“I thought, ‘Let me learn about business in the real world and not just in the classroom,’” she says.

So, she took a job with Kraft Foods where she marketed brands for a multinational consumer product goods company and learned all sides of the business. After a few years testing her skills in the corporate world, Kennedy decided it was time to try nonprofits.

Although Kraft is an ethical company and a good corporate citizen, Kennedy wanted her work to fulfill a social need. In 2002, she began working at America’s Second Harvest, the largest charitable hunger-relief organization in the nation.

“I learned a lot about hunger and the working poor, but I found there was a little bit lacking as far as business skills they needed,” she says.

At that time, Kennedy started investigating progressive businesses and joined the Socially Responsible Business Network. She kept her eye out for job openings at companies that had successful business models benefiting both the community and the bottom line. “I was looking for a company that I truly believed in,” Kennedy says. “I really think business drives the world, and if you want to change the world you can do it through business.”

In 2004, a position at Whole Foods came up, and Kennedy saw it as an opportunity to return to the corporate world and use her business skills for good. As senior coordinator of national marketing, one of her favorite parts of the job is giving consumers the information they need to make the purchases that are best for them.

“I like Whole Foods’ approach to marketing—providing people with information,” she says. “We tell our customers, ‘Here’s what the USDA (United States Department of Agriculture) says about organic products,’ and ‘This is what it means if a food has a pesticide in it.” With that product knowledge, the consumers can then make their own choices, she says.

In this role, Kennedy has also been able to work on marketing projects for both of Whole Foods’ nonprofits—the Whole Planet Foundation, which focuses on ending poverty through micro-credit loans, and the Animal Compassion Foundation, a hub for ranchers, meat producers, and researchers to learn and share practices that support the lives of animals on farms.

“The great thing about Whole Foods is that we never use the words “corporate social responsibility,” she says. “That’s an industry term. It’s really embedded in the culture. It’s part of the everyday life.” While Whole Foods doesn’t use the term, Kennedy says CSR is what’s driven her career since business school.

“I think corporate social responsibility has kept me in the business world,” she says. “I do believe that business can have a great social impact.”