2019/2020 Annual Report

Built on a Foundation of Community

The OSC member community saw growth early in 2020 with the addition of the co-founders of Pathwater, Shadi Bakour and Amir Orabi , the co-founder and CTO of Kuli Kuli Jordan Moncharmont, as well as the COO of Annemarie Skin Care, Rachel Pachivas. All four have been wonderful additions, sharing their unique perspective, and next generation leadership. This brings our member brand roster up to 33!

We also celebrated the launch of our third leadership chapter, the Cannabis Collective, which is comprised of 20+ founders/CEOs of mission-driven cannabis companies. Members are working up and down the supply chain and include growers, manufactures, and retailers.

The biggest shift for us this year was addressing how we convene. By necessity, members embraced virtual platforms, and with intention, we co-mingled our chapters to build trust and capacity for sharing across groups. Together we created a stronger Leadership community, with over 30 CEO gatherings – up from 14 in 2020. A huge thanks goes to our member-led Surprise & Delight Committee for their support!

In other celebratory news, 2020 also marked the graduation of our second Rising Star member to the Core leadership chapter. Congratulations to Caroline Duell and Ryan Rich of All Good for their monumental rise and transformational year.

Activating Purpose & Leadership

2020 demanded that we as community reimagine and reinvest in our nested capacity for leadership (individual to company to industry). In response, OSC and its members launched our first shared impact campaign, #YourVoteCounts, a nonpartisan Get Out The Vote initiative to support turnout at the polls.

We also successfully launched and landed four member Mentorship Pilots, a program that will now be offered to all Rising Star members. We developed three member-led committees – Surprise & Delight, Sales & Marketing, and an Internal JEDI Committee to build agency and deepen member engagement. And finally, we enriched our OSC University offerings with department specific and JEDI – themed courses.

Our Collaborative Nature

Packaging Collaborative

In its 7th year, OSC’s Packaging Collaborative expanded to over 40 companies and it launched its first Lunch & Learn: Meet the Composters webinar. Innovation continued to be an important focus for the Packaging Collaborative. This manifested itself in the launch of a field testing partnership with CMA to bridge the gap between brands and composters, and the Redefining Flexible Films Summit with RCD Packaging. The RFF Summit brought together 80+ stakeholders in rapid innovation with Tom Chi, and it generated 8 active teams incubating break through packaging solutions. View the resulting white paper here.

J.E.D.I Collaborative

With your help, we successfully funded J.E.D.I Collaborative for 2020 and launched a J.E.D.I commitments platform & toolkit – with over 80 companies engaged in the first year.  The J.E.D.I Collaborative team and advisors wasted no time, making impressive strides in 2020, including:

• Launching a fully redesigned website that includes our toolkit, unveiling a new brand aesthetic including a new logo
• Debuting a mini-documentary film
• Working with 15 early adopter companies
• Hosting 6 educational webinars
• Launching a women’s peer circle and a CEO peer circle
• Adding a Solutions Partners Directory and Investment Resources to our website
• Compiling hundreds of books, articles, movies, podcasts, reports etc in our resources library
• Embarking on a massive strategic alignment project, with Smoketown Strategy, to bring to life J.E.D.I Collaborative 2.0
• And starting the process of hiring an executive director

Climate Collaborative

And finally, the Climate Collaborative, a project of OSC and SFTA, expanded to over 680 companies with 2,549 commitments, and it hosted the largest virtual climate advocacy day in the natural products sector ever. In partnership with Climate Collaborative and SFTA, OSC kicked off the co-development a Formulation Impact Tool for packaging, which is set to launch in 2021!

We are also excited to share that in partnership with more than 1,400+ businesses, cities, states, investors, and other U.S. institutions, Climate Collaborative companies stood together earlier this month, and in a New York Times national ad,  publicly called for an ambitious and equitable national climate response. View the statement in full here, and if you haven’t already, your business can sign it here.

Our 2021 Intentions

While the path ahead is shrouded in uncertainty, we remain incredibly grateful to be we working with and alongside this amazing community of leaders. To help guide our way, OSC, and its member brands have expressed the following intentions:

• Prioritize disruptive, preemptive initiatives to magnify our impact in a changing world.
• Refine OSC programming to reflect the evolving needs of our stakeholders, and through digital platforms.
• Amplify OSC collective work and that of its members by way of a proactive communications.
• Retain current and engage new members in our leadership chapters and collaboratives that reflect the diversity we seek in our industry.
• Increase our members’ advocacy for and embodiment of JEDI principles in all aspects of their professional and personal lives.

We can’t wait to continue this incredible journey with you all in the coming year!

Gratitude For Our Partners

OSC would like to extend a special thank you to our amazing community of partners. Through it all, they adapted with us, never wavering in their support, and more gracious than ever with their time an insights. Special thanks go out to Jake Hebert of Futamura, Bill Acevedo of Wendel Rosen, Larisa Rapoport of Baker Tilly, Brett Schafer and Jeanne Cloutier of Elk Packaging, and Karen Burns, Jennifer Cantero, and Scott Anderson of Sensiba San Filippo.