CEO • Foodsmart • Digital Health
Chief Executive Officer, Foodsmart • Former COO, Amwell
From UNICEF field work to running a $314M food-as-medicine platform - Kurt Knight has spent three decades building the case that eating is a clinical act.
Kurt Knight — CEO, Foodsmart • March 2025
Profile
Before Kurt Knight ran corporate P&Ls, he ran nutrition programs in places without reliable electricity. His early career took him to UNICEF, Save the Children, and the Gates Foundation - not as a consultant parachuting in, but as someone working through the operational reality of maternal and child nutrition in low-resource settings. That detour shaped everything that came after.
Appointed CEO of Foodsmart in March 2025, Knight arrived carrying 13 years of institutional knowledge from Amwell - the company he helped transform from a scrappy telehealth startup into a national virtual care infrastructure. As COO from 2019 through 2024, he oversaw clinical operations, built the national provider group, and steered four separate acquisitions to successful integration. That last part - making mergers actually stick - is rarer than the press releases suggest.
Foodsmart's bet is that food is medicine, and that the data infrastructure to prove it at scale now exists. The platform connects Medicaid members, health plan partners, and registered dietitians through a system that personalizes dietary guidance using biometrics and health history - then routes users toward affordable options. Knight's job is to turn a promising clinical thesis into a durable business model.
The company he inherited had already done the hard lifting. Founder Jason Langheier built Foodsmart over 15 years - from its Zipongo origins through $314 million in total funding, including a $200 million Series D from TPG's Rise Fund in mid-2024. Langheier stepped to Chief Science Officer; Knight stepped into the CEO chair. The transition was an endorsement, not a correction.
"Through his thoughtfulness, sustained work ethic, and team-based approach, Kurt has been one of the key people that has fundamentally enabled the virtual care industry at scale."
- Dr. Jason Langheier, Founder & Chief Science Officer, Foodsmart
Between departing Amwell and joining Foodsmart, Knight spent time as a partner at SpringTide Ventures - a health-tech VC firm in Cambridge, Massachusetts. The stint as investor gave him a view from the other side of the table, evaluating the companies trying to solve problems he'd spent years living inside.
His conviction on food as medicine is both clinical and mathematical. Diet-related chronic disease is among the largest drivers of US healthcare cost. Foodsmart's platform targets Medicaid populations specifically - the segment with the least access to affordable, nutritious food and the highest rates of preventable chronic conditions. The unit economics, Knight argues, close when you factor in downstream healthcare savings.
"Kurt brings invaluable leadership expertise and a track record for driving innovation for payers and providers at scale."
- Frank Williams, Executive Chairman, Foodsmart
Knight holds three degrees from three institutions that rarely appear on the same resume: a BA in Economics from Brigham Young University, an MPH from Columbia University, and an MBA from Harvard Business School. The combination - quantitative grounding, public health framing, and business discipline - reads like a curriculum designed for exactly the job he now holds.
His prior stops before Amwell included BCG, where he focused on pharma and global health strategy, and Hill-Rom, where he created a new home care business from the ground up. Two very different schools of operational thinking. One focused on frameworks; the other on getting a new business unit off the ground inside an established company. Both surface in how he talks about scaling Foodsmart.
The company he's leading now serves more than 2 million members across health plans, Medicaid managed care organizations, and employer groups. The national network of registered dietitians is the largest of its kind in digital health. And the platform's integration with grocery delivery, SNAP/EBT benefits, and food retail partners means the clinical recommendations don't stop at the app - they follow members to the checkout lane.
As diet-related chronic disease and food insecurity impact millions of Americans, our work has never been more urgent.
- Kurt Knight, CEO, Foodsmart • March 2025
Career
Foodsmart
Foodsmart connects Medicaid members, health plan partners, and registered dietitians through a data-driven platform that personalizes dietary guidance and routes members toward affordable food options - grocery delivery, SNAP/EBT integration, and food retail partners included. The platform was formerly known as Zipongo before a full rebrand.
What He's Built
In His Own Words
Foodsmart's momentum gives us a unique opportunity to reshape how foodcare integrates with healthcare.
On joining Foodsmart as CEO • March 2025
As diet-related chronic disease and food insecurity impact millions of Americans, our work has never been more urgent.
On the mission of Foodsmart • March 2025
I look forward to collaborating with our team, health plans, providers, and food retail partners to expand the reach of our foodcare solutions.
On the strategy ahead • March 2025
Dr. Langheier and the Foodsmart team have created something transformational.
On the foundation he inherited • March 2025
Quick Takes
Three degrees from three very different schools: BYU for economics, Columbia for public health, Harvard for business. Not many executives can claim all three - and mean all three.
He worked with UNICEF in the field before he worked in a boardroom. That sequence - community first, strategy second - is rare in tech and rarer still in telehealth.
Foodsmart still runs its Twitter and Facebook accounts under the old "Zipongo" handle. Knight inherited a brand mid-transition and the social accounts as a small reminder of where the company started.
He spent 13 years at Amwell - longer than most C-suite tenures last anywhere. He was there before virtual care was mainstream and stayed until it was table stakes.
75% of Foodsmart's customers are Medicaid members or lower-income workers. Knight is running a large-scale digital health company where the primary user is the person least represented in Silicon Valley boardrooms.