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.

Please follow these steps to submit your application:

1. Create a PDF slide deck that includes the following:

   1. A clear articulation of the company mission, vision, the problem they address and solution they offer

   2. Bios of team leader(s)

   3. An abbreviated business plan covering at least 1 year

   4. Details of how the grant money will be used and the impact that will create

2. Email info@pragmaticvisionaryaward.org with the following information:

   1. Subject name should be as follow: “APPLICATION: Project or team lead last name, date (MM.DD.YY)”

   2. Attach the PDF file to the email

   3. Include your contact info in the body of the email and PDF attachment

• Info Page