RNAeatsBugs is helping the people who are building a better future food system. Farmers, founders, scientists, engineers, entrepreneurs, investors, chefs, celebrities, CEOs, policy makers, government regulators; we've worked with them all. Our is to contribute meaningful value as a catalyst and connector in the insect agriculture industry as it grows and contributes to a more sustainable and ethical future food and agriculture system. This is me below, but all of the things I've done have been with amazing teams along the way, and always in an effort to provide more knowledge and resources to the people coming behind us, to save time and increase impact.

Robert Nathan Allen, known as RNA to friends and colleagues, founded the Austin based nonprofit Little Herds (https://www.littleherds.org/) in 2013 as an educational resource to the public about the nutritional and environmental benefits of edible insects. A decade later, Little Herds is still the first, oldest and longest running nonprofit focused on insect agriculture in the United States. . In 2014 he worked with Aspire Food Group to start the first edible-insect farm in Texas growing insects and transforming them into food products. In 2016 he co-founded the North American Coalition for Insect Agriculture (https://nacia.org/), where he still sits on the Board of Directors, and co-founded a startup upcycling Austin’s wasted food nutrients into high quality chicken feed using insects. After organizing what would have been the largest food-focused event at SXSW 2020, “The Future Of Food @ SXSW,” the Covid19 pandemic shifted focus from “feeding people bugs,” to “feeding people, period.” In 2020 and 2021 he organized and managed programs for “Keep Austin Together,” under The Cook’s Nook’s leadership, ensuring vulnerable community members in Austin and Travis County had access to safe, nutritious and nourishing food, helping distribute more than 120,000 meals. He produced and co-organized The Future of Food @ SXSW Online in 2021, with headliners including Questlove, Temple Grandin, Moby and Kari Byron; The Future of Food @ SXSW 2022, in person and livestreamed to 2.5M viewers, with headliners including Arlan Hamilton, Andrew Zimmern, Adrian Greniere and Chef Tiffany Derry; and 2023, with Headliners including Julia Collins, Dr. Sweta Chakraborty, Danielle Nierenberg, and Chef Tavel Bristol-Joseph; and 2024, with headliners including Arlan Hamilton, Julia Collins, Dr. Temple Grandin, Ennis Olson and Chef Adrian Lipscombe, while also organizing partnerships and public/private collaborations to fight hunger in the Austin community, providing meals to students, seniors and other vulnerable populations in need. He regularly consults with companies and organizations interested in the growing BugAg (insect agriculture) movement, speaks on and moderates panels at academic and industry conferences and is an industry expert for a variety of publications and media outlets, including NPR, Reuters, the Associated Press, National Geographic, Washington Post, Pacific Standard, Newsweek, Popular Science, Entrepreneur, Buzzfeed, CNBC’s On The Money and more