Here at LAS, we love celebrating the achievements of everyone in our community—current students, former faculty, and alumni! Once you’re in the LAS family, you’re in it for life! We are proud to announce that LAS alumni Anastasia Kiku ‘17 was featured as a Forbes 30 Under 30 winner in the social impact category–what a fantastic achievement and something we are incredibly proud of as the LAS community!

Anastasia founded Reusables in 2020 with her business partner Jason Hawkins, a sustainable company that helps replace single-use plastic containers in restaurants and cafes with steel ones. Since its launch, Reusables has prevented over five tons of waste and over 20 tons of CO2 emissions and empowered more than 5,000 people to reuse 150,000 takeout containers. The Reusables team, now consisting of four full-time employees and five contractors, has raised over $1.5 million in funding and generated $250,000 in revenue.

In her early adulthood, Anastasia moved to Vancouver, where she interned at the online grocery management system provider FoodX. During this internship, she focused on integrating a circular economy model into the company’s operations and logistics, training that prepared her for her later ventures into entrepreneurship! When Kiku’s internship ended, she and her former manager founded Reusables, which uses this idea of a circular economy to implement zero-waste packaging.

Here at LAS, we instill a sense of global responsibility and innovation amongst our students through experiential learning opportunities and programs such as the innovation lab and visiting scholars. Our students can use Anastasia’s story as a source of inspiration, as it shows how far LAS students can go in the world and how much they can do for our planet! We are excited to see what the future holds for all our LAS students, and we hope they can learn something about entrepreneurship from the fantastic achievements of Anastasia! 

Read more about Anastasia Kiku '17 in her Forbes 30 Under 30 profile.