Komal Ahmad ... is the founder and CEO of Copia, an online platform that connects businesses with leftover food to local organizations that can distribute that food to people in need. While an undergraduate ... Ahmad was walking down the street when she was approached by a homeless man who asked her for money to buy food. Instead of giving him a few bucks, Ahmad decided to take him out to lunch and discovered that he was an Iraq war veteran. That hit me like a ton of bricks," she said, noting that she'd just gotten back from summer training for the U.S. Navy. "It was almost like a glimpse of my future. This was a perfectly educated guy, came from a good family. He was just a person who was down on his luck." Across the street from where Ahmad and the man had eaten lunch, the university's cafeteria was throwing out thousands of pounds of leftover food. Right then, the dual problems of hunger and food waste struck her. "Those who have and are wasting and those who need and are starving - and they're both living quite literally right across the street from each other," she said. "That's just ridiculous." Ahmad launched Feeding Forward, a local service that began ... in 2011 and has since grown into the tech startup Copia, which has now distributed some 600,000 pounds of food to 720,000 people in need. As Copia expands, Ahmad said that she hopes her phone app will set the stage for new platforms that can redistribute a wider array of necessities, like medicine and medical supplies.