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 Pragmatic Visionary Award seeks to encourage and support food systems innovators and entrepreneurs who are championing the values of systems entrepreneurship, ethical leadership, and creative transformation.
The award recognizes that positive transformation is an ongoing process and rewards efforts to create or to improve virtuous systems. It celebrates vision in action and values manifested through organizations that generate positive impact. The Award’s application and nomination process also serves as an entrepreneurial library of sorts, comparing and curating the ways creative leaders steward and implement transformation in business, culture, and society.
Each year, The Greg Steltenpohl Pragmatic Visionary Award will convey a $100,000 grant to an individual, team, or enterprise that embodies the process of transforming vision into action. The Award’s intention is to enable, amplify, and expand the accomplishments, reach and impacts of the recipient’s mission.
To be considered for eligibility, companies, individuals, or non-profit organizations must document through an application their holistic process, accomplishments and longer term objectives that encompass the following practices:
Systems Entrepreneurship in areas encompassing personal health, planetary well-being, animal welfare, diversity and equity, or some other significant social issue inherent to the core of the enterprise and its design.
Ethical Leadership at the intersection of activism and entrepreneurship that benefits a broad and diverse group of stakeholders: its consumers, teams, and mission constituents, particularly in those areas Greg cared deeply about: diversity, inclusion, access, justice, and security.
Creative Transformation that serves to generate or evolve the mechanisms of commerce as a form of stewardship of culture, community, and the planet as a whole.
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Greg Steltenpohl Pragmatic Visionary Award recipients will participate in a documentary case study of their work and process as a means of sharing and inspiring others to implement ways of transforming the world of entrepreneurship, capitalism and culture.