Tim West

Human Capitalist and Culinary Diplomat in Bellingham, WA

Tim West

Human Capitalist and Culinary Diplomat in Bellingham, WA

Slow Food Chef turned Social Entrepreneur and Food Futurist.

Grandson of Arch West, Inventor of Doritos, Tim was inspired by a bout of food poisoning from fast food his freshman year of college. He discovered the Slow Food movement and dedicated his life to feeding as many people as regeneratively as possible.

After attending the Culinary Institute of America in 2005, Tim cut his teeth in the the kitchens at The St. Regis Hotel in New York while co-leading the Edible Education Project teaching cooking and farming classes to kids and seniors with dementia with his identical twin brother, Chris.

In 2008 he served as U.S. Delegate to Slow Food's Terra Madre then continued his work at the University of Massachusetts where he led the development of the Environmental Performance Advisory Subcommittee on Food which designed a plan to achieve carbon neutrality by 2030.

In 2010, he was recruited to open Cafe 6 at the Facebook headquarters in California where he discovered the hackathon model of rapid prototyping. Inspired, Tim co-created Food Hackathons as a means to build out the global food entrepreneurial ecosystem.

In 2013 Tim was recognized as one of Zagat’s 30 under 30 Food-World Up-and-Comers and served as a Fellow4Good at the Institute for the Future in 2015.

Through True West Ventures, his consulting and educational events company, he has designed learning journeys, spoken on panels, advised startups, placed executives and worked with clients including Facebook, Yahoo, Verizon Media, Clorox, Couch Surfing, Burning Man, Tesla, AirBNB, PMI, Center for the Edge @ Deloitte, Singularity University, Institute for the Future, Food Business School, Culinary Institute of America, SwissNex, General Mills, Quaker, Nestle and Mars (Innovation Institute for Food and Health, Mars Advanced Research Institute, Mars Corporate Global Innovation).

Tim currently serves as the Global Ambassador of the Future Food Institute supporting community events, Summer Schools and corporate innovation strategy.

His areas of interest include: plant based foods, better for you snacking, plastics and packaging innovation, personalized nutrition, bio-actives, food as medicine, gut health, micro-biome, AI and permaculture.

He's recently relocated to Bellingham, WA where he serves as the President of the Sundial Foundation, plans to start a farm and get a dog.

  • Work
    • Sundial Foundation
  • Education
    • The Culinary Institute of America
    • The University of Massachusetts Amherst
    • The University of Colorado @ Boulder