Lauren Bush hails from one of the most famous families in America, but the 26-year-old has eschewed politics (so far) in lieu of a career melding activism and fashion with FEED Projects and more recently with her new clothing line, Lauren Pierce. In advance of an appearance Wednesday at the Texas Conference for Women, Bush tells CultureMap what motivates her, how fashion is getting a slow movement to rival that of food and reveals the most Texan thing about her.

CultureMap: Tell me about speaking at the Texas Conference for Women.

Lauren Bush: I'm excited to participate and talk about FEED. FEED is actually a for-profit company with a mission to make products that help the world, raising money and awareness for global hunger. It's an unconventional business in that the focus is not profit-driven.

CM: What inspired you to create FEED and why do you think it's become so successful?

LB: I came up with the idea in college. I had been an honorary spokesperson for the United Nations World Food Programme, where I got to go see their work firsthand and go back and speak to peers and students about it. But the question became "What can I do?" I didn't quite have an answer, and it was frustrating.

It's so hard to connect to world hunger. It's so overwhelming and far away, and when you're young you aren't going to write a huge check, or maybe you don't want to join the Peace Corps and dedicate your life, but you still want to do something.

The solution I had was to create a bag, something anyone could buy, consumer-driven, and the eco-bag movement was really starting so all these things came together. When we started, the purchase of each bag fed one child at school for one year, supporting the World Food Programme in a tangible, concise way so you know the impact of your purchase. That was the original idea. Now we also support UNICEF and Feed USA, which provides better nutrition education to kids in America — it's part of our new partnership with Gap this year.

CM: What motivates you?

LB: My initial motivation was to empower people to help those who were born into poverty. The World Food Programme is a guaranteed lunch meal that encourages kids to go to school and stay in school. It's a nutritious, filling meal and might be the only meal they get all day.

It also encourages parents to support education. When kids, especially girls, are educated it has positive effects in their whole lives and helps to pull themselves and their communities out of poverty. I'm also a writer. I love design and I'm blessed to combine both of my passions, design and philanthropy, in an innovative way.

CM: FEED has become something of a model for the charity-business hybrid. How did it start, have you had any obstacles in its dual roles?

LB: I started the business with Ellen Gustafson — she was working for the UN at the time and originally we wanted the bags to be sold through the UN but we couldn't for legal reasons. So we had to start the company, basically, because we had an order from Amazon and wanted to start raising money and awareness, so it's kind of an accidental company.

Truly, the goal is to raise as much money and awareness as we can, so it takes people a while to wrap their heads around it sometimes, since a traditional business model is about growth, scaling, making as much as you can. And we want to grow, and hire people and reward them but at same time we are under constrictions of not having a huge budget because what we make we give away. But that's part of the reason people are buying the bags and we're young and that's what we want to do.

CM: What do you think are the challenges for women today?

LB: Obviously you hear the statistics, women aren't making as much as men even in same jobs, so it's not an even playing field yet. I feel blessed to be born in the place and time I was plus design is kinda a woman's world. I was always brought up to think I could get the best education and the best job, but I know that wasn't the case with my mom's generation.

She was pretty much expected to become a nurse or a teacher so she became a teacher. So I think things have shifted, I feel lucky that I've never felt held back by my gender.

CM: Tell me about launching your line, Lauren Pierce. What interests you as a designer?

LB: What interests me still is social good. I was really motivated and inspired by traditional fabrics and craft and I see this dying away with the global market and everything being made in China and artisans not teaching the next generation the crafts. I wanted to be able to use these fabrics in a contemporary way, because they are not necessarily something a woman in New York is going to wear, you know, walking down the street.

I wanted to translate it into something Western and modern as a design challenge. We worked with artisans, particularly a group of women in the DRC, the Congo, they hand-dye fabrics, so they're one of a kind. You know how there's a slow food movement? There's also starting to be a slow fashion movement, so each piece is truly hand-dyed hand-touched, not at all a mass-produced product, so each piece is truly unique and more special, and there's a social benefit supporting these local, traditional dyeing practices, plus everything is eco-friendly.

CM: As a Houston girl where do you like to go when you're in town?

LB: I grew up going to Molina's and Carrabba's. I'm a vegetarian so I tend to stay away from barbecue. I love that little place in River Oaks with the garden — Tiny Boxwood's — so pretty!

CM: You once said the quality that makes you least like a Texan is being a vegetarian. What makes you most like a Texan?

LB: I love jeans and denim — I think that's probably my most stereotypically Texan trait.

Bush, along with Leigh Anne Tuohy, Doris Kearns Goodwin, Jessica Herrin, Jennifer Arnold and 60 others, will be speaking Wednesday at the Texas Conference for Women at the George R. Brown Convention Center. Tickets are available at txconferenceforwomen.org.