New OrganicEye board member, Steven Heim
Dear OrganicEye members, supporters, and organic industry stakeholders,
One of the elements that makes OrganicEye different than virtually every organization in the organic movement, in addition to being lean and nimble, is the vast experience of our leadership.
I am pleased to formally announce the addition of Steven Heim, who has joined our board of directors.
I have known and worked with Steven for the better part of 30 years, starting when he was an agricultural policy expert with Rural Vermont. As you can see from his official bio below, his professional background includes diverse involvement in food systems work and cooperatives. And he is nationally respected for his knowledge in sustainable investing and watchdogging publicly held corporations on Wall Street—welcome, Steven!
I also want to take this opportunity to recognize and thank our outgoing board member, Bill Heart, who consistently helped guide this work since Will Fantle and I founded The Cornucopia Institute over 20 years ago. When I went on to found OrganicEye in 2019, both Will and Bill joined the board to continue our aggressive brand of governmental and corporate oversight in the organic movement.
Bill brought his decades-long expertise as a successful business operator and dedicated conservationist who, long ago, recognized the impact agricultural practices have on the natural ecosystem.
Twenty years is one heck of a lot of hours and meetings invested to ensure organizational success and mission focus—thank you, Bill!
Steven Heim has decades of leadership in sustainable investing and shareowner engagement with corporations, natural foods retailing, and grassroots advocacy for family farmers. He is Managing Director and Director of Environmental, Social and Governance (ESG) Research for Boston Common Asset Management, a globally recognized leader in sustainable investing. In October 2023, Steven received the prestigious 2023 Legacy Award from the Interfaith Center on Corporate Responsibility (ICCR), honoring his track record of success in influencing corporate practices.
Steven co-founded Boston Common in 2003 where he first led investor engagements on “organic” livestock factories operated by the agribusiness giant, Dean Foods, then the parent company of Horizon Organic. He worked closely with OrganicEye Executive Director, Mark Kastel, on this project between 2005-2006 and again from 2021-2022, focusing on Horizon Organic’s new corporate parent, Groupe Danone.
Prior to Boston Common, Steven worked for other sustainable investing firms, including Walden Asset Management. He helped lead ICCR’s early shareholder engagement work on genetically engineered foods, including filing shareholder proposals with Kroger, Yum Brands, and Conagra requesting they label GMO ingredients.
In the mid-1990s, Steven was the program and research director for Rural Vermont, a family farm advocacy group. He helped produce Rural Vermont’s nationally distributed rBGH-free dairy products list. It was there Steven first met Mark Kastel, who was helping lead the farm community’s fight against Monsanto’s genetically modified bovine growth hormone on behalf of the Farmers Union.
In the 1980s, Steven served as president and later general manager of the San Jose Food Co-op. He also served on the board of the Palo Alto Co-op that operated five supermarket-scale stores. He subsequently served on the board of the Hunger Mountain Co-op in Montpelier, Vermont where he now lives with his wife Kathy.
Steven received two undergraduate degrees from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in 1977 and was an intern at the Massachusetts Department of Food and Agriculture while a student at MIT.