John Mackey

John Mackey, co-founder and co-CEO of Whole Foods Market, has taken the natural and organic grocer from a single store in Austin, Texas in 1978, to an $11.7 billion Fortune 300 company and a top U.S. supermarket with more than 347 stores and 73,000 Team Members in three countries. In 1981, Austin's worst flood in history almost bankrupted the original store, and community efforts to save it shaped Mackey's leadership philosophy to "do right by your stakeholders and they'll do right by you." While devoting his entire career to providing shoppers with high quality natural and organic foods, Mackey has also focused on building a more conscious way of doing business. He led the company through 19 acquisitions and took the company public in 1992. The company has the highest stock market valuation of any dedicated U.S. food retailer and plans to grow to 1,000 stores.