Leslie Zinn is your next speaker!
Leslie Zinn turns family recipes and a passion for wellness into purpose-driven business growth, with proven experience building retail, wholesale, and community programs that improve access to healthy food. Her 40-year recovery journey shapes how she leads and mentors.
Meet Leslie
Official Speaker Bio
Leslie Zinn leads Arden’s Garden with the same curiosity and appetite she grew up with. Raised on wheatgrass and wellness, she stepped into the family business and took the reins in 1999. Since then, Leslie has blended bold product innovation with serious business chops, bringing industry-first practices like high-pressure processing to keep juices nutrient-rich, expanding Arden’s Garden into retail and wholesale, and earning shelf space in major grocers across the Southeast.
Leslie believes great food belongs in every neighborhood. She has opened stores where other retailers have overlooked, partnered with a local urban farm to increase produce access, and built community programs that make healthy eating practical and affordable. Her leadership style is equal parts strategist and neighbor — focused on growth, and on people.
Sober for 40 years, Leslie uses her recovery as a compass for resilience, accountability, and mentorship. That perspective informs how she builds culture, coaches leaders, and steers a company that’s as mission-driven as it is market-ready. Outside the business she is a mom of four, a fitness enthusiast, and a dedicated community mentor, and she brings all of that lived experience to her talks on leadership, innovation, and purpose.
Speaking Topics
Leading with Purpose: Scaling a Family Business into a Regional Brand.
How do you grow without losing your soul?
Leslie shows how a family business becomes a regional force by professionalizing operations while protecting the values that started it all. She pulls real-world lessons from her years leading Arden’s Garden since 1999, including how smart process choices and product innovation helped the company expand into retail and grocery across the Southeast.
How processed food is rewiring the American diet — and why whole plants matter
What happens when convenience rewrites our taste and our health?
This topic is personal for Leslie. A committed vegan for more than a decade, she lays out how refined “white” foods reshape palates, drive unhealthy supply chains, and weaken community health. Leslie pairs clear science with menu and retail examples from Arden’s Garden and offers practical steps retailers, public health leaders, and communities can take to make whole plant-based food the easier, tastier choice.
Building Food Access: Stores, Advocacy, and Practical Solutions for Food Deserts
What does it take to put fresh, healthy food where it has been missing for decades?
Leslie speaks from lived experience opening stores in neighborhoods other retailers have overlooked and committing to long-term presence, not short-term headlines. She explores the structural realities of food deserts, the business decisions behind placing fresh food retail in underserved areas, and the responsibility brands have to show up consistently. This topic centers on dignity, access, and the belief that where you live should not determine how well you eat.
Community-Driven Brand Building
How do you build a brand that customers love because it loves them back?
For Leslie, brand is action, not just messaging. She explains how neighborhood events, mission-first programs, and authentic service become competitive advantage—creating loyalty, sparking word-of-mouth, and translating community care into real growth. Examples include Arden’s Garden programs that bring people together around health and habit change.
Recovery, resilience, and leadership: 40 years sober
How does long-term recovery shape the way we live, lead, and show up for others?
Leslie’s 40-year recovery journey is a deeply personal story of resilience, growth, and choice. She speaks openly about what it means to rebuild trust, find clarity, and keep going one day at a time, offering audiences encouragement and practical wisdom that reminds them meaningful success and lasting change are possible for anyone.
Women leaders: Career, Family, and the Long Game
What does a resilient leadership life actually look like for women?
Drawing on life as a mom of four and a CEO, Leslie offers pragmatic guidance on tradeoffs, mentorship that works, and organizational supports that let women thrive. This topic is full of concrete strategies for designing careers, teams, and companies that survive the messy middle and win the long game.
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Former Addict Mom Turned CEO Determined To Help Others Be Healthy and Successful
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