Can a company scale to thousands of retail stores and achieve millions in revenue with a team that fits at a single dinner table?

In the latest episode of the Return to People Podcast, host Kaleem Clarkson sits down with Lisa Curtis, the Founder and CEO of Kuli Kuli Foods. A Forbes 30 Under 30 honoree and one of Inc. Magazine's top 100 female founders, Lisa shares how her mission-driven superfood brand cracked the code on building a high-performing, globally distributed team without sacrificing impact or profitability.

Lisa unpacks the reality of running a global remote team without a tech company budget, explaining how she turned unexpected tariff challenges into an opportunity to tap into international talent. Instead of viewing time zones as an obstacle, Kuli Kuli treats geographic dispersion as a quiet competitive advantage that enables nearly 24-hour operations.

She also emphasizes the importance of intentionality in the distributed employee experience. From flying executives across borders for side-by-side training to celebrating diverse cultural traditions at weekly standups, Lisa argues that running a lean business across borders requires moving away from startup hustle culture and treating entrepreneurship as a marathon, not a sprint.

As Lisa puts it, "No market, no mission. We gotta sell products. But we also have to do it in a way that really improves the lives of people around the world."

The conversation dives deep into the realities of navigating this modern workplace framework, mapping out the core friction points and breakthroughs every leadership team faces:

• The Core Challenges: Lisa details the raw friction of remote onboarding without physical proximity, the deliberate design required to maintain an engaging company culture across continents, and navigating tight operational margins under intense budget constraints.
• The Core Successes: You'll learn how Kuli Kuli turned global hiring into their greatest talent acquisition weapon, how they unlocked an overlooked talent pool of highly credentialed parents re-entering the workforce, and how they built a deeply human culture that thrives across borders.

Learn more about Lisa:

• Lisa's LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/lisamariecurtis/
• Kuli Kuli Foods' Website: https://www.kulikulifoods.com/