We see and hear about CEOs championing various different causes – some are more motivational and socially inspiring than others. For the majority however, building a business has little to do with the soft skills of empathy and kindness – they are more occupied and rightly so with the issues of making profits and making investments.

Enter Daniel Lubetzky, the son of a Holocaust survivor and CEO of Kind, recognized as one of the fastest growing snack companies in the USA. Their motto is healthier snacking and yes, a healthy dose of kindness. Lubetzky says that the stories of survival and horror passed on from his father have shaped his mindset towards business. Even the smallest act of kindness can and does count and can be reflected in the way we do things, he believes.

When he was 26, he founded Peaceworks, a food company that brought together an incredible group of people who would otherwise have been culturally stereotyped. There were Israelis, Arabs, Turks and others from conflict zones of the Middle East who came together to build an economic platform for a business in food products from the Middle East. Lubetzky believed that the common economic goal buried the differences and helped create a thriving company that 20 years later, is still going strong and is sustaining the strong cultural relationships created.

With a father who was an entrepreneur himself, Lubetzky started early – he taught himself magic so that he could do magic shows. He would buy wholesale goods and sell them to other kids. He believes that a lot of his success is also due to a strong survival instinct, one he believes he inherited from his father. Kindness is personified in many ways in this case – it is also about being kind to ourselves and our bodies by consuming food – snacking has a bad reputation for binge forming and junk food – that is healthy and kind to our bodies. The concept fits in well with today’s strongly socially responsible mindset concerning health.

“Many think what we’re doing as antithetical to business and the competitive environment. In my opinion, they’re wrong. It’s important for people to know that I’m not doing this because it makes me feel warm and fuzzy,” says Lubetzky.

He talks of qualities such as empathy, common survival and caring for others – qualities that are not often in the CEO vocabulary. He believes in achieving goals that target common good and believes that goodwill must be an underlining in all business engagements.

He just might be right – he is in his fourth venture and the concepts of kindness and empathy in place of cutthroat competition and merciless decision-making, he says, have served him well. He believes understanding people, relating to them and using soft skills to make the connections are imperative to running and sustaining a thriving business. 

His company KIND Snacks was a result of realizing that almost all of the snacks around were unhealthy – in face of rising obesity and diabetes, KIND Snacks has a social as well as an economic need to fulfil. Based on a concept of being kind to bodies, taste buds and the world, KIND Snacks has grown in keeping with the aspirations of its CEO.

In addition to KIND Snacks, Lubetzky has also launched Maiyet, a luxury fashion line that seeks partnerships with artisans from the world’s developing economies, promoting the concept of self-sustenance and entrepreneurship. 

In 2015, Lubetzky was named a Presidential Ambassador for Global Entrepreneurship. 

Entrepreneurs like him drive a new concept in business today. They are CEOs and business owners who take their social obligations seriously as citizens and fellow human beings. They sincerely believe that their businesses can and must make a difference that will have an impact on people’s lives. And they are right – in today’s information and tech-driven world, people feel closer and more connected with companies they believe are more caring about others than merely the bottom line. A strong social awareness is among one of the best USPs a company can have in its portfolio. 

Of course, we understand that there is a time and a place for everything. Kindness and empathy are no exceptions. Putting them into work in running a business is indeed innovation in motion.
(Nayomini Weerasooriya, a senior journalist, writer and a PR professional, can be contacted at [email protected])