Baltimore Social Innovation Journal, Fall 2016 Fall 2016 | Page 16

Hungering
for Change
A cybersecurity whiz wants to put his IT skills to good use – as in doing good.
By Lisa Simeone

Who would’ve thought that watching
comedian John Oliver would get somebody
so riled up?
Yet that’s what happened when IT
professional Steve Nutt saw Oliver’s report
on food waste in this country. According to
the stats, we waste 500 billion dollars’ worth
of food in the U.S. every year.
“I was irate after watching that segment,”
Nutt recalls. “I thought, maybe I should do
something.”

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with the Social Innovation Lab sponsored
by Johns Hopkins Technology Ventures, to
work with other like-minded people. He
also participated in the annual Baltimore
Hackathon, whose motto is, “Meet People.
Build Stuff. Have fun.” It was there that Nutt
came upon an organization called Unsung. It
seemed to be doing what he wanted to do.
He called the owner and began discussing
collaborating.

But what? Nutt’s background is in
computers (by way of microbiology, political
science, and international relations at West
Virginia University in Morgantown). He didn’t
know anything about delivering surplus food
from restaurants and caterers to people in
need.

“How do we tell the whole food story?”
Nutt asks. “It’s great to support a restaurant
that serves all locally sourced food, but that’s
only half the story. That’s about how the
food gets there. Where does it go after that?
How do we complete the circle? Wouldn’t
it be great if a menu had, say, a notice that
food wasn’t thrown away but instead went to
people in need?”

He did, however, know about
crowdsourcing, which he defines as “using
everyday citizens to achieve a common
goal.” He also knew about taking in huge
swaths of data and making sense of it. About
harnessing the power of technology. So he
signed up for a one-day intensive workshop

Nutt calls this idea “the Uber of food
delivery.” At the end of a day, a restaurant or
caterer packs up its excess food, someone
comes to pick it up, and that someone
then goes to a homeless encampment or
distribution center to deliver it. The whole
chain of delivery is organized through an