Sophia Skopetos was born and raised in Androusa, Greece, and credits her parents who owned a farm and butcher shops in Greece as well as her Godmother for teaching her everything she knows about cooking Greek food. 

 

Sophia emigrated to the United States in 1975 and went on to earn a Bachelor’s and Master’s degree in Mathematics from MIT.  Sophia currently resides in Medford, Massachusetts and is a founding board member of HelpIs.

 

Sophia founded “Sophia’s Greek Pantry” in 2001 and now owns two amazing locations in Belmont and Lowell with her children Valerie, George, and Kostas.  In addition to one-of-a-kind Greek yogurt, Sophia’s also sells many other Greek delicacies including olive oil, jams, cookies, chocolates and juices from Greece, stuffed peppers, spinach pie, kokoretsi (intestines of lamb and goat), tsatsiki (a yogurt dip made with cucumbers and garlic), and dolmathes (stuffed grape leaves), feta cheese, freshly baked koulouria bread and other homemade breads, spreads made from egg plant and fish eggs, hummus, homemade baklava and galaktobouriko, baximathi (dried bread) and more. Sophia takes great pride in what she has been doing the past 15 years and believes the secret to her success is her passion about what she does. “What I offer to people is 100 percent from my heart. If I don’t like something, I will not sell it, I will not make it. My customers are my family. I’m here all day, every day,” she said.

 

Sophia is an incredibly generous and positive force in the work that HelpIs does, including feeding 82 displaced families for three months by supplying them with home-cooked meals, fundraising and catering for those served by HelpIs.