How Yogi Tea Uses Film to Reimagine Philanthropy
Lauren Wood, President of the Yogi Foundation, shares how the organization is charting a new path for Yogi Tea’s philanthropic storytelling—one she describes as “reimagining philanthropy as collective creation.” In this episode, Lauren walks us through a series of stunning, cinematic films co-created with farming communities in India, Sri Lanka, and Guatemala, revealing how storytelling can elevate origin, sustainability, and cultural connection in powerful new ways.
She discusses the values-driven approach behind the foundation, the belief that “film is also philanthropy,” the process of collaborating directly with grower communities, and how the team built The Theory of Spice into an immersive, multisensory experience. We also explore what it takes to tell authentic stories at scale, how Yogi approaches distribution and impact partnerships, and why showcasing possibility—rather than despair—can be its own form of social change.
TRANSCRIPT
Lauren Wood: Film and storytelling is also philanthropy. It allows us to connect with topics in a much more visceral, emotional way, right? That's how you inspire the change, or the curiosity, or the sense of wonder that then inspires the next step in the action. So I think it's committing to the idea that film is philanthropy. CTM_LaurenWood_V2
Jesse Roesler: Greetings and welcome to Content That Moves, the podcast from Credo Nonfiction and Brand Storytelling that pulls back the curtain to reveal how the very best in brand-funded films and episodic content is being funded, created, distributed, and measured. I'm your host, Jesse Roesler, founder of Credo Nonfiction, where we partner with brands to find and tell stories that reveal brand purpose and deepen brand meaning through short- and feature-length documentaries or episodic series. Visit CredoNonfiction.com to learn how we can help you create real moving stories for your brand. This podcast is co-produced by Brand Storytelling, bringing you the latest news, trends, and insights in branded content with top-of-industry events and in-depth industry coverage online. Brand Storytelling encourages a higher level of collaboration amongst advertisers, agencies, media partners, and creators in pursuit of a richer media environment. For more of the latest in the world of branded content or to explore event offerings, visit BrandStorytelling.tv today.
Jesse Roesler: Today we welcome Lauren Wood, President of the Yogi Foundation. Under her leadership, the foundation is charting a re-energized path for Yogi Tea's philanthropic storytelling, moving beyond traditional giving and into what she calls reimagining philanthropy as collective creation.
In this episode, Lauren walks us through a series of films co-created with farming communities in India, Sri Lanka, and Guatemala, showing how storytelling can elevate origin, sustainability, and connection in ways people don't often see. We'll explore what drives Yogi's values-based approach, the challenge of telling authentic stories at scale, and the belief that film itself can be a form of philanthropy.
Well, Lauren, so good to have you here. I wanted to start by letting you know: I think Yogi teas are the one thing in my house we never run out of. My wife consistently has five to 17 or 18 boxes, I would say, in the cupboard. So she was especially excited when I told her that you were gonna be here — and bringing a film that we would get to talk about. So thank you for coming.
Lauren Wood: Of course. Do you know what her favorite flavors are?
Jesse Roesler: Blueberry Green Tea Slim Life. Uh-huh. That's her morning one. Uh, nice. And then I think the Cardamom one is kind of the consistent bedtime — but honestly, we always have multiple varieties floating around.
Lauren Wood: I love it. I love it. I do too. Yeah, the Cozy Cardamom’s a hit. Immune and sleep support — it's a good combo.
Jesse Roesler: Cool. [laugh] Yeah. Well, it was very kind of you to bring all the samples for everybody here too.
Lauren Wood: My pleasure.
Jesse Roesler: Well, Lauren, I have to say the film that you showed today, The Theory of Spice, was just stunning. I mean, I work in food documentary — food television — I'm around a lot of it. And this piece was just the most immersive, impressionistic, cinematically beautiful, poetic piece of thing I've seen about food in so long. So you should be so proud of it.
Lauren Wood: Thank you. I appreciate that reflection. Yeah, it was definitely a labor of love.
Jesse Roesler: You can feel that. You can feel that. We're gonna talk about the film specifically, but before we get into that, I'd love to have you set the stage about your role, and the Yogi Foundation — and what that is — and how you're, I love this piece of language, this phrase from your website: “reimagining philanthropy as collective creation.” That's such a cool way to think about it.
Lauren Wood: Yeah. So the Yogi Foundation is entering into a new chapter, and we are setting the stage to redefine philanthropy in the context of imagination and possibility. This is kind of grounded on the premise that as humans, we're often healthier in our imagination than we are in our observation. And as we both know, we are constantly bombarded with content in the media that easily takes us into a place of despair and fear — which can certainly drive change.
