“Regenerative” is the buzzword of today in agriculture, food, biology and even in finance.  To regenerate literally means to restore, renew and grow. Nature regenerates itself constantly with an ingenious and elegant brilliance we all admire. 

The question is can business follow nature’s brilliance?  And, will consumers care? And if so, will it lead to an economic benefit for people, planet and prosperity? 

We chose to ask these questions and more in our 2019 ReGen for the NextGen™ national survey. We asked over 1,500 shoppers aged 18 and older to tell us what they know about “regenerative” principles and a wider range of topics relating to how regeneration can positively affect their lives through their buying choices.

For more than two decades, Whole Health Marketing has been tracking the trends of shoppers in the U.S., taking note of where they shop, how they shop and what issues are most important to them as shoppers. Whole Health Marketing has partnered with Organic Valley to conduct this research.

Emily M. Olson

ReGen Friends™

Whole Health Marketing

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Nils-Michael Langenborg

ReGen Friends™ 

Whole Health Marketing

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Red algae bloom in Florida. Historical rains in Hawaii. Flooding in Wisconsin during summer months. Wildfires in California. PG&E citing climate change as an “imminent” risk. 95% of the global population breathing polluted air. Earth heading towards a ‘hothouse’ state. Farmers exhausting groundwater from the Ogallala Aquifer. Sea level rise eroding home values. Climate change making crops nutrient deficient. Fast-melting lakes increasing permafrost emissions by 118%.

Is sustainability working?

This keynote explores the economic benefits that come with an investment portfolio focusing on regenerative investments that not only mitigate climate change but also leverage them into profitability and solutions to reduce the effects of anthropogenic climate change.

Holly Ruxin

Montcalm Capital

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John Fullerton

Capital Institute

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Moderated by:

Jeffrey Gitterman

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As we harvest the bounty of our planet’s soils and seas we are unintentionally (or intentionally) reducing its productivity.

Half of the topsoil on the planet has been lost in the last 150 years. These impacts include compaction, loss of soil structure, nutrient degradation, and soil salinity. In contrast, living soils contain more organisms in a single tablespoon than all of humanity.

Our oceans are becoming increasingly acidic, warmer and littered with plastic that threatens sea life of every type from microorganisms to massive blue whales. 

Are we nourishing or starving our planet?

This session explores the economic benefits that come with a regenerative approach to soil and seas. 

Alan Lewis

Natural Grocers 

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Rebecca Spector

Center for Food Safety

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Gina Asoudegan 

Applegate Farms

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Shauna Sadowski

General Mills

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Moderated by:

Nils-Michael Langenborg

ReGenFriends

The wellness industry is a $3.72 trillion global market encompassing beauty & anti-aging, healthy eating, nutrition & weight loss, tourism, fitness & mind-body, preventative & personalized medicine, complementary & alternative medicine, real estate, spas & thermal/mineral springs, as well as workplace wellness.

However, there’s a shadow side to these many industries as they utilize a vast array of chemicals, packaging and transportation costs to deliver their “wellness” solutions to their hopeful hordes. 

This session explores the economic benefits that come with a regenerative approach to well-being and speaks to “well-doing” as a more regenerative practice. 

Susanne Stormer

Novo Nordisk

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Chris Hortinela

Vitamin Angels

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Tammy Williams

She's It

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Meg Adelman RN, BSN, MPH

Navitas Organics

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Moderated by:

Emily Olson

ReGenFriends

On May 18, 1980, at 8:32 am Pacific Daylight Time the stratovolcano Mount St. Helens erupted in spectacular and devastating fashion. The nine-hour eruption blew 520 million tons of ash over 230 square miles and knocked down 14 billion board feet of timber. Nevertheless, many of the impacted areas unexpectedly still had some slivers of life – what ecologists called "biological legacies.”

One group of plants that particularly thrived after the eruption — and helped make the landscape more suitable for other plants — were the lupins; lupins can make their own nutrients and can grow in desolate nutrient-depleted areas.

Insects were able to parachute in once a recovery was underway and began decomposing materials into usable forms. Small mammals — such as herbivores, carnivores, insectivores — also helped enable the recovery of the ecosystem. Today, the Mount St. Helens region is a diverse and vibrant ecological community.

This session explores the economic benefits that come with a regenerative approach to the creation of value for our environment by respecting and learning from nature. 

Doniga Markegard

Markegard Family Grass-Fed

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Anthony Griffin

Valent USA

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Ethan Steinberg

Propagate Ventures

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Vincent Stanley

Patagonia

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Moderated by:

Conrad MacKerron

As You Sow

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The Presidio Trust has partnered with James Beard award-winning chef Traci Des Jardins to offer catering A native of Northern California, Traci Des Jardins has six restaurants in San Francisco, including three at the Presidio, in partnership with the Presidio Trust: The Commissary, Arguello, and TRANSIT. The Commissary has been selected as one of the San Francisco Chronicle's Top 100 Restaurants in Northern California for two consecutive years. Her other award-winning restaurants include Jardinière, Mijita Cocina Mexicana, and Public House.

