Abby Schmid,
Senior Scientist
at Kraft Foods
When Abby Schmid was growing up, her mom never had to wonder what she was up to after the day ended at Hannah Middle School. While her mom was out pursuing her Master’s degree at Michigan State, she and her older sister were in their East Lansing kitchen, huddled around a cookbook and usually covered in flour. It was in her parents’ kitchen that she really came to love food. She loved measuring the ingredients, tinkering with recipes and especially eating the results.
Abby decided to pursue a career in food science based on those afternoons in the kitchen and can truly say it was one of the best decisions she ever made. She is currently a Senior Scientist at Kraft Foods one of the largest food and beverage companies in the world. Since starting at Kraft in 2002, she has developed new breakfast cereals, cereal bars, and protein bars for the Post, South Beach Living (formerly South Beach Diet) and Balance brands. She is a co-inventor on two low-calorie cereal bar patents that are pending in the United States and overseas.
Her undergraduate food science studies began at North Carolina State University. One of her favorite classes at NC State was dairy processing. The course taught her how to make all types of dairy products including yogurt, cottage cheese, and ice cream from scratch. Taking home her tasty peanut butter and chocolate ice cream to share with loved ones was such a proud moment! In addition to her coursework, she was a member of the Food Science Club, Institute of Food Technologists, and volunteered as a nutrition counselor for the Women Infant and Children program in Raleigh, NC.
After graduating with honors from NC State, Abby worked as a Food Technologist at Parco Foods, a retail bakery located in the Chicago suburbs. At Parco she developed new cookie products such as Cupcake Cookies™, as well as holiday and custom cookies for grocery store chains like Kroger. Most of her cookie-making skills were learned on the job from her colleagues. To enhance her learning, she also studied cookie ingredient technology at the American Institute of Baking.
Abby worked one year at Parco before pursuing a Masters in Food Science at Michigan State University. Her Masters research project focused on the investigation of thiamin retention in puffed wheat, which has relevance to the breakfast cereal and snacking industry. In 2001, she presented her research at the American Association of Cereal Chemists Annual Meeting and in 2005 published an article in the scientific journal, Cereal Chemistry. Her activities at Michigan State included Outreach Co-Chair for the Food Science Club and member of the Product Development and College Bowl Teams. She also participated in the study abroad course “International Food Laws and Regulations”. This 3-week trek throughout Europe included stops in Amsterdam, Geneva, Brussels, Florence, and Rome. She attended lectures inside the headquarters of the world’s most influential food and health governing agencies – WHO, EU, WTO, and FAO. For Abby the highlight was observing the global factor of food and the cultural complexity that exists in eating behaviors throughout the world. This insight was valuable in that it prepared her well as a future scientist at Kraft, developing products for a diverse population.
Coming up with new, innovative products for Kraft has been both challenging and rewarding. Between testing products at the plant, attending focus groups and conferences, and meeting with customers, her job has taken her to great cities like New York City, San Francisco, Baltimore, and Montreal. She loves her job because of the people. They come from all over the world and work together, as a team, to achieve high-quality results. But best of all is the feeling she gets when she walks into a grocery store, sees something she created on the shelf, and says to herself, “I made that!”.
A long-time supporter of Michigan State athletics, Abby enjoys watching MSU Football and Men’s Basketball games. She is a tennis and softball player and was the commissioner of her fantasy football league last year. At Kraft she is a member of two Organizational Excellence teams, Women In Operations and The FUN Team.
