Ivanka Trump will return to public life for the first time during her father's second term in the White House.
President Donald Trump's elder daughter on Thursday will announce an initiative focused on access to fresh produce and healthy food, and Axios reported that she hopes to leverage her celebrity to highlight "the role of nutrition in chronic disease and overall well-being" through a new for-profit venture.
"We launched Planet Harvest to reimagine how American produce moves— not just through the supply chain, but across communities," Ivanka Trump said in a statement to Axios. "By connecting fresh and surplus harvests with those who can benefit from them, we're supporting farmers, reducing food waste, expanding access and using good nutrition to improve health."
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Ivanka Trump will discuss Planet Harvest, what is billed as a "profit-for-purpose" company she started with her friend Melissa Melshenker Ackerman, a produce supply-chain expert who will serve the company's CEO, at the the Heartland Summit in Bentonville, Arkansas.
"I've worked with farmers for nearly two decades and have seen too much good produce go to waste — not because it wasn't fresh or nutritious, but because the system didn't make room for it," Ackerman said.
Planet Harvest says it will use "real-time data and smart logistics to match the right produce with the right buyer at the right time," and "collaborates with food manufacturers to turn surplus crops into innovative products — such as dried, no-sugar-added cherries."
Ivanka Trump, who has largely retreated from public life since the end of her father's first term, when she served as a senior White House adviser along with her husband Jared Kushner, will be interviewed on stage at the summit by Arianna Huffington, who appeared to tie the new initiative to the priorities in health secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.'s "Make America Healthy Again" agenda.
"[Her] decision to focus on democratizing access to healthy food comes at an unprecedented moment in our country's healthcare journey, where we're finally recognizing the scale of the crisis in chronic diseases,'" Huffington said.
The summit was co-founded by Walmart heirs Olivia Walton, Tom Walton and Steuart Walton and hosted by the Bentonville-based think tank Heartland Forward.
