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About Us
Equipping food system leaders to create lasting change
Ideagarden Institute supports social entrepreneurs by providing the community, operational infrastructure, and strategic guidance needed for their innovations to thrive.
With more than 100 years of combined experience in food systems, entrepreneurship, and impact investing, our team selectively identifies promising ideas to turn early-stage potential into lasting impact.
Our Purpose
Ideagarden exists to bridge this gap. Our purpose is to identify high-impact ideas and emerging leaders in food systems transformation and equip them with the community and resources they need to flourish.
We believe that supporting leaders working to address unmet needs is one of the most significant investments in food systems transformation.
We provide education and strategic mentorship for emerging leaders, helping them to test and grow their ideas with due diligence and intentionality.
With over 100 years of joint experience across food systems, entrepreneurial development, and impact investing, our community is positioned to identify high potential ideas and their leaders and guide leaders through early-stage testing.
We offer fiscal sponsorship and back-office infrastructure from bookkeeping to grant administration so founders can stay focused on their mission.
With deep expertise in nonprofit operations and organizational stewardship, we provide the financial, human resources, administrative, and technology infrastructure that allows our programs to thrive.
We offer seed funding for new ideas and catalytic matching grants for our portfolio, and amplify the work of our programs to accelerate their fundraising. Our organizational reputation helps de-risk new ideas and build confidence among funders and partners.
We have a far-reaching network of peers and partners that we connect emerging ventures with to secure the resources and credibility they need to grow.
We connect founders with mentors, advisors, and peers and cultivate a community where both the work and the people behind it can truly flourish.
Through peer collaboration, in-person convenings, and values-aligned partnerships, we provide the vision, accountability, and practical guidance that help leaders navigate challenges, strengthen their ventures, and build lasting, systems-level impact.
What We Do
From Seed to Sustainable Enterprise
We identify transformative food systems ventures and their leaders and provide the early-stage infrastructure, community, and catalytic support to grow their ideas.
Working within the Ideagarden ecosystem for the past two years has been a truly catalytic and life-changing experience.
For me to be the founder of a program that's all about making systems-level change within the food system with a small team and a small budget, but operating within this hugely supportive ecosystem and greenhouse that is Ideagarden, feels kind of like winning the lottery.
I feel so lucky and grateful for the supportive network created by the leadership, the board, the community of farmers, funders, and cultivators."
Laney Siegner
Executive Director, Climate Farm School
Lessons from the Garden
At Ideagarden Institute, we model and translate lessons from the garden to entrepreneurial innovation and ethical leadership. We support leaders and ventures growing solutions that are resource-aware, regenerative, and designed for enduring impact and replication.
Humility
Bringing reflection, patience and joyful effort to all our endeavors
Interdependence
Respecting the interconnections of our shared, finite ecosystem
Care
Embracing empathy and stewardship in all of our relationships
Encouragement
Providing transformative sources of energy and intention
Generativity
Cultivating ideas into enduring vehicles of positive impact
Rigor
Applying thoughtful discipline to how ideas are tested and sustained
Our Team
Ideagarden Institute Leadership
Executive Director
Cheyenne Pritchard
Cheyenne is an entrepreneurial spirit committed to advancing a food system that benefits people and the planet. With years of experience working across the food and climate ecosystem, she brings a breadth of perspectives from both private and public sectors. A proud Ideagarden alumna, Cheyenne is excited to return full-time to the Institute to drive impactful change. She holds a Master of Public Health from UC Berkeley, specializing in Sustainable Food Systems, and a Bachelor’s from Amherst College.
Founder & Executive Chair
Will Rosenzweig
Will is co-founder and Chairperson of Ideagarden Institute. He is an internationally recognized entrepreneur and educator. He is the founder and faculty steward of the Sustainable Food Initiative at the Haas School of Business at UC Berkeley and former founding Dean of the Food Business School at The Culinary Institute of America. Will is the co-author of The Republic Tea, How an Idea Becomes a Business, which was named one of the 100 best business books of all time. In 2010, Will received the Oslo Business for Peace Award.
Director of Operations
Aneeha Patwardhan
Aneeha Patwardhan serves as Director of Operations for Ideagarden Institute and provides strategic and operational support to the Greenhouse’s resident initiatives, Climate Farm School, FARMpreneurs and Plant Futures. Aneeha has years of experience supporting mission-driven organizations involved in food systems transformation and animal advocacy. Her role empowers the team activities of each initiative, while creating synergies that provide efficiencies and boost impact.
CFO
Kirsten Edwards
Kirsten is an established consultant CFO with over 25 years of experience in the fields of Education, AI, software and broader Knowledge Services. She previously served as CFO of InsideTrack (now owned by Strada Education Network), an education services provider that partners with higher education institutions. At InsideTrack Kirsten led the company through multiple rounds of funding, a large-scale merger, and a transition from for-profit to non-profit status. Prior to InsideTrack, Kirsten spent over a decade in equity research at several investment banks specialized in education and knowledge services industries.
