Ice cream icon Jerry Greenfield of Ben & Jerry's fame inspired Penn State Altoona freshman Amanda Koenig with his sweet story of success.

After hearing Greenfield speak on campus Thursday night as part of the Distinguished Speakers Series at the Stephen A. Adler Athletic Complex, the 18-year-old foodie said she'd like to open her own restaurant someday and incorporate a similar socially-aware approach to business as the one that helped make Ben & Jerry's Homemade Inc. a household name.

"He's proof that [it] worked, so why not?" Koenig asked.

Greenfield said he and Ben Cohen met on the track in seventh grade.

"We were the two slowest, fattest kids in class," Greenfield said of the beginning of their friendship.

Both went off to college, but Cohen went against his will at the urging of his family, Greenfield said. After Cohen dropped out of a few colleges and Greenfield kept receiving rejection letters from medical schools, the duo took a correspondence course from Penn State University for $5 and learned how to make ice cream.

"We had finally found the type of education suited to our unique styles," he said of the mail-order schooling.

Greenfield and Cohen opened an ice cream shop in Burlington, Vt., in 1978.

As their business grew, so did they but not into who they originally set out to become. They were turning into businessmen after an ice cream war with The Pillsbury Co., which owned Haagen-Dazs, he said.

The 1960s-era hippies were ready to throw in the scooper, when someone suggested why not change how a big name company conducts business rather than quit, he said.

So they did.

They sold bits of the company to customers and started the Ben & Jerry's Foundation with 7.5 percent of pre-tax profits going to the foundation, he said. Since business typically focuses on profit, Greenfield and Cohen decided to make a two-fold focus - profit and social impact, he said.

The business began keeping financial and social reports, he said. To make the two goals work together, the pair made socially impactful business decisions such as buying the brownies for their ice cream flavors like Chocolate Fudge Brownie from a bakery that helps others, he said.

British-Dutch food company Unilever bought Ben & Jerry's in 2000, and according to www.benjerry.com, the company still maintains the same values.

"As you give, you receive. As you help others, you're helped in return," Greenfield said of what he called a "spiritual" approach to business. "You only get what you measure."