Richard Bennett

Richard Bennett has always considered healthcare to be the most complex and important industry on earth and sought to play a meaningful role in its constant improvement. He is a tireless entrepreneur and problem-solver, having spent most of his 15-year business career striving to make good health more accessible and more appealing to more people.

At Northwell Health, New York’s largest health system, he created his own incubator, designed to nurture companies that would widen the health system’s razor-thin profit margin while providing valuable health services to patients: He built a scalable and successful pharmacy chain that brought discharge prescriptions right to the patients’ bedside. He re-branded wellness services and gyms, incentivizing and gamifying fitness and screenings for the company’s workforce of 60,000+, all before the Affordable Care Act.

However, when asked to scale delicious and “healthy” food choices across the enterprise, there were challenges. Despite the fact that food is a major determinant of health, there was little clinical consensus around food and nutrition. At the time, medicine was evidence-based, but healthy food wasn’t.

One evening in early 2015, his Georgetown classmate Renee Cherkezian came over for dinner, seeking his counsel for a “food as medicine” business idea. Motivated by his lingering desire to make real change in the healthcare system and by entrepreneurial thirst, Richard took on his most exciting and fulfilling work yet to partner with Renee and create Epicured.

Serving as CEO, Richard has grown Epicured from a concept into a thriving hub for culinary and clinical expertise.