir. And, you know, the then he, I mean, started selling it to not only Russian stores and Ukrainian stores, but he went to the local grocery stores in Chicago. And I remember going with him to, you know, my first demo at Trader Treasure Island in Chicago and Dominic’s in Chicago, and attending the very first Fancy Food Show, and I was 12 years old and standing at the booth and like, you know, really doing exactly what I’m doing now, telling you about kefir well, and it’s a 2000 year old product. It’s a ancient super food that has been passed down by my generation for 2000 years, grandmother to grandmother to grandmother. They sat around in the village, shared stories by the fire, made this very humble, simple food of these live, active bacteria, grains that survived for 2000 years. I mean, they really carry the stories of our humanity, of our of our lives. You know, multi generation, the story of the earth. Really, these are some of the most living, oldest organisms that have survived. And I think it’s really interesting that, you know, when we consume to fear our life, way to fear, we really do get in touch with what we know in our gut to be true, and it improves. You know, mental health now we know and immunity and digestion and skin health, and you know, there are so many health benefits, and it really goes back to the fact that our ancestors really knew how to heal their bodies, and we’re just now starting to get in touch with that, and it’s really reaching a tipping point. And so that’s kind of how Lifeway was founded, with this idea of bringing this 2000 year old, ancient superfood that was unknown to the rest of the world outside of the caucus mountains and the Soviet Union Eastern Europe, to a global marketplace, and that’s really how what Lifeway is about, and what we’ve been doing for 38 years now. So it’s really, really an honor and a privilege to get to be leading this conversation, bringing this product to the marketplace, to communities, moms, children, parents, you know, seniors. It’s really cradle to grave. All generations can enjoy this, no matter where you are in the world. We know that live, active bacteria cultures are important to our overall health. A microbiome is one of the most exciting things that we’re studying now that researchers are studying. So that’s the long answer to a short question.

Kara Goldin 9:44
I love it. So how long was it before your dad started really taking it into stores? Obviously, you guys started before Whole Foods even started, but you started in more of these as you. Said the Russian Ukrainian stores, maybe the natural food stores. And then at what point was, did it actually go mainstream?

Julie Smolyansky 10:08
Yeah, pretty quickly it started to go mainstream. Almost immediately after inception in 1986 word started to get around. You know, this is again, still at the height of the Cold War, Reagan and Gorbachev are starting to meet to have peace talks. And there was a massive interest in the mass media with all things Russian, you know, anything to do with what was behind the Iron Curtain, big curiosity and the White House had learned about this Crazy Russian Ukrainian immigrant doing, living the American dream with this product that was a native product to the Soviet Union. And so the White House reached out to us, to my dad, and said, you know, we I’m meeting with Gorbachev, and I’d like to bring your product, a case of your product, to the Soviet Union. And so he did, you know, he brought him a bottle, and, you know, Reagan said something to the effect of like, look at what your people, your countrymen, are doing in our country. And you’re having a brain, brain trust is leaving your all of your talent is leaving because of these policies, you know, tear down this wall that was part of the conversation. And as a matter of fact, I was really, really lucky to be invited on a delegation to go to Moscow, and I had the opportunity to spend 15 minutes with Gorbachev, and we had a talk about this moment, and he told me about how he remembered this moment, and he knew our company and story very well, and We cried together, really, for about 15 minutes. It was really one of the most touching moments of my life. And to have him remember this. And I do really think that, you know, by Reagan bringing our product to him, it might have even I know there were bigger policies, but I know it humanized what the experience is, and made it real for him in a real, palpable way, besides just, you know, policy papers and stuff like that. So, so that was really exciting. So, so, because of all of this, we were all over media blew up, you know, you’re on, like, Newsweek and Time Magazine and all these magazines and articles and just the media was always over at the factory, and talking to my dad, it really helped propel the product into mainstream. And like you said, at the same time, the health food industry started picking up all the natural food co ops were opening. Health food stores were showing up in all major cities and towns across the country. And there was this, you know, evolving that we still, I think, continue to evolve in this idea of, like, how food impacts our overall health and wellness. But this was the early, all early conversations. And then it became, you know, kind of popular for mass grocery stores to have these store within a store concept where they would bring in a section of their mass market grocery store and make it organic and healthy. And that was our way in. You know, we weren’t really able to yet compete with the big players in the mass dairy, but we were able to carve out a section in the health food section of this the mass market grocery store, whether that be Kroger or Safeway, everyone had a little section where they started to bring in these healthy brands, pioneering healthy brands. And Lifeway was one of those early pioneering brands that really created what we have today is now it’s all integrated into all the stores. And you know, our brands are in Costco, at Walmart, at Target, you know, all the grocery stores. You know, it’s not just the natural food section anymore, and health is mainstream. You know, everyone now is recognizing that how we eat impacts our overall health. And, yeah, so, so it happened kind of quickly, but I think it’s always an evolution, and it’s always, you know, we always think it’s, it’s our time, you know, this is our time. It’s always our time, and every year, which is why we have had, you know, pretty much consistent 38 year growth, and we had some dips during the kind of plant based anti dairy movement, but the pendulum swung back really quickly, and it’s back with vengeance, you know, back with a forest, which I love, because I’m such a dairy girl I love, you know, Farmer cheese and cottage here, you know, I love it, yeah, kefir, kefir. So we’re very excited to see that, you know, kind of, you know, science and this whole movement to get back to high quality, bioavailable foods that are really again, the way that our ancestors ate, definitely.

