Asper Award winner Barry C. Levin honored for career overseeing massive growth, weathering storms

Brandeis Stories

Asper Award winner Barry C. Levin honored for career overseeing massive growth, weathering storms

By Heejai Kim '28
May 4, 2026 • Business

Barry C. Levin, an entrepreneur who took a small snack company and grew it into an industry powerhouse, outlined key moments over the course of a 45-year career as he accepted the annual Asper Award for Global Entrepreneurship at the School of Business and Economics.

The April 23 ceremony brought Brandeis students, faculty, staff, alumni, and friends of the university to honor the former chairman and CEO of Snak King. Presented by Philippe Wells, the Director of the Asper Center for Global Entrepreneurship and Ain Family Professor of the Practice in Entrepreneurship, the award serves as a platform to examine and understand the key trends affecting entrepreneurship across cultures and borders, and is given to a person who best exemplifies the Asper Center's values of entrepreneurial spirit and independent thinking.

Levin, whose wife, Wendy Colman Levin, is a 1981 Brandeis graduate, accepted the award on behalf of his team, and walked the audience through the origin story of Snak King in the late 1970s. He eventually became the CEO, buying the company and growing it exponentially; the City of Industry, Calif.-based company produces more than 500 million bags of various snacks annually. Levin spoke about how seizing opportunities, finding out what works for the company, and leading a team through hardship helped him to grow Snak King into a "one-stop shop" in the snack industry.

He highlighted three main messages for the audience and young entrepreneurs to take away from his experience:

Own the obstacle before you blame the storm.

In 2004, Snak King faced an unexpected crisis when the roof of the production facility collapsed due to extreme rain in Southern California. During the COVID-19 pandemic and the war in Ukraine, the company weathered a shrinking workforce because of safety concerns and increased oil prices. Over the years, there were impactful acquisitions and decisions that put stress on the business.

But ultimately, Levin said Snak King survived due to consistency. He emphasized routine quality checks of the ingredients he put into his products and strict standards. Consistency and persistence are the most reliable ways to build trust with consumers and a stable brand, he said.

Growth is sexy. Growing the right way is hard.

For young entrepreneurs, growth is one of the top priorities and worries. One student at the ceremony asked Levin how he distinguishes opportunities to take advantage of despite the risk and opportunities that may not be worth it. He said "a lot of it is just gut" and learning from experience. He spoke about the importance of culture over strategy, recalling the difference between Snak King's Southern California and Illinois facilities. While having another facility producing goods in another region of the country is a good strategy, he said he had to consider how the frequency and consistency of his presence at each facility would affect its working culture.

Know when to quit.

"My strength is never giving up. My weakness is that I never give up," Levin said, referring to a period when he considered selling the business. He said there were many times when he held off on making important decisions in the hopes that something would just happen. He said failure to give up on things when they are not working out, despite putting in copious amounts of time and energy, can lead to unnecessary loss and stress.

The ceremony included student entrepreneurship awards; KoraFlow: Cash Flow Intelligence for Informal Economies, led by Binta Tounkara and Yonathan Eyov, took the top spot; Angelo Chen's The AI One-Person Company won the runner-up award.

The Asper Center for Global Entrepreneurship was founded in 2004 by current Brandeis Trustee Len Asper '86, P'25. Asper began his career in 1991 as associate general counsel at Canada's leading private television network, Global, and was involved in a series of mergers, sales, and acquisitions before acquiring his present significant ownership stake in Anthem Sports & Entertainment. Len has recently served as co-chair for the Brandeis School of Business and Economics Board of Advisors.