The Katlin Smith-Simple Mills Fellowship Honors One of Chicago Booth’s Brightest Success Stories

Katlin Smith has a favorite saying: “To whom much is given, much is expected.”

It’s a mantra that drove the former Chicago Booth student and founder of Simple Mills while she was still a young entrepreneur with a business idea that would revolutionize the food industry. It’s a belief that motivated her at Booth and afterward, while she grew Simple Mills into an $800-million company as CEO. Currently, it’s what guides her as a philanthropist looking to empower the next generation of difference-makers.

Smith is also the first to credit the people who helped her along the way, and the same can be said for two of Simple Mills’ early investors: Christopher McGowan, adjunct professor of entrepreneurship at Booth and general partner of CJM Ventures, and Doug Monieson, MBA ’89, chief executive officer and executive chairman of UICO, chairman emeritus of Hyde Park Angels, and investor-in-residence at the Polsky Center for Entrepreneurship and Innovation.

In the spirit of paying that help forward, and to honor Smith’s incredible journey, McGowan, Monieson, and a group of donors including Smith herself established a new award at Booth to provide financial assistance to young entrepreneurs in the Full-Time MBA Program: the Katlin Smith-Simple Mills Fellowship. The donors hope it will provide opportunities for students who, like Smith, want to start businesses with broad social impact.

The Founding of Simple Mills

The idea for Simple Mills was born out of Smith's difficulty finding convenient, nourishing foods while traveling for her job as a management consultant. Frustrated by the lack of nutritious packaged options on grocery store shelves, Smith spent months experimenting with grain-free baking recipes in her apartment kitchen before perfecting her first product. After securing a spot on the shelves of her local Whole Foods, she worked tirelessly to expand the business and meet growing consumer demand, laying the foundation for what would become one of the nation’s leading better-for-you food brands.

When the opportunity arose to attend business school, Smith was torn. She had been working full time while investing every spare cent into growing her early-stage venture. The financial and time commitments that would be required to earn her MBA were daunting.

However, one of the tipping points for Smith was when she was awarded a Herman Family Fellowship to attend Chicago Booth. The fellowship, established in 1995 by Karen and Michael Herman, MBA ’64, provides financial assistance to incoming Booth students interested in entrepreneurship.

Beyond making business school financially feasible, the fellowship reinforced Smith’s belief in her fledgling company. “It helped me feel that someone else believed in me and in what I was trying to build,” Smith says. “At a pivotal moment when I was debating whether to close up shop, that belief mattered enormously.”

Chicago Booth and the New Venture Challenge

Smith brought the challenges she faced as a young entrepreneur into the classroom at Booth, where she learned new ideas and tools to help grow Simple Mills. Smith remembers the school’s emphasis on independent thinking and multiple viewpoints.

“There wasn’t a single ‘right’ answer or path,” Smith explains. “That mindset ended up being incredibly valuable for me as an entrepreneur, because building a company often requires being comfortable with ambiguity, questioning conventional wisdom, and forming your own point of view.”

At the end of her first year, Smith entered Simple Mills into the Edward L. Kaplan, ’71, New Venture Challenge (NVC), where she won first prize and met “an incredible community of builders and thinkers” who helped sharpen her problem-solving skills and creativity.

It was during the NVC finals that Smith’s business caught the attention of McGowan and Monieson.

“I remember sitting in the NVC in 2014 as Katlin was presenting,” McGowan says. “I tried one of her samples, and it made me want to invest because she had a great tasting product and demonstrated so much traction—$1 million in sales—which was more than any company I had ever seen in the NVC.”

McGowan served as a significant angel investor and debt investor during each of Simple Mills’ equity rounds, as well as a board observer for four years. During his involvement with the company, McGowan continued to be impressed by Smith’s leadership and enthusiasm.

“Katlin sets ambitious goals and holds herself and her whole team to very high standards. She seeks out talented advisors and team members and was relentless in trying to find the best solutions to challenges,” McGowan says.