Kara Goldin 14:43
So you grew up in this business as a little girl, and as you were sharing that story with me, I think about my own kids and sort of growing up with entrepreneurial parents. Did you work after school? Little summers, did you always pitch in to kind of help? What was sort of your role, and at what point did you say I’m going to come into this business?

Julie Smolyansky 15:10
Oh, my God. Kara, I working since I was a little girl. I was actually just telling a story to my kids because they thought they’re like, You’re so lame. All you do is work, which is kind of true. No, I mean, I had a very different, unique childhood, very different than a typical American kid growing up. I was, you know, the daughter of immigrants. I was an immigrant. So I really grew up with one foot in, like, Russian community, Russian culture, and one foot in American culture, and I learned how to switch, you know, between the two communities very quickly. It gave me, like an emotional intelligence, to kind of track the room, understand my audience, where I was, and learn to switch in that way. But, you know, my mom opened up like I said the first deli when I was three years old. And I basically grew up in the back of a, you know, deli in Chicago, and I vividly remember putting on, like, price tag stickers with the old fashioned price gun. That was my favorite thing to do. It was to put like, take should give me, like, cases of sprouts, and, like tinned fish and, you know, preserves and boxes of chocolate, and I had to put a price tag on each product that was in the store. And I love that. I love the sound of it. I love, like, just the feeling of accomplishment. During the holidays, I became the expert candy wrapper. I would wrap hundreds and hundreds and 1000s of boxes of chocolate for her stores. And then I was a very hard worker. I was really ambitious. I wanted to, you know, kind of be a perfect daughter, perfect immigrant daughter. I didn’t want to make waves. Never was in trouble. I don’t think I’ve ever had a detention. I figure, skated for 15 years. I played varsity tennis. I horse back road. I was involved in lots of other like leadership positions at school, at high school, I was like the director of homecoming and the president of we help others, and all of these things that really paved, you know, laid the groundwork for future leadership for myself. Yeah, I went, you know, during during vacation, days or days off, I would work with my dad at his factory and helped him deliver products at midnight. You know, he would be make he would work his like nine to five job in the early days of Lifeway. He worked his nine to five job, still as an engineer, and then from five to midnight, he would do deliveries. I remember, you know, dropping product off at the back of the local grocery store in the in the receiving shipping department. So always working. And then, yeah, I mean, I started college, and I graduated in three years. I was expecting to go to grad school. I did go to one year of grad school as a psych for psychology. I was going to be a psychologist, and it was a weird situation where I was in the field as an in home, family therapist and some really rough neighborhoods in Chicago, and I almost died. I got caught in the middle of a gank bite, and I saw my life flash before my eyes. It was super, super traumatic, but also gave me a deep sense of empathy for what my clients live with every day in some of these abandoned neighborhoods, and I basically quit my job that day and went to my dad and just said, I just want some time to figure out what next, you know, I’m gonna do. While I was still in grad school, I just needed a different kind of job, I think. And within a couple of weeks I really like, it’s almost like, for the first time I got to hear what my dad was doing throughout his day, even though I knew obviously what he was working on. But something just clicked where I realized that I could channel my passion for wanting to improve the world, or improve people’s life, or change the world, as cliche as that sounds, that I could you know, one of the things that I worked on as like a mental health expert, was to help people make positive lifestyle choices that would lead to overall better lifestyle situations. And I saw that through food, through healthy eating, through healthy lifestyle, that I was able to help channel those those passions and help lead people, bring people to this place of wellness and health. And as I mentioned before, you know, I was a figure skater, I played tennis, I taught aerobics. I became a certified aerobics since. Instructor, and I, you know, really, for myself, personally, was very curious about how food helped me achieve my athletic goals. And it sort of became this, both personal passion, but part of my career, like health and wellness, was always part of something that I was very passionate about as a little girl, you know, understanding how if I ate peanut butter, that could help me do a better axle or whatever, you know, that that was important to me. And it just clicked. And so I finished. I finished the first year of grad school, and I told my dad I wasn’t coming back for the second year. And he was like, I wish you took a business class. I He begged me to take a business class. He’s like, just take one class. Um, he really, really wanted me to be at Lifeway. He was grooming me to be at Lifeway when I told him, he’s like, I’ve been waiting for this day my whole life. Like, come on over, baby. Uh, he was thrilled. And he quickly started to show me all the ropes of the business. He, you know, always pointed out strong female role models for me. Even though he’s a very complex man and had his own streaks of misogyny, he always pointed out strong female role models to me, and he would like, like, one time, Christie Hefner, you know who took over for Hugh Hefner for Playboy when she was a young woman too, and there was a CNN special about her. And my dad’s like, come over. Come watch this with me. One day you’re going to be just like, Christy, look what she did for her dad’s company. You’re going to do the same thing at Lifeway. And those kinds of messages really gave me the courage and the bravery to, you know, take to lead when it was my time to do so, you know, he held the first fundraiser for Congresswoman Jan Schakowsky before Jan was Jan in Illinois, and he was like, I want you to come meet Congresswoman Jan. Like, look what she’s doing. She’s this powerful woman. You know, anytime he saw strong women in positions of leadership, he always pointed them out to me and encouraged me and, like, told me I could do that. He told me I could. Yeah. He said you could do anything you want, but be the President of the United States only because you weren’t born in the United States. So, yeah, that was very powerful for me. So