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Traci Des Jardins is a two-time James Beard award-winner and has earned a number of industry accolades. She sits on the board of La Cocina, a San Francisco based non-profit business incubator. She is a deeply committed activist and philanthropist working with hunger relief organizations such as Share Our Strength, Citymeals On-Wheels, and other non-profits such as amfAR.​

All are WELCOME

We all share the same risks posed by the changing environmental, social and political climate. And, whether we run the largest companies in the world or work on the ground with a non-profit focused on social justice, we all share the same Earth. 

Thusly, the air we breathe, the ground that supports and feeds us, the oceans where we gather our seafood are all shared. Though we may work in different arenas, we all return home to the same planet at the end of our workday. We might be businesspeople, but we are also parents, brothers, sisters, uncles, aunts, cousins and friends and consumers. 

This keynote explores the economic benefits that come with a regenerative approach to environmental risks. We take two very different perspectives from the speakers to explore their shared risks and how we can share solutions across the broad landscape of business.

Shaun Frankson

Plastic Bank

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Christopher Ategeka

UCOT

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Moderated by:

Navi Radjou

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Researchers reported in July 2018 in the journal Science, a sweeping survey of global fossil and temperature records from the past 20,000 years. It suggests that Earth’s terrestrial ecosystems are at risk of another, even faster transformation.

Now instead of going from cold to warm, we’re going from warm too much warmer and on time scales that are much faster than anything experienced in the past.

This session explores the economic benefits that come with a regenerative approach to investments in climate change mitigation and speaks to utilizing financial capital in a more regenerative practice.

Jeffrey Gitterman

Gitterman Wealth

Matt Reynolds 

Indigenous

Robert Brown

Encore Consumer Capital

Greg Bohlen

Union Grove Venture Partners

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Moderated by:

Michelle Fox

SPINS LLC

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Natural capital can be defined as the world’s stocks of natural assets which include geology, soil, air, water, and all living things. It is from this natural capital that humans derive a wide range of services, often called ecosystem services, which make all of human life possible.

The most obvious ecosystem services include the food we eat, the water we drink and the plant materials we use for fuel, building materials and medicines. There are also many less visible ecosystem services such as the climate regulation and natural flood defenses provided by forests, the billions of tonnes of carbon stored by peatlands, or the pollination of crops by insects.

Even less visible are cultural ecosystem services such as the inspiration we take from wildlife and the natural environment. Poorly managed natural capital, therefore, becomes not only an ecological liability but a social and economic liability too. 

This session explores the economic benefits that come with a regenerative approach to the employment and deployment of natural capital.

Christian Shearer

Regen Network

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Daniel Kurzrock 

Regrained

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Michael Malara

South Pole Group

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Betty Cremmins

Director, CDP West

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Moderated by:

Josh Knauer

JumpScale

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A 2018 Gallup study revealed 85 percent of employees function below their potential and don’t feel engaged at work. Globally, that means most workers function on autopilot.

What if they became engaged around a platform of regenerative practices that promised to save the very lands they lived on? It could begin by exploring your supply chain with the help of your employees, vendors, and customers.

The typical consumer company’s supply chain creates far greater social and environmental costs than its own operations, accounting for more than 80 percent of greenhouse gas emissions and more than 90 percent of the impact on air, land, water, biodiversity, and geological resources. Consumer companies can thus reduce those costs significantly by focusing on their supply chains.

This session explores the economic benefits that come with embracing a regenerative approach to people, whether employees, suppliers or customers.

Renee Farris

Silicon Valley Community Foundation

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Emily Chan

Edelman

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Jaclyn Bowen

Clean Label Project

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Michelle Wald

Tony's Chocolonely

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Moderated by:

Tripp Hughes

Organic Valley​

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An “enabler” can be two very different things with two wildly distinct outcomes:

1) a person or thing that makes something possible;

2) a person who encourages or enables negative or self-destructive behavior in another.

Enabling us to make intelligent, long-term regenerative decisions is a great calling for technology companies. Equally, technology must recognize its role in enabling our destructive behavior such as food waste, agricultural greenhouse effects, acidification of the oceans, overfishing, dead zones in the Gulf of Mexico, bee population collapses, plastics pollution, and the rise in disease states in both plants, animals, insects and humans that are tied to the effects of rising temperatures.

This session explores the economic benefits that come with a regenerative approach to technology within the areas of production, consumption, and destruction (recycling/upcycling). 

Paul Gambill

Nori 

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Tom Duncan

Liquid Token

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Bill Reichert

Garage Technology 

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Raphael Rosen

Carbon Lighthouse

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Moderated by:

Radhika Iyengar-Emens

StarChain Ventures

The Conversation Lounge will be a gathering place for attendees to have the opportunity to meet with speakers and other experts in an intimate setting. 

Rather than bunching up at the front of the room, as we all have experienced in most conferences, The Conversation Lounge will offer a comfortable space for people to meet the speakers, have books signed and share their own experiences with others.

The Conversation Lounge is located in the Prince Room with spectacular views of the Golden Gate Bridge, San Francisco Bay, Alcatraz, as well as majestic Monterey pines, hawks, owls, and falcons!

All are WELCOME

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All are WELCOME