John Mackey, cofounder and CEO of Whole Foods Market, has grown the natural and organic grocer to a $16 billion Fortune 500 company with more than 470 stores and 90,000 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 and ranked first in the food and drug store industry as part of the magazine’s “Most Admired Companies” list in 2016.
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 the 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 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 cofounded the Conscious Capitalism Movement (consciouscapitalism.org) and coauthored the New York Times and Wall Street Journal bestseller 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, takes no bonus or stock options, and continues to work for Whole Foods Market out of a 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.
Dr. Alona Pulde is a board-certified practitioner of acupuncture and oriental medicine and a family medicine physician. Dr. Matthew Lederman is a board-certified internal medicine physician. Drs. Pulde and Lederman, who specialize in reversing disease using nutrition and lifestyle medicine, created the lifestyle-improvement program used in their medical center and for Whole Foods Market Medical and Wellness Centers. They were featured in the film Forks Over Knives and coauthored the New York Times bestseller The Forks Over Knives Plan, Forks Over Knives Family, and Keep It Simple, Keep It Whole. Drs. Pulde and Lederman live in Los Angeles with their two daughters and work with Whole Foods Market to oversee various health and wellness projects.