Kara Goldin 22:21
your dad passed away unexpectedly, and you ended up, at that point, taking over the role as CEO, wow, and, and this was you were, were you 27 at this point when you took it over, and had you guys actually gone public yet? Or did you actually take the company public then?

Julie Smolyansky 22:46
No, he took it public in 88 two years after it’s starting. The company, right around when Gorbachev and Reagan were meeting, is about the same time that he went public. So then at that point, the company was about 12 years old or something. I’ve done the math, but I had worked with him for five years. And, yeah, he had a sudden heart attack and passed away instantly. And that night, you know, when all of the friends of the spouse are gathering to bring comfort to the surviving spouse and the family. So all these people were gathering at our home, and my dad’s best friend a few feet away from me, just stood there and said, That’s it that, you know, the company’s done. There’s no way a 27 year old girl could run this company. It’s over. Sell, sell your stock. And that was devastating to me. And you know, my dad taught me how to be a fighter. He intentionally would trigger me. And would say, like, punch me, punch me. You know, punch my hand. You know, just to teach me how to fight. And he used to say, one day, you’re going to need to know how to fight. And I knew this was, these were the moments, these were the fights that he was trying to teach me about that, you know, I would have the courage to fight back. So I, I, you know, it was really fuel for my fire, hearing him save at and my fighter instinct came out, and I went into the office that night. I didn’t go home until, you know, the next day, basically, the sun came up. NASDAQ opened. And the stock market, you know, the stock crashed. Lifeway crashed, and it was horrific. It was really scary. NASDAQ halt to trading until we could figure out what our next steps would be. We could release a, you know, get a press release out and whatnot. That night, while we were picking out my dad’s cemetery, thought I got a call from one of our board members who was like, Hey, are you aware of this emergency board meeting that our SEC Council is wants to hold. And I was like, No, I and I ran all these board meetings so no, I didn’t know about it. And he was like, well, he wants to, he wants the board to make him interim CEO, which doesn’t sound like something we would want, or that he would know how to do. And. And we want you to be the CEO. And I was like, Well, I want to be the CEO too. So the board had, they brought in another attorney, they had a meeting that night, and they voted me in a CEO that other SEC Council. I never heard from him again. He had some shares, he sold them, and he, you know, he tried to even convince my mom. He called her and he was like, trust me. You need you need some gray hair on the board. You need me to be the CEO. Just vote me and I’ll be interim CEO. Trust me. Trust me. And whenever somebody says, Trust me, it’s always a red flag, because you don’t need to convince somebody so much. But I mean, I had worked with my dad for five years. He had really been grooming me, taught me all the secrets, like I knew every part of the business already. So, yeah, I you know, they voted me in a CEO that night. The rest is history. I’ve been doing it since June 9, June 10. 2002 I think it’s been like 88 quarters or something. I know somebody told math recently, yeah, it’s been a lot of quarters.

