By Lara Ivanitch
Of the three career choices presented to Angela Cauley by her parents — doctor, lawyer or engineer — doctor appealed to her the most. However, as an undergraduate student on a pre-med track, she started questioning her decision.
But it wasn’t the rigorous course load of organic and biochemistry that gave her pause — it was a bit more basic than that. “I don’t like blood,” she says. “I don’t like to see people being sick or hurt.”
Fortunately for Cauley, a summer internship at Abbot Laboratories (previously known as Ross Laboratories) introduced her to a career she hadn’t known existed. “Working around food scientists every single summer at Ross, I decided to just shift and become a food scientist.”
After earning an undergraduate degree in food science at The Ohio State University, Cauley continued her studies at NC State University’s College of Agriculture and Life Sciences, where she earned her master’s in food science in 1998.
At NC State, she grew in ways she didn’t anticipate. In the lab, surrounded by a multicultural group of women from places near and far — Korea and other parts of Asia, Argentina and the United States — Cauley developed an understanding of the importance of and an appreciation for different points of view.
A Recipe for Success
Today, when describing the different phases of her career, enthusiasm spills from Cauley, a 2025 CALS Outstanding Alumni Award recipient. When talking about her role as a technical service chemist at National Starch, now Ingredion, she begins listing the foods starch could be used to produce in rapid succession: chicken, cheese, sauces, and so much more.
Because of the broad range of uses for starch, Cauley traveled to a wide variety of food manufacturers, introducing the starch produced by National Starch to food scientists and teaching them how to use these products.
“So, it was learning all over again, like getting another master’s because I was able to see how starch could be applied across the industry,” she recalls.
In 2008, Cauley’s career took a new turn when she co-founded Coalescence, a custom ingredient manufacturer, with her husband, Ian Blount. As an agricultural economist, Blount contributed his expertise to their business, which manufactured seasoning blends, vitamin premixes, functional blends, and specialty flavors for the food industry. Their products went into foods produced by well-known companies such as Wendy’s, T. Marzetti, Kellogg’s, and Rise Against Hunger.
Although working with big names and seeing products in grocery stores that contained Coalescence creations was exciting, Cauley is particularly proud of the vitamin premixes the company developed. These premixes were incorporated into therapeutic foods transported around the world by non-governmental organizations such as the World Food Program, the Global Alliance for Improved Nutrition and the World Health Organization to help people facing food insecurity. This fulfilled one of Cauley’s and Blount’s original missions for the company: helping feed undernourished people and providing nutrition for those without access to healthy foods worldwide.
In addition to creating nutritious and delicious food, Coalescence’s commitment to employing people with different experiences and backgrounds echoed Cauley’s time in the lab as a graduate student at NC State.
“It was about bringing together the diversity of thought,” she says, noting that it’s something she feels added to the success of the company.
Feeding Curiosity
Nearly 30 years after completing her graduate studies at NC State, Cauley’s passion for food science hasn’t waned. In fact, she’s focused on sharing that enthusiasm to inspire future food scientists.
After Cauley and Blount sold Ohio-based Coalescence in 2021, they turned their attention to teaching and inspiring the next generation of food scientists through their work with the George Washington Carver Food Research Institute, a nonprofit they founded in 2013. The institute’s partners include the NC Food Innovation Lab, North Carolina A&T University and Tuskegee University, among others.
“We realized that many career opportunities exist in the food agriculture industry, and we owe it to our community to be able to educate teenagers on where food comes from and how they can be a part of the fabric of the food industry, just like we were,” she says.
Driven to expand access to agricultural education, Cauley now relishes the energy and excitement teens bring to the institute’s programs, such as the organization’s Explore Ag STEAM Academy and Food Is Medicine workshops.
“I see their eyes, that light bulb, that goes off,” she says. “They’re just like, ‘I never knew what supply chain was about. I never knew about product development. All I knew was that I like to cook.’”