Greg Steltenpohl Pragmatic Visionary Award

The mission of the Greg Steltenpohl Pragmatic Visionary Award is to support early-stage entrepreneurs working to create a more positive, plant-centric food system.

The Greg Steltenpohl Pragmatic Visionary Award seeks to encourage and support innovators, entrepreneurs, and change makers building a more positive, plant-centric food system. With a $100,000 annual prize, the award celebrates vision in action and values manifested through businesses that generate personal, community, and planetary health. 

• Be an established for-profit business or intend to use business as a means for change.

• Operate in the broader food-system. Ventures at any stage of the supply-chain are welcome, this not limited to consumer-facing products.

• Be plant-centric. Companies need not explicitly identify as a vegan or plant-based, though a more plant-centric food system should be a result of their work.

• Be early-stage. The award committee will seek to support ventures for which $100,000 will be of material difference to the team’s success.

Applications will be evaluated using the following four core values:

• Systems Entrepreneurship: 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.

• 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.

Complete this application form, which includes:

• Eligibility screening

• Project questions 

• Selection of grant tier:

  • SEED: $10-25k for individuals or early-stage ideas

  • MOMENTUM: $75-90k for established ventures

• A pitch deck (details provided in the form)

Recipients will be notified by February 15, 2026 and invited to join us at a presentation at the Natural Products Expo in Anaheim on March 5, 2026. Travel stipends may be available though in-person attendance is not required to be selected.

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