As the Founder of Create A Change Now, Candace Knobloch brings 30 years of highly successful business development and management experience to this nonprofit. After 15 years in the airline industry, Candace took her career to another level when she co-founded one of Nevada’s largest Health Insurance Brokerages, Custom Benefit Consultants. She took her agency nationwide with the development of the Costco Health Insurance Plans offered to individuals and business members. After retiring, when Candace’s imagination sparked her to start the nonprofit organization, Create A Change Now, she knew she’d found the perfect recipe for change. She was convinced having edible gardens in valley elementary schools would provide the platform needed to address increasing obesity rates in children and empower them to make healthy food choices. Since 2009, Create A Change Now has led the school garden movement from the ground up. “Getting their fingers dirty and watching seeds grow gives kids a sense of pride and self-esteem,” she explains. “It also develops a respect for what they put in their body. Statistics support, if they grow it, they’ll eat it”.
She then paired local Chefs with elementary schools to teach kids ways to create easy, delicious meals using their garden’s bounty, also while making it engaging and fun. Their Healthy School, Healthy Life programming, now encompasses overall health and wellness from head to toe while including the families, too.
Her love of cooking inspired her to attend the Cordon Blue Cooking School in England and throughout the years she studied cooking with Jacques Pepin, Alice Waters, and many other renowned chefs. Her Healthy School, Healthy Life Program recently helped Mayor Carolyn Goodman win the 2017 Mayors Childhood Obesity Prevention Program with the City of Las Vegas. Additionally, her nonprofit in partnership with the City of Las Vegas won the National Civic League All America City Award and she was recently honored with the Mayor’s Compassionate City Award in Education.