John Mackey
Co-Founder and CEO
Whole Foods Market
John Mackey
Co-Founder and CEO
Whole Foods Market
John Mackey, co-founder and CEO of Whole Foods Market, has led the natural and organic grocer to a $15.7 billion Fortune 500 company with more than 460 stores and 87,000 team members in three countries. The company has been included on Fortune magazine’s “100 Best Companies to Work For” list for 20 consecutive years.
While devoting his career to helping shoppers satisfy their lifestyle needs with quality natural and organic foods, Mackey has also focused on building a more conscious way of doing business. He was the visionary for Whole Planet Foundation to help end poverty in developing nations, the Local Producer Loan Program to help local food producers expand their businesses, the Global Animal Partnership’s rating scale for humane farm animal treatment, and the Health Starts Here initiative to promote health and wellness.
Mackey has been recognized as one of Fortune’s “World’s 50 Greatest Leaders,” Ernst & Young’s “Entrepreneur of the Year Overall Winner for the United States,” Institutional Investor’s “Best CEO in America,” Barron’s “World’s Best CEO,” MarketWatch’s “CEO of the Year,” Fortune’s “Businessperson of the Year,” and Esquire’s “Most Inspiring CEO.”
A strong believer in free market principles, Mackey co-founded the Conscious Capitalism Movement (http://consciouscapitalism.org/) and co-authored a New York Times and Wall Street Journal best-selling book entitled “Conscious Capitalism: Liberating the Heroic Spirit of Business” (Harvard Business Review Press 2013) to boldly defend and reimagine capitalism, and encourage a way of doing business that is grounded in ethical consciousness. Mackey cut his pay to $1 in 2006 and continues to work for Whole Foods Market out of passion to see the business realize its potential for deeper purpose, for the joy of leading a great company and to answer the call to service that he feels in his heart.
Mackey is also the co-author of the book, “The Whole Foods Diet” (Grand Central Life & Style 2017).
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Deep Dive Episode 140 – It Can Be Done Live: The Future of Our Food
An expert panel explores the potential of human ingenuity to solve the problems we face when it comes to our food and the conditions necessary to make those solutions a reality.
Listen to this podcastIt Can Be Done Live: The Future of Our Food
The creators of the award-winning documentary, They Say It Can’t Be Done, in partnership with the Federalist Society’s Regulatory Transparency Project, present It Can Be Done Live – a conversation between entrepreneurs, regulatory experts, and noted academics around creative and bipartisan solutions to global challenges to our shared future. The last of four panel events, It Can Be Done Live: The Future of Our Food, took place on October 1st, 2020.
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