Kara Goldin 26:07
You are such a badass. So what’s the best, best advice you’ve ever received about running a business, whether it was from your dad or one of the many mentors out there that every time you kind of hit a hard spot and in the the journey of growing your business, you go back and really think about that.

Julie Smolyansky 26:31
Trust your gut. Yeah, trust your gut. You know, every single time, there’s a lot that I didn’t know. I did not pick a single business class, my dad was right, and I all I knew was what my gut would tell me. And every single time that I second guessed my gut, I made mistakes, and every time that I didn’t know what to do, and I just sat still and thought about it or gutted about it. I knew what the answer was, and I always it always proved me right, you know, and that’s when you know, there’s a lot of things that you just have to make a choice. You just have to make decisions every day, and there is no right or wrong answer. In a lot of cases, there’s no crystal ball to really tell you. All you have is your gut and a lot of other opinions who maybe don’t have such good gut, gut instinct, I have learned over the years to trust my gut, and also, you know, just to know that, like in our society, it’s, it’s, it’s brutal, and especially for women in leadership, it’s brutal. And from the day, from very early on, right away, people have been trying to steal it from me, hurt me, attack me, tell me I wasn’t good enough. I wasn’t smart enough. I wasn’t cut out for the job. I didn’t know what I was doing. Time and time again and over and over again, I have proved those people wrong. I proved myself, you know, proved to myself what I could do, and I love that I am just now finally starting to step into my power and really own it and know about it and like feel it and like embody it. I think you know, it’s taken me a while to build that self confidence to know what my dad knew about me. My dad told me, you could do anything you want. I see something in you that you don’t even see in yourself. And you know, it’s taken me till this moment to really feel it, to know it, to embody it. So, you know that is even though I’ve, you know, been doing it for a long time, I feel like I am, you know, phoenix rising out of the ashes. And that fight even continues today, even today, big people, small people, mostly, mostly men. Are, you know, have continued to try to tell me all the ways that I won’t succeed or have done it wrong or whatever. And you know what? I’m still standing. I’m still here. I’m better than ever, and I already won that thing. Everything else is the cherry on the top. I already won. So I I’m in my truly like as I’m about to turn 50 this year, I’m really standing in that wonderful journey and that wonderful story and and all that I’ve done and accomplished, and I am proud of myself, and I’m really proud of my team, because, you know, you don’t get to anything anywhere without a lot of amazing people supporting you. It wasn’t just my team, it was like the universe literally rising to help me. And every time I think, why are all these people like, why are they helping me? Why there’s so many ways to, you know, have a career or partner or this or that, and all, you know, I just, it’s so it’s so inspiring to hear people say to me things like, you know, the one with the moral high ground wins. You know, you’re inspiring, you’re passionate. We want to be a part of that story. You want to be part of that. Journey, and I’m so excited to take whoever wants to join me on this wonderful journey. And it’s it’s an honor and a privilege to have been part of our community at Lifeway and touch so many lives and guts all around the world. So if you’ve ever been a part of Lifeway, bought our products, seen our products, engaged with our community like we love you. I love your guts.

Kara Goldin 30:23
Yeah, your book is absolutely incredible. Can you tell people the show people, there you go. It’s a it’s a cookbook, the kefir cookbook. But it’s also just absolutely incredible how you’ve wound stories in it, and the recipes are so good, we’ll have all the info in the show notes for that too. And you also co founded test for 400k and i would love for you to talk a little bit about sort of the impetus for actually starting that too. Yeah,

