Member since October 2025
Erin Baumgartner is the CEO and cofounder of Family Dinner, a farmers’ market delivery business serving Massachusetts.. Family Dinner launched in 2017 and partners with over 100 local farmers and food purveyors to deliver the region’s best ingredients to 600+ households weekly. Using data and predictive analytics, Erin’s team reduces food waste while strengthening small farmers’ competitiveness against industrial agriculture.
Alongside her entrepreneurial journey, Erin has enjoyed a 15-year career at MIT, most recently as Managing Director of Programs at the Institute for Data, Systems and Society, where she works with machine learning and data science experts to expand access to Data Science and AI education domestically and internationally.
Her career and company have earned her opportunities to speak on major stages, including TEDx (featured on TED’s main site with nearly 2M views), the New York Times, the United Nations, HubWeek and Bosch Headquarters. When she’s not leading Family Dinner, Erin enjoys cooking for friends, transforming anything into pizza, sharing a beer on the porch and spending time with her husband (and cofounder) Tim. She’s also a sports fanatic having been a founding member of both Brutesquad, Boston’s Elite Women’s Ultimate Frisbee team and the Boston Renegades, the Boston Women’s Professional Tackle Football team.
Erin thrives when she’s coaching and connecting with people, whether in a classroom, coffee shop, or conference hall. She is passionate about helping others explore the art of what is possible, translating big ideas into approachable, inspiring lessons.
In her talks, Erin blends warmth, humor and moments of levity to keep audiences engaged, whether she’s speaking to a room of 40 or an auditorium of 4,000. She seeks to leave every listener with a personal takeaway, something actionable that resonates regardless of their industry.
When Erin left a successful career at MIT to deliver carrots in her old Honda, a chorus of voices, including her mother’s, asked if she was crazy.
Her answer was simple: “Watch me.”
That determination has carried her through the rollercoaster of entrepreneurship. From confident leaps to tearful moments in her truck during the pandemic, when the future of Family Dinner seemed uncertain.
Her talks don’t gloss over the struggles; instead, Erin shares the full story, successes, failures, and resilience. By being open, approachable and even a little funny, she turns her journey into a mirror for others, showing that no matter your business (be it food systems or a nail salon), perseverance, creativity and connection are universal.
It began with beer and chicken wings at Parlor Sports in Somerville, MA. Erin and her husband, Tim, were longtime CSA members who loved local food but were frustrated by inefficiencies and waste.
At the time, Erin was working at MIT’s urban science lab and saw the potential to apply data analytics to the food system. On a napkin stained with bleu cheese, they sketched out what would become Family Dinner: a business that could deliver local food more efficiently, eliminate waste and help small farmers compete with big agriculture.
What started with seven friends as guinea pigs has grown to serve nearly 900 families across Massachusetts. That napkin experiment became a thriving company, and Erin’s proudest accomplishment.
Family Dinner has created solutions to economic, environmental and social issues stemming from the current food system in the United States. That system prioritizes profit, not people, and harms not only small farmers and consumers, but animals, soil health and the food products themselves. Pesticides, inefficient (and unsustainable) cropping and farming practices all but guarantee that communities do not eat as healthily as they should. This talk will cover why local food matters, how technology can reshape supply chains and what it means for communities.
The audience will walk away with an understanding of:
- How current practices create and perpetuate issues within the food system.
- How Family Dinner is empowering local farmers and food-insecure communities.
- Sustainability tips and waste-conscious practices for the average consumer.
This talk can be given as a keynote, a podcast interview, a webinar or a workshop. This talk is a ideal for women in entrepreneurship or industries such as logistics, agriculture, environmentalism and/or supply chain.
Erin believes that turning big research concepts into approachable, engaging insights for any industry is key to driving change and improving systems. She draws from her experience at MIT, where they use data to break down and understand complex issues in urban areas, and applies that to her business model at Family Dinner to simplify the process of getting food products delivered to local community members.
Erin will cover:
- Why factory farming is unsustainable.
- The drawbacks to farmer’s markets and food-sharing networks.
- The three core innovations used by Family Dinner to address and solve the problems created by traditional food systems.
- The importance of using plain language.
This talk can be given as a keynote, a podcast interview, a webinar or a workshop. This talk is a fit for corporations, universities, professional development events or those in technology.
