This summer, we’d like to highlight the incredible folx who support Pilot Light with their time and energy on our Advisory, Development, and Young Professional Boards! We are so grateful for their dedication and passion for food education day in and day out!
Featured today on our Feeding Minds Blog is Robert Teinowitz, and I’ll pass it over to him to kick us off!
Tell us a little bit about your background and journey with Pilot Light:
Pilot Light is an outstanding charitable organization doing some amazing things with food education, and I’m proud to be a member of Pilot Light’s Development Committee and Advisory Board.
I was introduced to Pilot Light by Board President and Co-Founder Matthias Merges back in 2014 (approximately) and have been happy to watch Pilot Light grow ever since. It has been exciting to be part of an organization that has worked hard to expand its programming — starting with a few schools in Chicago to rolling out nationwide reaching thousands of students. It is truly inspirational to be part of their mission:“kids make healthier choices by connecting the lessons they learn in their classrooms to the foods they eat on their lunch trays, at home, and in their communities.” My years of television, film, and commercial production along with my experience in marketing and entertainment have helped me to help Pilot Light with the annual fundraising gala Feed Your Mind. I was happy to be part of the team that drove success against the fundraising goals of the organization.
Food and food education has always been important to me as if you teach people about food, people tend to make better choices with regards to their health and other cultures. To me, the key part of Pilot Light’s mission is being able to show students that there are many food choices available to them. Whether it’s in the food or the preparation, Pilot Light provides students with an introduction to different customs which ideally creates more acceptance of the differences we share. It’s a small step that may change a student’s life or the lives of the community around them.
If you created a Pilot Light lesson, what would the title and topic be?
If I was creating a Pilot Light lesson, I would call it “Mashed, Baked or Fried: The Potato: Only the Beginning.” The lesson would be about how many uses we can have for a potato. Kids could learn different preparation methods: mash/bake/fry and apply both math and science skills. In addition, students could learn how potatoes are used throughout different cultures to demonstrate how we all have a common bond through a single ingredient.
In addition to my time on the DCAB Board at Pilot Light, I am President and Owner of a sports marketing company named Live Action Media. Live Action is a high-end graphic design company that focuses on in-arena content for sports teams, sponsors, and advertising agencies around the world. For fun, I also get to be the Chicago Bears Orange Sleeves (TV Time Out Coordinator) which puts me on the field for every Bears home game.