Builders Initiative - Fixing a Broken US Food System
Collaborative Development and Facilitation 

Builders Initiative wanted to stand up a collaborative of U.S. organizations to rethink industrial animal agriculture and transform the American food system to prioritize alternatives that are more humane, healthy, sustainable and just. By 2023, we brought together 17 organizations from various sectors including non-profits, policy, academia and for-profit to form a collaborative called the Food Rebellion.

The goal of this collaborative is not to identify one solution but instead a constellation of many, connecting the champions of reduction, nature-based solutions and protein alternatives to build a new agriculture system. This new system will dramatically reduce the number of animals raised for food and improve the health of the planet, those who live on it and those involved in the food system, including workers, animals and consumers.

We worked with these organizations to map their collective power, including existing knowledge, skillsets and relationships. We conducted foresight sessions, using Just Lab's Foresight tool, to analyze the building blocks required to make change considering the social, economic and political angles. We created collective measurable outcomes categorized under five main issue areas: animal welfare, environment, racial and social justice and health and rural economy. This will guide the collaborative’s work as it pivots to action.
My role included leaded an internal team at Spitfire Strategies and guiding the Builders Initiative to:
  • Develop and manage a private micro-site that houses all of the collaborative’s resources and updates.
  • Create and curate a listserv to share relevant news and updates across the collaborative. 
  • Design and facilitate ongoing learning sessions to continue to build expertise across all three solution areas.
  • Develop a glossary of terms to establish a common lexicon.
  • Identified, recruited and onboarded additional organizations to bring needed diverse perspectives.