Alumna Sources Aid for Ukraine

Feed the World, enabled by Pauli’s connections, has expanded beyond meals into providing assistance and goods to Ukrainian orphanages, schools, and hospitals. 

It supports mental health resources for children and some unique inventions out of necessity, ie., shatter-proof polyurethane window replacements for schools where windows shatter from explosions and wood-burning cookstoves to help combat food scarcity in areas left without power. The organization is remarkable, but according to Pauli, it was a lifelong journey in the making. 

Pauli’s titles and accolades — French-trained chef, certified sommelier, Michelin-star experience, appearances on television and in publications like KQED, Oprah Daily, and Forbes (to name only a few) — belie a theme: high-level cuisine. But her ambition and fortitude go beyond her culinary expertise.
    
Despite working in tech and finding considerable success in her second career, she discovered the desire to push beyond her boundaries for the sake of others. Pauli now works to combat shortages of food, drink, education resources, healthcare, sanitation, and shelter around the world. 

Her recent social media presence paints a different picture from what might be expected of a chef and sommelier: fire, shattered windows, bullet-proof vests — the devastation wrought by Russia’s ongoing invasion of Ukraine. But also manifestations of hope — rallying cries and people banding together, charging towards adversity instead of away from it.  

Publications have dubbed her an “accidental activist,” and she claims her journey in life has been "divinely led” since the day she got an internship in communications while studying accounting at the University of San Francisco. 

After USF, she left any thought of accounting behind for a PR role in tech, left tech for culinary school in New York and France, and eventually came back to the U.S. after six years in Paris. She describes the hauntingly orange horizon over the Bay Area, as a result of the North Complex Fire in 2020, as a turning point in her life.

“It was like the world was going to explode any minute,” she said.

She responded to that feeling by springing into action. “I went up to Napa to cook for those displaced by the fires, down to Santa Cruz, and back up to Sonoma. That’s when I first felt the power of handing someone a meal in their moment of greatest need. It wasn’t just a fire on TV anymore. It was real, and I wanted to help.” 

When Russia invaded Ukraine in 2022, a colleague from a volunteer class headed to the border of Przemysl, Poland, to help set up a kitchen for refugees. 

She said, “It was the same feeling about leaving for cooking school. I had to do this.”

With a new job that she could work remotely, she relocated and started working in the kitchen in Przemysl from morning until 1 p.m. She worked at distribution points on the weekends and then started helping to make aid deliveries across the border in Ukraine. 

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In January 2023, she set up Feed the World to help fund Ukraine relief efforts, combining her experience volunteering in aid kitchens with a growing network of contacts and volunteers on the warfront. 

Pauli’s journey is one of taking big leaps and following her instincts for the good of other people. To anyone reading, Laura Pauli says, “If I can do it, anyone can do it.” 

 If you would like to support USF students experiencing food insecurity, discover how you can aid the USF Food Pantry.