Jesse Roesler: Because people are fearful and they wanna avoid what's happening. It affects perception.
Lauren Wood: Exactly. Exactly. And perception creates reality.
Jesse Roesler: It’s a reaction.
Lauren Wood: So in this exploratory phase where we were redefining what the foundation would represent and what it would stand for, we realized that there was a gap in the marketplace of organizations who were sharing stories about possibility — different ways, or more desirable ways of being.
And that's an opportunity because until we see things happening — until we see that possibility is real — until we see the things that we imagine as real in the world, we might not actually believe that it's possible.
Jesse Roesler: Right. I love that as a guiding vision or a guiding principle. It brings up the saying, “can't be it if you don't see it,” like for a lot of people. So I think that's amazing and can open the door to so many interesting possibilities.
The other piece of language from the foundation was “From Film to Field: our work seeks to inspire change,” and I think that speaks to that as well. But I'm curious if there's anything more you'd like to say about how that mission will actually come to fruition.
Lauren Wood: Yeah. I think it'll come through fruition in our giving agenda over the coming years. We've got three main categories of projects that we'll be supporting.
One is around “Grow Our Communities” — so community development in the communities in which we have relationships with and source ingredients from. Several of the films that you saw today are also in connection to foundation projects that we have with the communities that we source from. So that's the first one.
The next one is kind of next-gen, new territory works — organizations that are really pushing the boundaries of their field.
And the third is co-philanthropy — so identifying value-aligned individuals who are looking for collaborative projects and opportunities to have impact in the world. And when I mean value-aligned individuals, I'm also referring to people of influence — people who already have a community base, who have an audience, who wanna do more good in the world. How can we collaborate with those individuals and leverage their expertise and their passions to co-create projects and bring to life this mission and vision?
So that way we're broadening our own audience and demographic of who we're speaking to and who we're connecting with, ultimately.
Jesse Roesler: And are you planning to have storytelling and filmmaking in each of those three arenas, or just the first as you've done?
Lauren Wood: Potentially. And that's, you know, I think it's an exploratory moment for us. We're venturing out with these ingredient films that highlight the grower communities and their lives. And now we wanna see what the world wants next from us.
So we're gonna launch what we're calling Straight from the Source Studios, which is our production arm of the foundation. But that in and of itself gives us the platform and the runway to kind of go to the source of anything — of any topic, right?
So the projects themselves might manifest in film — that actually might be the project that we support. And we might also fund other film projects that advance the mission of the foundation. So it could be both.
Jesse Roesler: Well, especially in the third category you mentioned — working with other philanthropists — I’ve found a lot of the films that we've done live in that world of social impact. And the greatest benefit is often the subject taking that film and using it to garner further support.
And I've seen a lot of brands who align with causes doing more of this, where there might be a monetary gift for the mission, but they will fund a film that's sort of the gift that keeps on giving. Because then they can use that film for additional fundraising, and it raises awareness and elevates the whole mission. So I could see that really working well — as a win-win-win.
Lauren Wood: Absolutely. And I think it's also shifting our perspective around the impact of film. Film and storytelling is also philanthropy. It allows us to connect with topics in a much more visceral, emotional way. And again, that's how you inspire the change, or the curiosity, or the sense of wonder that then inspires the next step in the action. So I think it's also playing with this idea — or just committing to the idea — that film is philanthropy.
Jesse Roesler: I was talking to someone else here today about this idea of the hope gap. But to present these kinds of stories will change perception. And I think we need that to move to that next place. So this is so cool to hear that this is sort of your general approach.
Let’s talk about what we saw today with The Theory of Spice. Tell me about the genesis of that — and what was it always gonna look like, what we saw today? I mean, it's this journey. We're moving quickly through.
I've seen a lot of film around farming and sourcing ingredients — never anything like this. It's almost like magical realism. It's poetic. I mean, you get all the textures of the people and the ingredient itself and the environments that give it what we almost call terroir, right? Like all of these things that shape what these ingredients are — but it's done in such a cinematic, poetic way. So where did this start? And then how did you build the team and bring it to life?
Lauren Wood: Whimsical terroir. That could be what we call it. Because we're trying to think about what we call this.
First we were like, is it “para-nonfiction”? That's a little wordy.
We also took a really investigative approach to the storytelling because the idea started with: we wanna tell the story of the crop to the community. And that in and of itself felt like a bit of a played-out concept — kind of typical supply chain or sourcing story. And we also wanted to think about a different way to highlight these grower communities that really honor who they are and how they live.
