Nicole Bernard Dawes is a truly remarkable woman. At a young age, she strode into a crowded snack marketplace holding fast to a dream—and strong ideals—only to find roadblock after roadblock in her path.
At a time when organic and non-GMO were still anomalies in the center of the store, she broke new ground by introducing organic snacks into key categories, scrambling to find the right ingredients, with the right quality metrics, to fill production runs. When the Great Recession rocked the nation in 2007, organic snacks took a hit. Then, in 2009, immediately after the untimely death of her father—who was also her business partner—she suddenly faced the reality of a pivotal called loan, only to find a new lender at the last minute of the last hour. She fought a constant uphill battle as a female entrepreneur in an industry historically dominated by men. She gambled everything on a dream. And she made that dream come true with the successful launch of a line of premium organic tortilla chips, now the flagship products of her company, Late July Snacks.