In this talk, Erin reflects honestly on the ups, downs and resilience required to launch a mission-driven business. Family Dinner faced multiple challenges when launching and then again during the early days of the pandemic. Erin and her team had to pivot, adapt, and at one point, close the business for three weeks to overcome these challenges. But she also shares the positives that came from these obstacles and from building community and relationships.
Experiences that are covered in this talk include (but not limited to):
- Dealing with overwhelming demand in times of food scarcity.
- Making the decision to prioritize the health of Family Dinner workers, farmers and customers during a pandemic.
- Purchasing food from local struggling businesses, then donating the food directly to food banks.
- Expanding outside of Massachusetts for the first time.
This talk can be given as a fireside chat, a keynote, a podcast interview or a webinar. This talk is a great fit for startups, entrepreneurs, business schools, and/or women in business.
A legacy system is an outdated system or piece of technology that continues to be used to perform its original function, but does not do so as efficiently as newer models. And historically, they are not always easy to replace. This applies to areas of everyday life that we may not normally think about, such as our food system. The legacy food system in the United States produces billions of tons of waste, relies on factory farms that have pushed small farmers out, and uses unsustainable growth methods that leave out both flavor and quality. In this talk, Erin shares her inspiration to use the same scientific methods from her time in the MIT labs to challenge the food legacy system.
She will cover:
- What data points need to be studied and tracked to create change.
- How scientific methods and data analytics can strengthen local food systems, reduce waste, and compete with big agriculture.
- How predictive analytics can benefit small farms.
- How the changes made shorten and simplify the farm-to-table process.
This talk can be given as a keynote, a webinar presentation, a podcast interview or as part of a panel discussion. This talk is a fit for sustainability conferences, innovation summits, data science and/or technology groups.
It can be hard to wrap your head around just how much food is wasted on an annual basis - anywhere between 30 to 40 percent of food is thrown away due to the current, broken systems in the United States. Erin launched Family Dinner (a food delivery service) in 2017 to begin combatting this crisis in New England and beyond.
In her TEDx, Erin blends her experience in MIT data labs, where she and her team sought answers to complex urban problems, with her drive to deliver locally grown, fresh food to families in her community. Using plain language and a little humor to convey her ideas, Erin explains how she utilizes the same data-driven methodologies that proved successful in the lab for her own business model.
Audiences will walk away with:
- An understanding of problems within the current food system, from chemicals and pesticides to factory farming.
- A model of the three core innovations used by Family Dinner to address those problems.
- The economic, environmental and social benefits from community-supported agriculture.
- Encouragement to consume more sustainably and thoughtfully.
This talk is perfect for conferences and other events in sustainability, the food and beverage industry, environmentalism, innovation, agriculture or supply chain. This talk can be given as a keynote speech, on podcast episodes, as part of a panel or a webinar.
You can watch Erin’s TEDx here: https://www.ted.com/talks/erin_baumgartner_big_data_small_farms_and_a_tale_of_two_tomatoes
When Erin left a successful career at MIT to deliver carrots in her old Honda, a chorus of voices, including her mother’s, asked if she was crazy.
Her answer was simple: “Watch me.”
That determination has carried her through the rollercoaster of entrepreneurship. From confident leaps to tearful moments in her truck during the pandemic, when the future of Family Dinner seemed uncertain.
Her talks don’t gloss over the struggles; instead, Erin shares the full story, successes, failures, and resilience. By being open, approachable and even a little funny, she turns her journey into a mirror for others, showing that no matter your business (be it food systems or a nail salon), perseverance, creativity and connection are universal.
It began with beer and chicken wings at Parlor Sports in Somerville, MA. Erin and her husband, Tim, were longtime CSA members who loved local food but were frustrated by inefficiencies and waste.
At the time, Erin was working at MIT’s urban science lab and saw the potential to apply data analytics to the food system. On a napkin stained with bleu cheese, they sketched out what would become Family Dinner: a business that could deliver local food more efficiently, eliminate waste and help small farmers compete with big agriculture.
What started with seven friends as guinea pigs has grown to serve nearly 900 families across Massachusetts. That napkin experiment became a thriving company, and Erin’s proudest accomplishment.
