The Plant Futures Initiative is dedicated to the spirit, vision and generosity of the late Greg Steltenpohl, a founding member and supporter of PFI.
The Greg Steltenpohl Visionary Award seeks to encourage and support innovators, entrepreneurs, and change makers in the broader food space. The award celebrates vision in action and values manifested through organizations that generate positive impact on personal, community, and planetary health.
Each year, The Greg Steltenpohl Visionary Award will present a $100,000 grant to an individual, team, or enterprise to enable, amplify or expand the accomplishments, reach and impact of the recipient’s work. Innovations in any capacity of the food system from “soil to soul” are of interest. Alongside the scale of current and potential impact, initiatives will be evaluated for their embodiment of four core entrepreneurial principles that Greg championed throughout his career:
Systems Entrepreneurship
Pragmatic Vision
The ability to define a more positive future while maintaining a bias for action; recognition that positive transformation is an ongoing process free from perfection.
Ethical Leadership
A values driven mindset that benefits a broad and diverse group of stakeholders (consumers, employees, producers, mission participants) particularly in the areas of diversity, inclusion, justice, and security.
Creative Transformation
Working to evolve commerce and culture from ego-centric to community and eco-centric organization.
A holistic understanding of the food system that leads to purposeful engagement with one or any number of interconnected issues of the food system such as personal well-being, environmental health, equity and access, inherent at the core of the enterprise and its design.