“I’m about the most nonlinear entrepreneur you can imagine,” says Katherine Shamraj ’98, CEO of Sproot, a company she cofounded in 2012, which delivers healthy lunches to kids in Boston-area preschools and daycare centers. She was working in fast-developing Abu Dhabi from 2007 to 2011, consulting on how to bring more efficiency to the government. Katherine started thinking there had to be a better way to “generate economic growth that’s not wasteful and that benefits more than just the bottom line.” Then she read an article, “Creating Shared Value,” in the January 2011 Harvard Business Review, which suggests, “companies are widely perceived to be prospering at the expense of the broader community” and “missing customer needs,” among other blunders that limit their own success and longevity. It struck a chord with Katherine.

Katherine returned to Boston and entered MIT’s Sloan Fellows Program in Innovation and Global Leadership, still unsure of what would follow. A foodie at heart, however, she figured her next step would be something gastronomic. Her path became equally about women in business. She asked herself where there was market opportunity and where she might have the most impact. She also recalled that in business school, which was only about 20 percent women, “the women speakers who had achieved great things were also in a minority, and they said, ‘I had supportive husbands.’” This didn’t sit well with Katherine. Ultimately, she wanted to help women who want the best for their careers and for their families achieve just that. With Sproot, she takes the daily hassle of choosing and making kids’ lunches off parents’ plates.

Helping working parents is only half of Sproot’s mission. The complementary part aims to influence what kids eat. “Your flavor preferences are actually mostly established before age 5,” Katherine says. “So it really matters what you’re feeding children at that age.” With Katherine’s love of cooking and the help of a staff nutritionist, Sproot delivers tasty, fresh, minimally processed meals that are as locally sourced as possible and attractively packaged in reusable animal-shaped tins.

Now almost two years into delivering lunches, Katherine hopes to expand Sproot from an individual client base to also include direct-to-school contracts, as well as offering take-home dinners for families, cooking classes, and wellness events. “We want to continue doing individual lunches because it’s a huge need for parents. Getting a contract with a school would really help us as a business, though,” she says. The Sproot website has grown, too, with a blog, recipes, food news, and nutrition information. The positive feedback from families who love Sproot’s lunches makes all the hard work worthwhile. Katherine is thankful for the trust parents have given her and her budding company: “It’s hard to let go of having control of what your kids are eating; it takes a certain level of humility and reason.”