Julie Smolyansky 31:03
so, like I said, early on, I wanted to be a psychologist and was in the mental health field. When I was in college, I was a certified rape crisis counselor. I’m still certified rape crisis counselor, and I helped write the first teen dating violence curriculum in Chicago, even back in high school. So I’ve really been a part of this movement, this me too, movement, what we would call today, very early on as a leader, over 35 years now, I had my own personal experiences with violence, and you know that had left, you know, impact on me for the rest of my life. And as part of that journey, I wanted to use my pain for purpose. I didn’t want to waste it. And so one of the things that I learned about kind of after already I had been working at Lifeway, was I read a Human Rights Watch report that said that the biggest violation that women in the US face was 400,000 untested rape kits. And I couldn’t believe it, because I thought about all these cases that I was involved with when I was in high school in Chicago, and I was like, none of those cases ever went to trial or were even ever investigated, because all of that DNA, all of the evidence, is just sitting in a storage locker. I was outraged. And so I was like, there has to be, like, a breakdown in operations, or whatever. I just started to put, like, my business hat on and like, how do we solve this problem? How do we fix this? What are the levers to press? What do we who are the people to talk to? And I started unpacking this, and really ended up launching test 400k this was before the me too, movement too. And we put out a call to action in all 50 states. We reached out to all governors and elected officials. We sent them an untested like a like a rape kit that was just as a symbol. We fed exit to them. We published the tracking numbers to their constituents and the media so they could see how fast we could track, you know, test them quickly, like DNA evidence is now tested in less than 24 hours. You could do rapid testing in a few hours. Actually, it’s so so quick, and yet none of this has been advanced, and I just couldn’t believe it. And every time that these cases don’t get investigated, it’s negligence, and it puts everyone else at risk in the community for repeat perpetrators. And so there’s been some really remarkable data, like out of Detroit, where they had 10,000 kits, and they finally tested them all, they had 2500 hits and 750 repeat perpetrators, of people who are out and about, doing it over and over again, and hit every state like this isn’t just a Detroit problem. So, you know, I just thought that this, you know, what’s the point of having a platform of having an influence, of having a voice, if you can’t use it to help make change. And as a woman in a position of power, leadership, whatever small sliver that I have, I wanted to, you know, bring about this kind of change. And especially, you know, when my daughters were born, I made them a promise that I would spend my days making the world better for them. And you know, this was important that I had, like, 18 years until they got to college. I felt like I gave myself this deadline to change the world for them. And I’m really, really proud to see then that the ME TOO movement took off, and that so many other people’s like, torches were lit, and now all of us are, you know, we’re all holding a torch up, and we’re all shining a light on this issue, because it impacts us all. It’s an epidemic. You know, gender based violence, violence against women. It is an epidemic. And if you personally haven’t experienced, and I don’t know a single woman that hasn’t experienced. It. But if you haven’t, if you’re so lucky that you got through life without actually having violence or some really horrible experience, one of your friends or loved ones absolutely did, like, the numbers are really horrible, horrific. You know, one out of three women in the world are rape, beaten or murdered. That’s like a statistic that needs to be repeated over and over again, and so anyways, this was a way that I felt that we could change change things. And so there has been rape kit reform in every single state. And in my own state, we were able to change the statute of limitations to halt the statute of limitations until a test a kit was tested, if the government happens to not have resources because, surprisingly, they never have resources keep us safe are we’re always the last on those lists. So if those situations happen, which they do, happen from time to time, at least this statute of limitations halting gives the victim extra time to get these advocate for her, for themselves, to get the kits tested, and then I’ve also done a number of movies. I produced a number of documentaries, also in this space, also just to continue to have these tools to have conversations with around very challenging topics. So one of the well known ones is called The Hunting Ground, which highlighted rape on college campus and the cover up, which definitely has made our world safer. 300 colleges were investigated for their title nine abuses, and their their inability to keep their their students safe, or respond to them if they the students have been assaulted. So, you know, we I’m so proud of this work, because it’s a lot and it’s very heavy and but it’s really important for all of our kids. So yeah, you’ve

Kara Goldin 36:48
done such an incredible job and are living such a full life, for sure. So Julie Smolyansky, President and CEO of Lifeway Foods, so thank you again for joining us. We’ll have all the info in the show notes. And if you have not tried Lifeway Foods, or if you have tried Lifeway Foods, still go out and get plenty more. It is so, so yummy. And there’s all kinds of, always new collaborations and flavors and such such a great product. So thank you again, Julie,

Julie Smolyansky 37:24
you bet. Thank you so much, Kara. I love you. Thanks

Kara Goldin 37:28
again for listening to the Kara Goldin show. If you would please give us a review and feel free to share this podcast with others who would benefit. And, of course, feel free to subscribe so you don’t miss a single episode of our podcast, just a reminder that I can be found on all platforms. At Kara Goldin, I would love to hear from you too. So feel free to DM me, and if you want to hear more about my journey, I hope you will have a listen or pick up a copy of my Wall Street Journal, best selling book, undaunted, where I share more about my journey, including founding and building. Hint, we are here every Monday, Wednesday and Friday. Thanks for listening, and goodbye for now. You.

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