Family Dinner has created solutions to economic, environmental and social issues stemming from the current food system in the United States. That system prioritizes profit, not people, and harms not only small farmers and consumers, but animals, soil health and the food products themselves. Pesticides, inefficient (and unsustainable) cropping and farming practices all but guarantee that communities do not eat as healthily as they should. This talk will cover why local food matters, how technology can reshape supply chains and what it means for communities.
The audience will walk away with an understanding of:
- How current practices create and perpetuate issues within the food system.
- How Family Dinner is empowering local farmers and food-insecure communities.
- Sustainability tips and waste-conscious practices for the average consumer.
This talk can be given as a keynote, a podcast interview, a webinar or a workshop. This talk is a ideal for women in entrepreneurship or industries such as logistics, agriculture, environmentalism and/or supply chain.
Erin believes that turning big research concepts into approachable, engaging insights for any industry is key to driving change and improving systems. She draws from her experience at MIT, where they use data to break down and understand complex issues in urban areas, and applies that to her business model at Family Dinner to simplify the process of getting food products delivered to local community members.
Erin will cover:
- Why factory farming is unsustainable.
- The drawbacks to farmer’s markets and food-sharing networks.
- The three core innovations used by Family Dinner to address and solve the problems created by traditional food systems.
- The importance of using plain language.
This talk can be given as a keynote, a podcast interview, a webinar or a workshop. This talk is a fit for corporations, universities, professional development events or those in technology.
In this talk, Erin reflects honestly on the ups, downs and resilience required to launch a mission-driven business. Family Dinner faced multiple challenges when launching and then again during the early days of the pandemic. Erin and her team had to pivot, adapt, and at one point, close the business for three weeks to overcome these challenges. But she also shares the positives that came from these obstacles and from building community and relationships.
Experiences that are covered in this talk include (but not limited to):
- Dealing with overwhelming demand in times of food scarcity.
- Making the decision to prioritize the health of Family Dinner workers, farmers and customers during a pandemic.
- Purchasing food from local struggling businesses, then donating the food directly to food banks.
- Expanding outside of Massachusetts for the first time.
This talk can be given as a fireside chat, a keynote, a podcast interview or a webinar. This talk is a great fit for startups, entrepreneurs, business schools, and/or women in business.
A legacy system is an outdated system or piece of technology that continues to be used to perform its original function, but does not do so as efficiently as newer models. And historically, they are not always easy to replace. This applies to areas of everyday life that we may not normally think about, such as our food system. The legacy food system in the United States produces billions of tons of waste, relies on factory farms that have pushed small farmers out, and uses unsustainable growth methods that leave out both flavor and quality. In this talk, Erin shares her inspiration to use the same scientific methods from her time in the MIT labs to challenge the food legacy system.
She will cover:
- What data points need to be studied and tracked to create change.
- How scientific methods and data analytics can strengthen local food systems, reduce waste, and compete with big agriculture.
- How predictive analytics can benefit small farms.
- How the changes made shorten and simplify the farm-to-table process.
This talk can be given as a keynote, a webinar presentation, a podcast interview or as part of a panel discussion. This talk is a fit for sustainability conferences, innovation summits, data science and/or technology groups.
It can be hard to wrap your head around just how much food is wasted on an annual basis - anywhere between 30 to 40 percent of food is thrown away due to the current, broken systems in the United States. Erin launched Family Dinner (a food delivery service) in 2017 to begin combatting this crisis in New England and beyond.
In her TEDx, Erin blends her experience in MIT data labs, where she and her team sought answers to complex urban problems, with her drive to deliver locally grown, fresh food to families in her community. Using plain language and a little humor to convey her ideas, Erin explains how she utilizes the same data-driven methodologies that proved successful in the lab for her own business model.
Audiences will walk away with:
- An understanding of problems within the current food system, from chemicals and pesticides to factory farming.
- A model of the three core innovations used by Family Dinner to address those problems.
- The economic, environmental and social benefits from community-supported agriculture.
- Encouragement to consume more sustainably and thoughtfully.
This talk is perfect for conferences and other events in sustainability, the food and beverage industry, environmentalism, innovation, agriculture or supply chain. This talk can be given as a keynote speech, on podcast episodes, as part of a panel or a webinar.
You can watch Erin’s TEDx here: https://www.ted.com/talks/erin_baumgartner_big_data_small_farms_and_a_tale_of_two_tomatoes