Food has always been more than what ends up on a plate. I've spent years working at the intersection of biology, technology, and the stories we tell about what we eat — and one question keeps pulling me back: why do so few people talk about food the way it actually lives in communities? That question is a big part of why Strange Little Fruit exists.

Food system equity is not a side project. It's not a line item in your CSR budget. And it is absolutely not something that gets solved by a canned food drive in November. I've spent years sitting at the intersection of food, technology, and culture — watching brilliant people build incredible companies while the communities most affected by broken food systems get handed a press release and a donation receipt. I'm tired of it. And honestly, I think a lot of you are too. So let's have the real conversation.

When someone asks me what keynote speaker topics are working right now, I don't hand them a list. I give them a framework. Because the topics that move audiences in 2026 aren't the ones trending on LinkedIn this week — they're the ones that meet your audience exactly where they are and leave them with something they couldn't have gotten from a Google search. I've been on both sides of this. I've sat in conference rooms where a speaker delivered a technically flawless talk that nobody remembered by lunch. And I've been in rooms where a single idea shifted the energy so completely that people were still talking about it on the shuttle back to the hotel. The difference almost never comes down to the topic itself. It comes down to how the topic was chosen, framed, and matched to the moment. If you're a conference director or event planner trying to fill a speaker slot, here's the framework I'd use.