Board Members
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Vice Chair
Ed Colloton
Ed is partner emeritus at Bessemer Venture Partners, where he served in different operational and leadership roles for over 20 years. His time in private equity informs his financial and professional decisions, and now he offers his valuable insight to Outward Bound California and the Urban School of San Francisco on their respective boards and investment committees.
Board Member
Catha Groot
Catha is an advisor at Radicle Impact, an early-stage venture fund focused on tackling climate change and economic inequality. She was a partner on the investment team for 7 years and led partnerships at fintech startup Personal Capital prior. She started her career in investment banking and private equity. Catha has an MBA from Stanford and a BA in Politics from Princeton.
Board Member
Adrian James
Adrian is an entrepreneur, board director, and advisor. He believes that user-centered design has boundless potential to improve human health and happiness. In 2011 he co-founded Omada Health, a virtual-first care provider helping people make lasting changes to improve their health and reduce costs for organizations. Prior to Omada, he led the medical products team at IDEO. He holds a BS and MS in Mechanical Engineering from Stanford University.
Board Member
Fazeela Rashid
Fazeela is Co-Founder and Managing Partner at Arcventis Health Partners. She has more than 20 years of finance and investing experience with a focus on growth equity in both the private and public markets. Fazeela holds an MBA from Harvard Business School and a B.S. in chemical engineering with a minor in economics from Cornell University. In addition to her work experience, Fazeela is the Chair of the Advisory Council of Cornell University’s Robert F. Smith School of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering.
Board Member
Kristin Groos Richmond
Kristin Richmond serves as a Managing Director and Board Operating Partner for the Draper Richards Kaplan Foundation (DRK), where she sources new investments and works with portfolio organization leadership. At DRK, she currently serves on the boards of Unmudl, Pallet Shelter, SolarAPP+ and Honeycomb Credit. She is the Chairwoman of the Food for Education Board in Kenya, which creates and serves over 650,000 healthy meals per day to students across the country. Prior to joining DRK as a Senior Fellow, Kristin co-founded Revolution Foods in 2006 and served as CEO through 2021, scaling the company to over 2,000 employees and delivering more than 1.2 billion healthy, chef-crafted meals across 400 cities nationwide. She is an Aspen Fellow, Ashoka Fellow, and Young Global Leader of the World Economic Forum, and currently teaches Business Models For Social Impact at UC Berkeley's Haas School of Business. Kristin holds a BS in Finance and Accounting from Boston College and an MBA from UC Berkeley.
Board Member
Erin Siestra
Erin Sietstra is the Head of Investments at Hopelab, where she leads venture investments in companies that aim to improve the mental health and well-being of teens and young adults. Prior to Hopelab, she led Transactions and Business Analytics at Johnson & Johnson Innovation, and began her career as a strategy consultant at Leerink Partners, a healthcare-focused boutique. Erin holds an MBA with a Certificate in Public Management & Social Innovation from Stanford and a BA in Biology from Harvard.
FAQs
Ideagarden Institute is an incubator and nonprofit fiscal sponsor that accelerates food systems transformation by creating environments where entrepreneurs and their ideas can flourish. We focus on selecting ideas and leaders with high-potential and resource ourselves appropriately to provide meaningful guidance to ensure their success.
Instead of “moving fast and breaking things,” we’re guided by the principles that govern healthy ecosystems — regeneration, reciprocity, and patience — because we know that food systems change requires long time horizons and deep roots.
Ideas are first tested and if determined to be synergistic with our current portfolio and aligned with our mission, invited into the Ideagarden Portfolio. Once a Program is in our Portfolio, our community provides the strategic mentorship, operational infrastructure, fundraising support, and community needed to turn their vision into enduring impact. By empowering their solutions to grow, we’re working towards food systems where ecological health and community prosperity go hand in hand.
Ideagarden is a federally approved 501(c)(3) non-profit organization, tax ID: 86-2425643
Yes, for programs invited into Ideagarden’s portfolio that align with our 501(c)(3) mission, we offer Model A fiscal sponsorship and provide robust back-office support, including but not limited to HR, finance, payroll, tech management, and more.
We understand that food systems change requires long horizons and we are committed to providing in-depth mentorship to growing ventures until they have established it is time to exist as a separate entity. At this time, we don’t have a strict requirement for our portfolio programs to exit the Garden.
Depending on Ideagarden Management’s fund availability, we aim to provide SEED capital ($5-25k) to new ideas to test viability. For Portfolio Programs, we aim to offer catalytic matching grants of up to $125k.
Please visit our Portfolio page to learn more about the emerging leaders and pragmatic visionaries we support.
We have a robust ecosystem of mentors, colleagues, and peers available to support Founders, including our Board of Directors, Ideagarden’s Executive Director, and our growing Community of Cultivators. Through deep connections at university and academic institutions (like UC Berkeley and Stanford) we are also positioned to support Founders with identifying talented and rising students interested in food systems work. We are always developing new relationships with committed leaders interested in providing mentorship.
Visit our Engage page to learn more about how you can get involved with our work. We’d love for you to join us.