Barbara Heitman Bronstein

Barbara Bronstein [she/her] had just retired from a successful brand-marketing career in Houston, but she wasn’t ready for the rocking chair. “I was looking for something,” she says. She found it while attending a catered charity event where a lot of fresh food was destined for the dumpster. Accustomed to finding solutions, Bronstein made a quick call to a local food bank. But they wouldn’t take pre-prepared food. The lack of common-sense rankled Bronstein. “I’m the child of Depression-era parents,” she says. “We never wasted anything.”

Bronstein arrived at the next gala prepared. She’d prearranged for the untouched food to be delivered, at the end of the event, to a local soup kitchen. “I asked the host to announce this plan,” she says. “The guests erupted in applause.” That’s when she knew; everyone was appalled by the senseless waste at these catered gatherings. Bronstein had stumbled upon an unpopulated humanitarian space. Before long, she’d established Second Servings, a nonprofit food-rescue organization that redirects unsold and unserved food to hungry people throughout Houston—at shelters, soup kitchens, low-income housing complexes, and anywhere else it’s needed.

Second Servings officially began operating in 2015 as a small-scale events-focused operation. But Bronstein’s common-sense idea has grown legs. Second Servings has, to date, redistributed over 10 million pounds of food to people in need. Much of it is taken from overstocked supermarkets and distributors (and would otherwise be generating climate-altering methane gases in a local landfill). In just the last year the organization’s food supply has grown 25% and helped nourish over 200,000 people. Bronstein has been repeatedly celebrated for her work, but what makes her happiest is the practicality of Second Servings’ mission. “Food rescue didn’t exist in Houston,” she says. “And it just makes a lot of sense.”