A medical-school-trained entrepreneur left a planned medical career, returned to school for an MBA, and founded a fruit snack company focused on healthy bars. The company now generates over $100 million annually and distributes products to about 85,000 retail locations, including Walmart, Target, and Costco. The founder de-emphasizes formal credentials when hiring and prioritizes effort and adaptability over degrees. Current data show low unemployment among biology and nursing graduates and limited short-term risk from AI in nursing. The founder cited disillusionment with insurance-driven medicine and adopted food-as-preventative-medicine as a scalable impact strategy.
Gen X founder and CEO of That's It Nutrition walked away from a stable career path in medicine to instead get his MBA and build a $100 million-a-year fruit snack empire. Now, even with three degrees to his name,Lior Lewensztain tells Fortune that he doesn't even look at degrees when hiring. His message to Gen Z: effort and adaptability matter more for success than what you study in school.
For many young workers, today's job market makes a straight career path feel like a luxury. Luckily, healthcare-related fields have little to worry about, with AI experts saying robotic nurses are not in the picture anytime soon, and unemployment rates among college graduates reaching just 3% for biology majors and 1.5% for nursing, according to data from the Federal Reserve Bank of New York. It's no surprise then that Gen Z are flocking to these "more secure" healthcare jobs.
But for Lior Lewensztain, there was an even bigger problem that overshadowed job security-he was struggling to believe in the profession altogether. As a medical school graduate, he was in part put off by insurance companies that have made medicine less of a public service. And while a traditional medical career promised financial stability, the 46-year-old took stock that he could have far more impact-and even more wealth-by skipping residency and heading back to school for his MBA.
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