After giving birth to her first child in 2017, Kim Chappell returned to her job as the head of communications for a tech firm in San Francisco. The position required a lot of travel and, as a nursing mom, that presented challenges.
Chappell’s company was supportive, even covering the shipping costs to send her frozen breast milk back home after she asked if they would.
The experience of advocating for herself as a new mom returning to work was so meaningful and empowering for Chappell ABJ ’06, the Grady grad did what came naturally. She wrote about it.
Chappell’s Medium post changed her life.
Laura Modi, an Ireland-born, Northern California-based entrepreneur, tracked Chappell down and offered her a job as the marketing lead for a startup she’d co-founded: an organic infant formula company she called Bobbie, after what Modi’s first child called her bottle.
Modi wanted her company to vocally support women with their feeding choices, and she thought Chappell was perfect to lead that effort.
For Chappell, there was only one problem.
“I wasn’t a marketer,” Chappell recalls. Before moving to the West Coast, she’d spent a decade as an award-winning reporter and anchor at TV stations in North Carolina, Tennessee, and Indiana. “But Laura believed in me.”
Emboldened by that trust, Chappell bet on herself. She took the job and found her calling.
“We told our own stories as mothers leading this company,” says Chappell, Bobbie’s chief brand officer. “Then we started sharing the stories of our customers. I think it really helped people feel seen by the brand in a way no one in our industry was doing.”
One of those stories was Chappell’s own. As evidenced by her blogging, she was dedicated to breastfeeding, but the pressures of work and family life took their toll. And she made the decision to supplement her babies’ feeding with formula. She was living and breathing the societal pressures that come with that choice alongside Bobbie’s customers. Bobbie’s organic, European-style recipe stood apart from other domestically available formulas. Yes, Chappell worked for the company, but her family also used the product. Her experience was personal, emotional, and authentic.
That authenticity of storytelling, a skill she learned at Grady, connected with parents.
Within a year and a half of its launch in 2021, Bobbie surpassed $100 million in revenue. It began as a direct to consumer, membership-based company but has since expanded to the shelves of mainstream retailers like Walmart and Target.
Bobbie now employs more than 100 people across the country and owns its own manufacturing facility in Ohio. From her home base in Austin, Texas, Chappell travels around the U.S. promoting Bobbie in new markets one week and meeting with brand ambassadors/young moms like tennis star Naomi Osaka and influencer/UGA alumna Kelly Stafford the next.
In 2023, UGA named Chappell to its 40 Under 40 class. This year, Chappell was included among Forbes’ 50 most entrepreneurial chief marketing officers and ADWEEK’s 2025 Creative 100 list. The company was also named one of TIME Magazine’s 100 Most Influential for 2025.
Winning awards and recognition isn’t necessarily Chappell’s goal, but they certainly don’t hurt. They also open a lot of networking opportunities.
In February, Modi was named one of TIME’s Women of the Year. Chappell, now a mom of three, joined her at the honorary gala in West Hollywood, California. They shared a table with other honorees, including Academy Award-winning actress—and mother of four—Nicole Kidman.
“Do you want to know what we talked about?” Chappell asks.
“We talked about how she fed her babies! It’s a universal throughline to every mother, and we had a great time chatting. She was lovely. It was like one of those surreal moments where it’s hard to believe that we went from working in a basement in San Francisco to sitting at a TIME dinner gala next to Nicole Kidman.”