Let’s do this: How core values can fuel progress in 2025 and beyond
Staying grounded in our values and vision
As we all start a new year, I’m struck by the power of core values in pulling off world-shaping work in the face of constant change.
Last year, more than 70 countries, including the United States, held national elections, considered by many to be the largest election year in history. Changes in leadership everywhere spur all sorts of societal shifts, creating new challenges and opportunities, knowns and unknowns, concerns and hopes—for all of us.
At GFI, our values keep us grounded. In many ways, values and value systems are like underground roots, nourishing and stabilizing individual trees and entire forests year after year under ever-changing conditions. Our values, our global team and network of organizations, and our generous supporters around the world, are the roots that fuel us for the important work ahead. Our theory of change remains our north star: When plant-based, fermentation-enabled, and cultivated meat become as affordable, delicious, and accessible as conventional meat, this will allow people around the world to eat the food they love while tackling some of the biggest challenges of our time.
In 2025 and the years ahead, we have both an opportunity and an obligation to do exactly that. Our five core values will light the way, as will our work with all of you—our global community of donors, our colleagues across sectors, and innovators and advocates around the world.
1. Believe change is possible.
We bring determination and informed optimism to our work because we know change is achievable.
On a planet nearing 10 billion people by 2050, and where demand for meat is expected to rise significantly in that same time frame, change with many implications for people and the planet will definitely happen. Investing in food and agricultural innovations like alternative proteins—meat made from plants, cultivated from animal cells, or produced via fermentation—can help ensure such changes meet growing demand while reaping significant societal benefits.
GFI champions alternative proteins within the scientific community, public sector, industry, and civil society to make change possible across regions, governments, and communities. We are securing support for increased investments in science and innovation, educating the next generation of scientists and entrepreneurs, amplifying public sector opportunities that help companies scale up, and helping to create future-resilient jobs in communities around the world.
Alongside researchers, policymakers, private sector leaders, supporters, and colleagues across a diversity of fields, we are staying agile, focused, intentional, and collaborative. Together, we can transform food production in meaningful, lasting ways.
2. Do the most good we can.
We focus our time and resources where they will make the biggest difference to maximize our donors’ support.
We know that protein diversification can drive food system resilience, which in turn can help the everyday lives and livelihoods of people everywhere.
New approaches to protein production can add circularity to our food system, reducing waste and creating new uses for crop byproducts—a win for farmers and others on the frontlines of food production. When a diversity of delicious, affordable, and healthy foods like plant-based meat and other alternatives reach restaurants, grocery shelves, and kitchen tables, consumers win. When new methods of protein production reduce the use of antibiotics and prevent pollutants from entering creeks, streams, and coastal zones, personal and public health wins.
To achieve this multitude of wins, plant-based and cultivated meat require the kind of investment in science and policy support that is propelling renewables toward success—support that is driving down costs, meeting consumer needs, and making these options easy to access. Toward those ends, GFI’s teams of scientists map out and channel funding toward the most neglected areas that will allow alternative proteins to compete on taste, price, and nutrition. Our policy teams advocate for public investments, incentives, and clear regulatory paths to market. Our corporate engagement teams work with the private sector to bring delicious, tasty, affordable, and nutritious products to more people’s plates.
We see an abundance of wins in our grasp, and we’re going for them.
3. Share knowledge freely.
Good data, good science, and good strategy have the biggest impact when they are available to everyone.
We know that investing in open-access science and innovation can drive breakthroughs that open up new paths forward. Around the world, centers of excellence are forming at higher learning institutions, creating world-class information hubs that enable universities and the private sector to collaborate in mutually beneficial and catalytic ways. These same innovation centers, like those launched at North Carolina State University, Imperial College London, and National University of Singapore in 2024, can tackle the biggest challenges and opportunities ahead—from biomanufacturing scale-up and crop diversification to ingredient innovation, water and land analyses, and future-resilient jobs and livelihoods.
GFI’s research grant program, powered by generous donors, is dedicated to open-access science. Its three primary objectives: address technical bottlenecks, catalyze further funding, and foster collaborations to attract new talent to the field. To date, we’ve funded research in more than 20 countries across five continents and will continue to channel funding to the best, most critically needed research around the world. In addition, GFI’s signature university program, the Alt Protein Project, is cultivating the next generation of food and agricultural innovators, with active chapters at 70 universities across the globe.
Our work investing in science, sharing that science freely, and cultivating the next generation of science-minded innovators and change-makers is core to who we are.
4. Act on evidence.
Our strategy is grounded in data. We make decisions on the basis of research and the industry insights our experts uncover.
Evidence on several fronts is indeed mounting: Growing global demand for meat and seafood is putting even greater pressure on farmers and fishers to produce more with less, including a dwindling supply of farmland and diminishing stocks in the ocean. Around the world, farmers and others on the frontlines of food production are experiencing an unrelenting set of challenges, from drought and deforestation-fueled flooding to devastating bird flus and crop blights. Meat production is hitting hard limits.
Food production approaches that are less vulnerable to these challenges, such as meat and seafood made from plants or cultivated from animal cells, could bring much-needed relief and resilience to food systems and supply chains. As a nonprofit think tank, GFI is relentlessly data- and evidence-driven, taking a global, cross-sector, and long-term view of what is known, what remains to be known, and how best we can contribute to fill gaps and pursue lines of inquiry that help the entire field. We share our data and expertise freely, and we focus our efforts where companies and governments can’t or don’t (yet).
Acting on evidence is both a value and a practice, and it’s a powerful anchor for our work.
5. Invite everyone to the table.
We foster an inclusive, collaborative work culture. With the same spirit, we bring together a wide range of partners to advance our mission.
Billions of people around the world have a growing appetite for meat. Full stop. To what extent could diversifying protein production meet this demand in ways that enable cleaner air, cleaner water, greater food security, and vibrant, healthy communities?
This is a question that could bring a diversity of people to the same table, and move beyond “either/or” to “yes/and.” Around the world, alternative methods of producing protein can help create regional bioeconomies and revitalize rural communities—building new mutually beneficial bonds between rural and urban centers.
Inviting everyone to the table is perhaps GFI’s most expressed value because it courses through all we do. But even in this area, we have more work to do—more people to learn from, more communities to engage, more partners to work alongside. We love this part of what we do, and we can’t wait to do more of it in pursuit of food solutions that do the absolute most good.
Onward—together.
When I zoom out beyond GFI, it also strikes me that many of these same core values are shared by individuals and organizations that we have not had a chance to work alongside. Yet.
As we lean into what’s next, amid the unknowns, it’s incredibly energizing to know that many shared values and priorities can be pursued simultaneously and together with partners:
- New market opportunities that equip farmers and others on the frontlines of food production to thrive
- Incentives and support that create in-demand food and agricultural jobs and careers that future generations will covet
- Healthy, clean, ecologically functional lands and waters
- Delicious, nutritious, affordable, and easy-to-access food choices for all
GFI is here for this moment and for all the moments ahead. We’re incredibly grateful for each and every person and partner on this journey with us—those who support us, work alongside us, broaden our understanding, and inspire us to live our values, day in and day out.
Author
Ilya Sheyman
Ilya leads all aspects of GFI’s programmatic and administrative operations in the U.S., working alongside the U.S. leadership team to ensure GFI is executing towards maximal impact in transforming our food system while building an inclusive, equitable culture where every team member can thrive. Areas of expertise: strategic plan implementation, program leadership, infrastructure and operations
