Keynote speaker John Mackey is Whole Foods Market’s co-founder and CEO. In 1978, Whole Foods Market started off as a small grocery store in Texas. This turned into a Fortune 500 company, which was then bought out by Amazon in 2017. Nowadays, Whole Foods Market has more than 500 stores throughout the United Kingdom, United States, and Canada.
John devotes himself to helping people eat the best quality foods that are both organic and natural. Additionally, he created Whole Planet Foundation to allow developing nations to put an end to poverty. He also founded the Global Animal Partnership’s rating scale to help treat farm animals in a humane way. Furthermore, he founded the Local Producer Loan Program to assist local food producers to grow their businesses.
Fortune considers speaker John Mackey to be one of the “World’s 50 Greatest Leaders”, as well as “Businessperson of the year”. John has also received praise from MarketWatch, the Institutional Investor, Barron’s, and many more.
John is a big supporter of free market principles, and this is why he co-authored Conscious Capitalism: Liberating the Heroic Spirit of Business. The purpose of the book is to reimagine and defend capitalism. He also co-founded the Conscious Capitalism Movement. In 2016, John reduced his salary to $1 and carried on working for Whole Foods Market out of a desire to see the business reach its full potential and for the positive rewards that come from managing such a great company.
Lately, John Mackey has concentrated on making clean eating and lifestyle decisions a central part of the company’s efforts. He created programs that emphasized health and wellbeing for team customers and team members. John co-wrote The Whole Foods Cookbook: 120 Delicious and Healthy Plant-Centered Recipes, and The Whole Foods Diet: The Lifesaving Plan for Health and Longevity.