So as we unpacked “community,” we're like, well, what does that really mean? It means that everything surrounding this ingredient — take cinnamon as an example — the quality of the farmer's life, the environment, the quality of the soil, but also the heritage of the land, the culture, the pastimes, the music, the ritual — all of this is actually infused in the ingredient from Sri Lanka that we enjoy on the other side of the world.
So how do we tell that in a way that creates that sense of wonder — and also incorporates some level of play, like you nodded to? It's a little whimsical, it's a little fun. So engaging directly with our grower communities to co-create these scenes: what’s most important to you? What do you wanna share with the world? And then collaborating with them on set to really bring it to life in a beautiful way.
Jesse Roesler: Yeah. And you captured all the things that, in my opinion, you can't convey in any other medium. Like, I can't tell you what it feels like to be in some of those places, but I think the way that it's captured and using all the tools of cinema — it's transporting. It really is.
Lauren Wood: We see ingredients — and tea in general — as a portal. We were talking about silence and solitude earlier, which is also a portal. And I think tea provides an opportunity to connect with oneself and to transport yourself. And that's what we really wanted these films to be: a portal to another world. You may not be able to go to Sri Lanka or India or Guatemala, but we can take you there and we can connect you with the people there and the pastimes and the customs and the culture.
And the other piece I wanted to note: part of the inspiration here — because you mentioned no one's ever done storytelling around food or ingredients like this, which I agree — Madhur Jaffrey has a line in Climbing the Mango Treeswhere she says, “spices were more than flavors. They were stories waiting to be told.” And that fundamentally is what we're trying to do — hopefully evoking some sense of wonder and curiosity about our food, and ultimately about the communities that cultivate them.
Jesse Roesler: Yeah. And it felt like even more than storytelling — it was experiential in a way. And I can imagine settling into this film, making some of your tea, and having a multisensory, transformative experience. So that'll be fun.
I'd love to get into a little bit more of the process because I could feel, before you talked about what it took to make these, just how much time and freedom was allowed the creative and the production team. Because you just can't get to that level of specificity.
You have to know a place with a certain intimacy before you can make what was made, I feel like. So I understand there was the knowledge of your team that got passed along, and also spending time in some of these places. So what went into that? Can you give us a sense of the scope of the pre-production and the production?
Lauren Wood: Yeah. I mean, the pre-production was very rigorous and detailed — again, an investigative journalism level. That's what we were like: do we call this investigative poetry? Because we really dug deep, but there was also only so much that we could do from abroad.
Ginger and cinnamon, we shot first. So the process looked a little bit different because we had learnings from those experiences that we carried through to cardamom and Guatemala.
So in India and Sri Lanka, we did lean heavily on local production companies who could go and scout for us, connect with the farmers, support translation — translation was a huge theme for us throughout this, given the regions that we were filming.
But leaning into the local production companies who were experts and understood the customs and the cultural norms — they could go and do the site visits and help us really get a lay of the land so that, to the best of our ability, when we flew over, we could hit the ground running. Which worked out pretty well because they were fantastic teams.
And I think we probably could have been more efficient had we been able to be there ourselves to develop the relationship directly with the farmers, and just spend more time with them — in their homes, in their environments — really kind of living with them to be able to capture even more of those moments.
That said, the outcome obviously is fantastic, and we were able to capture a ton.
Taking those learnings into the development with the community in Guatemala, that development was supposed to be about a month, and it ended up being almost four months of development with them. In part because as we started to get to know more about who they are — the perceptions around Westerners, what they've experienced as a community — knowing that while this is a documentary, it's not a talking-heads documentary, there is some creative freedom. There is some imaginative component that comes to life.
And when you are working with another community, they wanna be sure that they're represented in a way that honors who they are. And when it's more artistic, it's really difficult to describe what that's gonna look like — because we also didn't really necessarily know.
So anyway, it took us doing a site visit down ourselves to be able to scout it and start to develop those relationships. And then with those relationships solidified, we come back to the US and we're able to have WhatsApp and Skype calls with them to start to say — in broken Spanish — here's the type of shot list we're looking to create. What else do you wanna create? So that ended up being almost a four-month process for us to co-develop the whole film with them and some local people down there that we were able to work with.
We had to fly in a bunch of the team from the US because not many people in that area were equipped to produce what we were looking to produce. And so it also became very quickly aware to us that we were going to be investing a lot more in just getting the right crew down there. And that no one's ever invested in getting the right crew down there to get the shots. So just by virtue of us being down there with the crew that we had, we were capturing imagery that's never been seen.
So that was the process on the film production side. And obviously we came back and did post.