Monieson led the 2014 seed investment in Simple Mills as then-chairman of Hyde Park Angels, a leading early-stage investor in Chicago. Monieson was similarly struck by Smith’s business acumen.

“I knew little about almond flour or consumer packaged goods, but I believed in Katlin’s vision and determination. The investment ultimately returned more than 60x for the group and reinforced my belief that pairing an active angel network with a top business school can help create exceptional companies,” says Monieson.

The Idea for the Fellowship

In 2025, Simple Mills sold for $795 million to Flowers Foods. At a celebration of the successful exit, Monieson and McGowan discussed the idea of honoring Smith by establishing a scholarship, an award that would make a Booth education accessible for future entrepreneurs.

“Katlin has been such a great ambassador for Booth and the NVC, and every investor did meaningfully well, so it was a no-brainer when we first started talking about the fellowship,” says McGowan.

When Monieson and McGowan approached Smith with the idea of a scholarship in her honor, she was humbled and enthusiastic. Smith herself contributed to the effort, and Monieson and McGowan recruited other Simple Mills investors to join them in making a gift.

Buoyed by a dollar-for-dollar scholarship match from Chicago Booth, the donors’ investments established and endowed the Katlin Smith-Simple Mills Fellowship in 2025 with the intent of “supporting and inspiring the next generation of social and entrepreneurial leaders who demonstrate a strong interest in using business as a force for good.”

Beyond honoring Smith’s impact, establishing the fellowship was also personal for McGowan and Monieson, who had both received help on the way to their own successful careers.

“I was a financial aid kid, and if I look at all the great opportunity I’ve had in life, it all stems from the fact that someone had set the path for me with a scholarship when I was younger,” says McGowan.

Monieson is similarly grateful for the education and opportunities he received at Booth, and he wanted to pay those opportunities forward.

“Creating a permanent scholarship to help attract the next generation of entrepreneurs to Booth is a meaningful way for me to give back to a university that has had such a profound impact on my life and career,” says Monieson.

Investing in Entrepreneurs

Starr Marcello, AM ’04, MBA ’17, deputy dean for MBA and masters programs, special advisor to the provost, and adjunct associate professor of entrepreneurship, has seen the impact that awards like the Katlin Smith-Simple Mills Fellowship can have on students.

“Katlin’s journey and the success of Simple Mills exemplify not only the power of individual talent and entrepreneurial creativity but also the value of the Polsky Center and the Booth faculty and alumni network. The scholarship in Katlin’s name demonstrates how a small community of donors with a pay-it-forward ethos can come together to make a big impact on students’ futures,” says Marcello.

For Smith, establishing the fellowship is one of the new avenues for impact that she sees in the next chapter of her career.

“I’ve become increasingly focused on how we help more people step into roles where they can create meaningful change in the world,” says Smith. “The scholarship feels meaningful because it’s not just about recognizing the past, it’s about helping invest in future builders, leaders, and changemakers who may go on to create impact far beyond what any one person can do alone.”

Reflecting on the fellowship, Smith can’t help but think of the award she received when considering attending Booth over a decade ago—a powerful vote of confidence, funded by a supporter of the school, that helped motivate her on her path to success.

“One person’s belief, encouragement, or support can end up impacting far more lives than they ever see directly,” Smith says. “My hope is that this scholarship, particularly with its focus on social entrepreneurship, can help support future entrepreneurs and changemakers at similarly pivotal moments in their own journeys, moments where—without the generosity of others—they may not otherwise be able to continue forward.”

The following donors have given to the Katlin Smith-Simple Mills Fellowship: Patricia Cox
Ellen Rudnick, MBA ’73, and Paul Earle, MBA ’66
Dan Korybalski
Joel Krauss, MBA ’74
Anne and Russell Mayerfeld
Christopher McGowan and Sandy Wang
Dawn and Stephen McKenna
Leslie and Doug Monieson, MBA ’89
Robert Rosenberg, MBA ’97
Katlin Smith
Mark Tebbe and Robin Loewenberg Tebbe

To support scholarships at Chicago Booth, please reach out to Hannah Ruth Henrickson.