Meet Angela Zeng

Angela is the founder and CEO of Fulfill Food & Beverages, a company that creates whole plant-based prebiotic beverage products. Her company’s signature brand is Karviva—meaning “compassion leads to long life” which combines traditional East Asian traditional medicine and modern science and research.  Karviva is a unique line of wellness drinks that are designed to address specific health issues. 

Angela is passionate about traditional and holistic medicine, which was one of her cornerstone drivers in creating Fulfill. Many of her passions and priorities within her company come from the way that she was raised. For example, she was raised in a household culture that strictly avoided food waste. She saw the food waste of industrial food processing—more than one-third of food is wasted in America—and built her company to avoid any unnecessary waste. 

Before starting Fulfill, Angela worked in pharmaceuticals and had direct experience seeing the effect that food and diet have on health.  She sees food as a gift from Mother Nature, and she wants to encourage others to go back to the basic and beautiful nutrition of natural whole foods.  “Our bodies are designed to be fed by natural sources.” She says. “When we feed ourselves with man-made foods like highly processed sugars or pesticides, our bodies do not process them the way that we are meant to process food.” 

Angela wanted to do something good not only for her family but her people: her friends and her colleagues, and so Fulfill was born.  The first two years of starting her company were difficult; she had to build her own facility for growing her ingredients because many of the existing facilities were unwilling to work with her traditional ingredients. To the American companies that she was working with, these ingredients were unknown.  While these first few years were a challenge, her friends were a constant support. Every time that she was ready to step away from her business, her friends pushed her to continue by encouraging her and rallying around her and her vision for her company. Now, knowing that she is making something that helps others is her number one motivator and joy in her work. 

As a leader, Angela sees balance as a primary principle that has allowed her to lead effectively. She values flexibility and being a lifelong learner but also values the strength and confidence that it takes to stand firmly on the beliefs and convictions that one holds. Finding the balance between the two has aided her as a leader and as a woman. 

Whenever Angela has an opportunity, she shares the knowledge that she’s learned over the years about holistic health. She’s continually learning and always has educational podcasts on while she’s working or walking. Angela has been married for twenty-five years. Her husband is an oncologist at Mercy. She has two teenage children who love the arts. Angela also loves the arts and enjoys painting with watercolor in her free time, something she never seems to have enough of. She travels as often as she can with her family, but always has her phone or her laptop for work, even when she’s halfway across the world. 

 

Angela recommends: