SETH GOLDMAN

1965–

Harvard graduate Seth Goldman left a promising career in politics to undertake a management course at Yale, where he became interested in the beverage industry. A few years later, he teamed up with a former Yale professor to create the company Honest Tea.

Seth Goldman was born in 1965 and grew up in Massachusetts. He studied government affairs at Harvard University, and, after being involved in politics for a few years, he attended the Yale School of Management in 1995. Goldman’s idea for a low-calorie beverage first came about while he was working on a case study of the beverage industry at Yale; he saw there were many types of sugary drinks and bottled water on the market, but nothing in between. After a run in New York’s Central Park, Goldman could not find a suitable drink to buy. As a consequence, in 1998, he cofounded the beverage company Honest Tea with Barry Nalebuff, one of his professors at Yale, initially producing organic, not-too-sweet, bottled teas. In 2011, Coca-Cola bought 40 percent of the company for $43 million.

In 2015, Goldman became executive chair of Beyond Meat, a producer of plant-based meat substitutes. He stepped down as “TeaEO” of Honest Tea at the end of 2019 to pursue his interest in environmental activism and climate change.