Summer 2016

About the Magazine

Northwestern is the quarterly alumni magazine for Northwestern University.
Contact or contribute to the magazine.

Alumni Life

Maggie Hecht Le Beau: Social Entrepreneur

Story Tools

Share this story

Facebook  Facebook
Twitter  Twitter
Email  Email

Print this story

Tell us what you think. E-mail comments or questions to the editors at letters@northwestern.edu.

Find Us on Social Media

Facebook  Twitter  Twitter

Maggie Hecht Le Beau ’80 first fell in love with Nepal when she traveled the Annapurna Circuit in the early 1990s with her friend Ruth Levin ’80. Le Beau was struck by the spirit of the Nepalese and felt compelled to give back. Years later, when her father suggested that there was an opportunity to build a sustainable tea economy in Nepal, Le Beau quickly turned social entrepreneur. In late 2012, after leaving her job as chief marketing officer at Dex Media, she founded Nepali Tea Traders, a Denver-based company that is developing a North American market for Nepal’s premium teas. With its high altitude and clean air, the South Asian country grows exquisite — but often overlooked — tea. “It’s a natural resource for this very beautiful but struggling country,” she says. The company sells its award-winning loose-leaf teas to tea shops and specialty grocers and online to consumers, while ensuring that the smallholder farmers receive a fair share of the profits and donating a portion of the company’s proceeds back to Nepal to support health care, education and social services. Recently the company sent more than $12,000 to help reconstruct a school that was destroyed in the April 2015 earthquake.