I guess the other thing to note is that we had designed these to be three independent films — three independent ingredients. So we now essentially have four assets: the snackable ingredient-focused ginger, cinnamon, cardamom films, and the longform. And so the longform was a little bit of an extra surprise for us in terms of how do we bring it together in a way that's cohesive.
Jesse Roesler: Awesome. I'm super curious too — within production — it blew me away both in terms of the intimacy of those moments, but then also how beautifully cinematic every frame is. It reminded me of two films made from the same filmmaking team. Are you familiar with The Truffle Hunters? And they made two films — one more focused on food, which would be The Truffle Hunters.
It was one of those where literally every shot — it was verité — but every shot was so painterly. So I'm like, how do you do both of those things? And it was that they had spent weeks and weeks, maybe months with these people. They would observe and then note: this is the rhythm of their day; this is a beautiful frame and a beautiful moment. If we set up here — they would kind of light it — but then they were still just letting life unfold in that frame.
And seeing this today, I'm like, wow — every frame is so beautiful, but it also feels so authentic. So can you talk about how you're able to capture these moments that feel so authentic, but are so painterly and cinematic at the same time?
Lauren Wood: I've gotta give credit to our director, Gilly, and our DPs, Nick and Gabe. Their cohesion — Nick was our DP for cinnamon and ginger, and then Gabe was our DP for cardamom. And the synergy that they had with Gilly, I think, is what created what you're talking about — this really painterly, beautiful, lyrical, cinematic quality to the footage. Because they knew that's what we were looking for. We were looking to highlight the beauty — the authenticity of this community — in a way that would spark a little bit of love, a little bit of warmth. And I think it was really their relationship, and what they knew we were looking for, that allowed that to come to life.
Jesse Roesler: And were they sort of observing the rhythms of daily life and then they would say, we love this moment, we love this moment — let's come back and get that? Or what was the process on the ground?
Lauren Wood: Yeah, I would say that was the process on the ground. And so it was very opportunistic in the way that we shot. They were very full days. We had set lists that we needed to capture every day. And that set list obviously had been informed by numerous conversations with the communities there and making sure — for the most part — we all had a shared understanding of what we were looking to shoot.
But then we were on the ground — it was, “Oh, catch those two people dancing over there.” Catch that woman with her child over here. And so we were on the move constantly to be able to capture those authentic moments.
Jesse Roesler: And was it like, let's just go grab this, or were you like, this is beautiful — can we set up a light and then go? How much of that was there? Was there interjection, or was it literally just: we go here, we grab this, we go here, we grab that?
Lauren Wood: That's a great question. It was a little bit of both. I think less so when we were in India and Sri Lanka because we didn't have as much time — so it was a little more opportunistic. Let's just go here, follow that person down that road — what are they doing?
Whereas in Guatemala, because we had been able to do the site visit ourselves, we were able to go and set up some of those things and make sure we had the right lighting because of what we saw opportunistically on that site visit.
So when you're sharing eyeballs with a local production company in Sri Lanka, you're just gonna see different things than when you go yourself. So I think that was a learning for us — that we wanna be able to do that ourselves in advance so that we can kind of recreate some of those moments.
Jesse Roesler: Cool. Well, thanks for going down that path. I think this is the most in-depth I've gotten into the actual production because I was so blown away by the imagery — it's so, so beautiful.
Lauren Wood: Thank you. You're just scratching the surface. There's a lot of footage yet to be used.
Jesse Roesler: Cool. Well, say more about that. You have this vehicle of the three stories that we saw today, which you have very clear distribution plans for. Can you speak about that, and then also how else you might use what you captured in other ways?
Lauren Wood: Absolutely. So it was very important to us that because we were taking a bit of a risk in creating these films — we’ve never done anything like this before. Yogi as an organization is at an interesting moment in time. It's surprisingly a 53-year-old global company.
Jesse Roesler: Blew me away when you said that. I was like, really?
Lauren Wood: It's been around the block for a long time. And it's always been a B2B business. And over the last couple of years, we've been evolving the company to become D2C — so really talking to people for the first time.
So I'd say these films are in support of that direction, and a risk because it's so different than anything that we've ever done before. Our sales team is still probably like, I don't really understand — we're not selling a product in this — so what are we really doing?
So I'd say that would be the first thing: it's a bit of an experiment for us. We're gonna see what we learn.
And so because of the openness and willingness of the C-suite to support this project, it was really important that we had our distribution unlocked. And that was not gonna be an afterthought.
So we came to Elevate last year to start to mingle and learn more — what are the unknown unknowns as a team, right? Who are the people who probably know the distribution space best? That's when we found Marcus and Amy at Passion Point, and then connected with Kristen over at LA Times.
Jesse Roesler: All very lovely people.
