Next Economy Now highlights the leaders who are taking a regenerative, bio-regional, equitable, transparent, and whole-systems approach to using business as a force for good.
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Natalie Reitman-White served as Vice President of Organizational Vitality and Trade Advocacy at Organically Grown Company, one of the largest independent distributors of organic produce in the country, where in 2018 she led an groundbreaking move to restructure the company ownership under a Perpetual Purpose Trust.
This initiative was featured in 2019 Fast Company’s World Changing Ideas, and Natalie was recognized as “a leading executive and change-maker in efforts to make food supply greener, healthier and equitable.”
She founded and served as the Executive Director of the Sustainable Food Trade Association (2008-12), she was on the faculty of the Institute for Sustainable Environment, serves on numerous advisory boards throughout the organic food sector.
Recently Natalie has shifted her focus to transformative finance and ownership models that ensure mission maximization, shared prosperity for multiple-stakeholders and lasting independence through growth or business transition.
In the last year she supported the launch of the Purpose Foundation to grow the movement toward a new paradigm of “steward-ownership” in the U.S. through field building, infrastructure development, and investment.
In 2020 she co-launched Alternative Ownership Advisors, is a Trustee of the Sustainable Food & Agriculture Purpose Trust, and is in Cohort 5 of the New Zealand Edmund Hillary Fellowship for Global Change Makers.
Interview Highlights:
Natalie’s background as an activist that informed her work to shift corporate behavior that is irresponsible to it’s stakeholders
Translating principles of regeneration in a farming context to a business context
Examining the purpose of a corporation and making a distinction between driving shareholder value and actual value
A background on Organically Grown Company’s mission, operations, and iterations of the company’s structure to be ever closer to the values that inform the mission
Organically Grown Company’s innovating on the Employee Owned Trust model by making it multi-stakeholder and anchoring it in the purpose of transforming food and agriculture – a “Perpetual Purpose Trust”
Resources:
Alternative Ownership Advisors: A Steward Ownership Consultancy
Fast Company: This company pioneered a new business structure to preserve its mission
Next City: Why Employee Ownership Wasn’t Good Enough for This Organic Food Company
The National Center for Employee Ownership
Christopher Michael: Could the Employee Ownership Trust Better Sustain Perpetual Employee Ownership?
Christopher Michael P.C. – Employee Ownership Law
Sustainable Food Trade Association
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LIFT Economy is an impact consulting firm whose mission is to create, model, and share a locally self-reliant economy that works for the benefit of all life.
Shawn Berry is a Partner at LIFT Economy, where he works as an organizational strategist inspired to harness the power of business to create resilient local economies as patterns to be documented, open sourced, scaled globally and adapted regionally.