![]() | This article contains content that is written like an advertisement .(December 2021) |
Nick Cooney | |
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Alma mater | Hofstra University (Non-Violence Studies) |
Occupation | Managing Partner at Lever VC |
Notable work | How to be Great at Doing Good, Veganomics, Change of Heart |
Website | nickcooney |
Nick Cooney (born c. 1981) is a managing partner at Lever VC, an investment fund focused on alternative protein companies. [1]
He co-founded the Good Food Institute and was co-founder and Managing Trustee of New Crop Capital. [2] [3] He is the author of three books: Change of Heart (2010), Veganomics (2013), and How To Be Great At Doing Good (2015). [4] [5] [6] [7] [8] He previously worked for the non-profit organizations Mercy for Animals and Farm Sanctuary and was the founder of the non-profit organization The Humane League.
Nick Cooney was born and raised in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. [9] Cooney received a bachelor's degree in Non-Violence Studies from Hofstra University in 2003.
In 2005, Nick Cooney founded The Humane League in Philadelphia, a non-profit organization that works to protect animal welfare. [10] Cooney is one of several people who provided information used in the writing of the book Striking at the Roots: A Practical Guide to Animal Activism (2008) by Mark Hawthorne.
Since then, Nick Cooney's work promoting alternative proteins and animal protection has been featured in media outlets including Bloomberg, CNBC, Yahoo Finance, Quartz, Upside, Food Navigator, Just-Food, and the Wall Street Journal. [11] [12] [13] [14] [15] [16] He has lectured internationally at conferences and campuses including Harvard, [17] Yale, [18] in Luxembourg, [19] and in Washington, D.C. [20] [21]
Cooney previously worked as campaign coordinator at the non-profit Farm Sanctuary and as executive vice president at non-profit Mercy for Animals. He is currently a director with the non-profit Lever Foundation. [22] [23]
Nick Cooney is former board chairman and co-founder of The Good Food Institute. [24] [25] [26] He is also co-founder and former managing trustee of New Crop Capital, a private venture capital trust that invests in plant-based and cultured meat, dairy, and egg companies. [27] [28] These two organizations collaborate to support the plant-based and cultured food companies. [29]
Nick Cooney is founder and currently Managing Partner at Lever VC, a U.S.-Asian venture capital fund investing in early stage alternative protein companies. [30] [31]
The Humane League is a 501(c)3 and Certified Best In America by the Independent Charities of America... Nick Cooney, Founder.
Nick Cooney, founder of the Humane League and then employed by Farm Sanctuary (now working for Mercy for Animals), spoke about his involvement with activism and farm animals.
His work for animals has been featured in hundreds of media outlets around the United States
Their impressive lineup of speakers this year includes Gene Baur, President of Farm Sanctuary; Nick Cooney, Director of Education for Mercy for Animals...
...founder and Board Chair of The Humane League, Board Chair of The Good Food Institute, and Managing Trustee at New Crop Capital
Besides funding, Friedrich, Cooney and Kerr provide their portfolio companies with access to like-minded investors and to consumers who want to avoid meat
A meat alternative or meat substitute, is a food product made from vegetarian or vegan ingredients, eaten as a replacement for meat. Meat alternatives typically approximate qualities of specific types of meat, such as mouthfeel, flavor, appearance, or chemical characteristics. Plant- and fungus-based substitutes are frequently made with soy, but may also be made from wheat gluten as in seitan, pea protein as in the Beyond Burger, or mycoprotein as in Quorn. Alternative protein foods can also be made by precision fermentation, where single cell organisms such as yeast produce specific proteins using a carbon source; as well as cultivated or laboratory grown, based on tissue engineering techniques.
Bruce Gregory Friedrich is co-founder and president of The Good Food Institute (GFI), a Y Combinator funded non-profit that promotes plant- and cultivated meat alternatives to conventional animal meat. He is also a co-founder of the alternative protein venture capital firm New Crop Capital. Friedrich previously worked for PETA and Farm Sanctuary.
Animal-free agriculture, also known as plant agriculture, plant-based agriculture, veganic agriculture, stockfree farming, plant farming or veganic farming, consists of farming methods that do not use animals or animal products.
New Harvest is a donor-funded research institute dedicated to the field of cellular agriculture, focusing on advances in scientific research efforts surrounding cultured animal products. Its research aims to resolve growing environmental and ethical concerns associated with industrial livestock production.
Matthew Michael Ball is an American animal activist. He is co-founder and President of One Step for Animals.
Gousto, a trading name of SCA Investments Limited, is a British meal kit retailer, headquartered in Shepherd's Bush, London, founded by Timo Boldt and James Carter. Gousto supplies subscribers with recipe kit boxes which include ready-measured, fresh ingredients and easily followed recipes.
