As the Founder and CEO of Peeled Snacks, a New York based company that produces three snack-sized varieties of fruit and nut mixes, Noha is actively trying to help Americans think more about their eating habits, the agriculture industry, and how food is made in the USA.

Explains Noha, “there was a time in this country when families spent as much as a third of their incomes on food. Now most people spend less than 10% of what they earn on what they put into their bodies. In theory that’s not such a terrible thing, except that what makes that cost cutting possible is the dilution of food. The most frustrating thing about this industry is dealing with the widely held notion that the value of food is determined by how cheap it is rather than how nutritional it is. I started Peeled Snacks to offer an answer to all the wasted calories in the processed food sold in America today.”

The idea for Peeled Snacks first came to Noha in 2004 while perusing a shop in an airport for a snack. Her options were limited: overly sweet candy, salt drenched chips, and energy bars full of mystery ingredients. What she didn’t see was the sort of food that would make her feel good about snacking, the dried fruits and nuts she grew up snacking on in the Middle East.

“I started Peeled Snacks with a very simple goal in mind: to make a tasty snack that people can feel good about eating. I looked for ways to capture the freshness of the snacks I ate growing up through innovative packaging and high quality ingredients. Since launching the product in 2005 I’ve steadily grown the company.”

With Noha’s diverse experience and educational background, it’s no wonder she’s made Peeled Snacks a success.

After graduating from American University in Washington D.C. with a BA in Spanish and Latin American Studies, Noha tried her hand in publishing, nonprofits, and marketing communications.

However, it was in the winter of 2000 that Noha found her calling.

“During the Seattle WTO riots. I identified with protesters in the belief that multinational corporations are some times responsible for social and environmental mishaps. Since large corporations weren’t going away anytime soon, I thought it was important to change the way they work. I realized that things could only improve if we fixed them from the inside, and I needed to become part of that change. I decided the best way to make an impact was by going to business school and getting the skills to influence business.”

In fall of 2000 Noha enrolled in Columbia Business School. It was here that she first encountered Net Impact.

“I've always been interested in social justice, and when I arrived at school I was eager to find likeminded people. Now, Columbia attracts an amazing diversity of people, but social justice and corporate social responsibility weren’t on the top of most of my classmates’ list of priorities back in 2000. Net Impact helped me find other students that wanted to be successful in the business world, but in a way that has a positive impact on society at large.”

Upon graduating in 2002 Noha accepted a position at Unilever where she gained experience in brand management and new product development on the Lipton Tea and Ragu Pasta Sauce brands. In these roles, she developed expertise in areas such as supply chain management, marketing, retail promotions and advertising. Her exposure to the Health and Wellness category at Unilever gave her a deep understanding of consumer trends within healthy snacks and led to the eventual creation of Peeled Snacks’ fruit and nut mixes.

“I learned about the very best and worst of the consumer packaged goods industry, and saw how Unilever has the potential to make really high quality food affordable for most people. However, too often they opt for a cheap product, rather than a good product. Like all the other large companies in the food industry, they contribute to an obese and unhealthy America by overusing high fructose corn syrup, oil, salt, and other processed fillers.”

In 2004 Noha left Unilever to launch Peeled Snacks, distributing the products in grab-and-go locations on the east coast: in airports, hotels, gyms, theaters, smoothie shops, corporate cafeterias, and online at www.peeledsnacks.com.

Her business model seems to be working. In the past few months, Peeled Snacks has gained a lot of media attention, with products being featured in O Magazine, reviewed in Time Out NY, and linked to a slew of celebrities in a variety of other publications.

But it doesn’t stop there. In the near future, Noha is planning to expand to the west coast and launch "a-peeling" t-shirts and other new products this winter.

She couldn’t be happier with the result. Says Noha, “it's thrilling—the work that we're doing is very important to us, and very motivating. I've worked in companies where there really wasn't any particular cause or purpose behind the work, so managers had to constantly keep after employees to create urgency. In contrast, with our clear purpose of promoting healthy lifestyles through good snacking habits, it’s easy to be passionate about Peeled Snacks.”

Today, Noha stays active in Net Impact, attributing the organization to much of her success.

“The ‘Net’ part of Net Impact has impacted me greatly: Net Impact has offered me access to a grand network of smart, motivated, like-minded people. Some of the people I’ve met have given me sound advice that’s shaped and built my company. Others have given me access to resources and distribution channels that have improved my bottom line. And some members (you know who you are) have just supported me and filled me with the strength to meet all the crazy challenges of this industry. I wouldn’t be the same without Net Impact.”