The
World’s 50
Greatest
Leaders
The List09
58
FORTUNE.COM // MAY.1.19
CHEF/FOUNDER, WORLD CENTRAL KITCHEN
Just over a week after the opening,
Andrés was on the ground in Fremont,
Neb.—population 26,000—handing
out meals to families displaced by the
unprecedented flooding wreaking havoc
throughout the Midwest. That a two-star
Michelin chef and pioneer of Spanish
cuisine would deliver sandwiches out of
a Catholic church here in Dodge County
seemed obvious to Andrés.
“When you need medical service,
you bring doctors and nurses,” he says.
“When you need the rebuilding of
infrastructure, you bring in engineers
and architects. And if you have to feed
people, you need professional chefs.”
Andrés has formalized that credo
through his nonprofit, World Central
Kitchen (WCK), which he founded after
volunteering in Haiti in the wake of its
2010 earthquake. Since then, Andrés
and his team show up with a simple mis-
sion wherever disaster strikes: to feed
people, especially those who are hardest
to reach. “The big problems have very
simple solutions,” he says. In this case,
it’s to just start cooking—a quest that is
remaking ideas about what relief work
and humanitarian aid can look like.
Since Haiti, Andrés and WCK have
fed Texas, Florida, and North Carolina
after hurricanes; Guatemala and Hawaii
after volcanic eruptions; Indonesia
post-earthquake and tsunami; federal
workers during the U.S. government
shutdown; firefighters amid the Cali-
fornia wildfires; and Central American
refugees in Tijuana. Most recently,
Andrés was in Mozambique, which was
hit in mid-March by a cyclone, attempt-
ing to double the number of daily meals
produced by WCK to 20,000 by the
time he left. He and his team do not wait
for permission to show up. When people
are hungry, he says, you must start
feeding them today, not tomorrow or a
week from now, after you’ve had a dozen
meetings and made a plan. “We don’t sit
waiting for someone to tell us what to
do,” he explains.
Andrés’s most visible work took place
in Puerto Rico, where he jumped on
one of the first commercial flights to the
island in the aftermath of Hurricane
Maria. WCK would become the terri-
tory’s largest provider of fresh meals—to
date it has served nearly 4 million—a
feat that reportedly helped earn Andrés
a Nobel Peace Prize nomination. WCK
continues to operate in Puerto Rico
through programs that help the island
grow more of its own crops so it’s better
prepared next time disaster strikes.
The chef ’s experience in Puerto Rico
further opened his eyes to problems with
the current aid model; he saw NGOs
moving without urgency and flexibility.
Big nonprofits must become leaner, with
more expertise, he says. “We come with
a fresh view of how to solve the same
problems,” he says. “We are not here to
push anybody out, but I do think we are
here to tell people we need to reinvent
ourselves.” —Beth KowittIN MARCH, CHEF JOSÉ ANDRÉS DESCENDED ON MANHATTAN to prepare for the launch of a fresh
addition to his restaurant empire—a 35,000-square-foot Spanish food hall in the
sparkling new Hudson Yards complex. Here, alongside other A-list chefs such as the
French Laundry’s Thomas Keller and Momofuku’s David Chang, Andrés’s New York City
culinary concept would ply patrons with cured meats and cheese, tapas and paella, and
a selection of a dozen sherries.