Josh Balk is an American activist, currently serving as CEO of The Accountability Board, which he co-founded. Previously, he was vice president of farm animal protection for tbe Humane Society of the United States (HSUS) farm animal division. In addition, he is a cofounder of Eat Just, a food technology company. Prior to working with HSUS and founding Eat Just, he was known for his work at Animal Outlook. Balk is best known for leading successful legislative campaigns for farm animals, along with his work with food companies in enacting animal welfare policies that include eliminating gestation crates for breeding pigs and battery cages for chickens. He is also known for his work with the food industry to shift its focus onto plant-based foods.
Veggie Grill is a fast-casual vegan restaurant chain that operates in California, Oregon, Washington, Illinois, Massachusetts and New York. After first being opened in Irvine, California, it already had 29 restaurants across the United States in February 2018.
Direct Action Everywhere (DxE) is an international grassroots network of animal rights activists founded in 2013 in the San Francisco Bay Area. DxE uses disruptive protests and non-violent direct action tactics, such as open rescue of animals from factory farms. Their intent is to build a movement that can eventually shift culture and change social and political institutions. DxE activists work to "put an end to the commodity status of animals."
Impossible Foods Inc. is a company that develops plant-based substitutes for meat products. The company's signature product, the Impossible Burger, was launched in July 2016 as a vegan alternative to beef hamburger.
This page is a timeline of major events in the history of cellular agriculture. Cellular agriculture refers to the development of agricultural products - especially animal products - from cell cultures rather than the bodies of living organisms. This includes in vitro or cultured meat, as well as cultured dairy, eggs, leather, gelatin, and silk. In recent years a number of cellular animal agriculture companies and non-profits have emerged due to technological advances and increasing concern over the animal welfare and rights, environmental, and public health problems associated with conventional animal agriculture.
The Good Food Institute (GFI) is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization that promotes plant- and cell-based alternatives to animal products, particularly meat, dairy, and eggs. It was created in 2016 by the nonprofit organization Mercy For Animals with Bruce Friedrich as the chief executive officer. GFI has more than 150 staff across six affiliates in the United States, India, Israel, Brazil, Asia Pacific, and Europe. GFI was one of Animal Charity Evaluators' four "top charities" of 2022.
Cellular agriculture focuses on the production of agricultural products from cell cultures using a combination of biotechnology, tissue engineering, molecular biology, and synthetic biology to create and design new methods of producing proteins, fats, and tissues that would otherwise come from traditional agriculture. Most of the industry is focused on animal products such as meat, milk, and eggs, produced in cell culture rather than raising and slaughtering farmed livestock which is associated with substantial global problems of detrimental environmental impacts, animal welfare, food security and human health. Cellular agriculture is a field of the biobased economy. The most well known cellular agriculture concept is cultured meat.
Novameat is a food tech startup that works with plant-based foods, including plant-based meat substitutes. According to El País, the company was responsible in 2018 for creating a meat substitute through 3D printing, whereby a plant-based paste was used with syringes placed in a 3D printer using AutoCAD software.
Perfect Day, Inc. is a food technology startup company based in Berkeley, California, that has developed processes of creating dairy proteins, including casein and whey, by fermentation in microbiota, specifically from fungi in bioreactors, instead of extraction from bovine milk.
Miyoko Schinner is an American - Japanese vegan chef, cookbook author, cooking show host, cooking school leader, vegan activist, and social entrepreneur. She is currently the host of the YouTube cooking show, The Vegan Good Life with Miyoko, and is working on her next cookbook.
A vegan school meal or vegan school lunch or vegan school dinner or vegan hot lunch is a vegan option provided as a school meal. A small number of schools around the world serve vegan food or are vegan schools, serving exclusively vegan food.
Ethan Walden Brown is an American executive who is the founder, president and CEO of Beyond Meat. Before founding Beyond Meat, Brown worked on alternative energy and electricity grid restructuring at the National Governors Association's Center for Best Practices before joining fuel cell manufacturer Ballard Power Systems.
Matthew Glover is a British businessman and animal rights activist. He is the co-founder of the Veganuary movement, which his wife Jane Land helped to create. In 2019, Glover founded Million Dollar Vegan, a global education charity focused on veganism. In addition he is the founder of Veg Capital, which helps fund vegan food businesses. In December 2020, Glover and Adam Lyons created the vegan food brand VFC, a business that went onto become an international venture.
Mirai Foods is a food technology company which produces cultivated meat from beef cells. It is headquartered in Wädenswil in the canton of Zurich in Switzerland, and was founded in 2019.