Lauren Wood: I would say incredible human beings.
Jesse Roesler: I love them all. Yeah.
Lauren Wood: You found the best people. Amazing experts. I felt so proud to be up there with them today. The film — it was a really beautiful moment.
So with Passion Point and with LA Times, it's been an ongoing conversation since Elevate last year. We engaged Marcus at the end of last year to start to say: let's lay the foundation of a strategy of what distribution could look like.
LA Times had expressed interest in featuring Yogi and the Yogi Foundation's films as the first brand spotlight within their Short Docs product, which was amazing. And that felt very meaningful because to me it demonstrated their understanding of our vision and our mission behind these films and the foundation. And that's the most important thing to me — the value alignment and the relationship.
And so Marcus was wonderful in bringing us a plethora of options for distribution that we considered. Many of them felt very transactional — they just wanted to know how much budget we had available. And what they offered from a distribution perspective wasn’t, to me, going to spark the kind of conversation that we were hoping to in the culture.
And the LA Times came back to us with a beautiful offer: in addition to the spotlights, co-authoring articles, bringing us to different festivals together, and really becoming a partner with us — and bringing this to life as an experiment on their side. It's their first brand, and an experiment on our side, because it's our first film. So that's what we're planning for the fall launch.
The other piece I would add is that a couple of months ago we decided that in response to the reaction to having Gaby Moreno be the voiceover for cardamom — and just a quick note on that: we really wanted the voiceover for cardamom to be someone from Guatemala.
And when we honed in on the concept for cardamom and that we wanted to tell the story of this community, we wanted to do that in a way that would create some softness, some warmth, some inspiration, but also instill the resilience that this community embodies.
And so we reached out to Gaby Moreno, who's a three-time Grammy Award-winning Guatemalan musician and singer, shared the idea with her, and she said, “I wanna write a song about this community and about this crop” — “the green gold” is what they call the crop.
So everyone's response to the Gaby Moreno collaboration then inspired us to say: well, let's reach out to two other Grammy Award-winning singers and musicians to support the voiceovers for the other two films.
So now we have Jon Batiste — who's also an incredible human being — and Rhiannon Giddens, who is another Grammy Award-winning singer, for the voices for ginger and cinnamon. So that is also gonna help us with distribution. So that's also, I think, an example of how these co-philanthropy projects can come to life.
Jesse Roesler: No, I'm so excited. I think that's a perfect home for it for many reasons. Beyond that, do you plan to use what you captured in other ways? Is this the first of one, or…?
Lauren Wood: I think that we're open to creating more films around this concept — the theory of spice in general — and revealing these different cultures and communities from around the world.
And the footage will likely be used for other storytelling opportunities — probably shorter versions. The Yogi Tea side of the business might be able to leverage some of the film content for some of their own storytelling purposes.
But we're just at the beginning phase of having just completed these films and now: what do we do next with all this beautiful content that we have? BTS is definitely on the table. We've got some amazing footage there to share. But we could do so many different little vignettes — the people that we collaborated with.
Jesse Roesler: Yeah. I'm sure. Beautiful. I always like to ask: seeing what you created, what's inspiring you these days — whether that's in brand storytelling, or just film, or food, or the intersection of those things?
Lauren Wood: I get really excited when I see and feel people taking responsibility for their own lives and their own experiences. And when they start to understand that their beliefs, the meaning they assign to things, and the focus they give to things is ultimately what's creating their reality.
And so this kind of conversation, or even the feedback from this morning screenings, and the inspiration felt by people, and the desire to learn more about our food, the desire to learn more about how to collaborate with the Yogi Foundation — reconsider different ways to approach philanthropy — that's what's exciting to me.
And I think that's really what the world needs: more people coming together in a mode of inspiration, in a mode of aspiration and possibility. These are very worthy causes to commit to and to invest in because they're essential for our future. They're essential for our lives.
And we've got a lot of opportunity, I think, to inspire possibility through the foundation, through storytelling, and through the collaborations that we support. So that's what I'm really inspired by. I love food and ingredients and all of those things too. And I'm also just inspired to hear what people feel in response to this.
Jesse Roesler: This feels like one expression of that bigger idea, which is the most exciting thing. Well, I think that's a beautiful sentiment to close on. So thanks for being here.
Lauren Wood: Thank you so much. I appreciate it.
Jesse Roesler: To watch The Theory of Spice, visit TheYogiFoundation.com or find it on the LA Times Short Docs platform. As always, I hope you've been enjoying the show, and I'd love to hear from you. If you have ideas for guests or topics for future episodes, drop me a note at jesse@credononfiction.com. CTM_LaurenWood_V2
