Meg grew up outside New York City and graduated from Brown University with a degree in Comparative Literature. After college she moved to California to work on an organic farm. For three years she ran a science education garden for elementary school children. Her interest in organic growing led her to get a Master’s degree from Cornell Agriculture School, after which she was hired to manage a large organic vegetable operation in New Jersey.
Eventually Meg moved to New Hampshire and married Gary Hirshberg, founder and current President and CEO of Stonyfield Yogurt, whom she’d met at an organic farming conference. Meg worked in the business for several years, in sales and yogurt production. Stonyfield took nine painful years to reach profitability, and now, with about $350 million in sales, it is the largest organic yogurt company in the world.
After Meg stopped working in the business, she wrote two yogurt cookbooks, and launched a career in freelance nonfiction feature writing for magazines, including Yankee, New Hampshire Magazine, and The Boston Globe Magazine. Currently Meg is a regular columnist for Inc. Magazine. Her column, “Balancing Acts”, focuses on work/life balance issues in an entrepreneurial setting, a subject she also addresses in speaking appearances. Meg enjoys gardening, going for long walks and teaching nonfiction writing at a community college. Meg and Gary have three children.
Slide into bed with an entrepreneur, and you wind up cuddling with his business. At a certain point, the entrepreneur’s spouse has to answer the question: Are you in or are you out? Read the Inc. Magazine article here.
The people who run fast-growing companies are driven by optimism and a passion for what they do. And the people married to them? In this piece, I discuss candidly the issues that arose for me as the passenger on a wild entrepreneurial ride. Read the Inc. Magazine article here.
Getting inside the mind of World-Cup ski champion Bode Miller is a bit like trying to keep up with him on the slopes: catch him if you can! I got him to sit for awhile and talk with me about his remarkable life both on the world’s great mountains and in the woods of his native New Hampshire. View a PDF of the New Hampshire Magazine article here.
What exactly do they DO out there in Iowa every four years? I got an opportunity to observe the quirky caucus process in Des Moines the year of Barack Obama’s surprise victory there. View a PDF of the Concord Monitor newspaper article here.
