Apeel Sciences Mexico

Our founder, James Rogers, Ph.D., was driving home through the lush California farmlands while he was listening to a podcast about global hunger. He wondered: how could so many people be hungry when there was such an abundance of food growing and seeds that were so easy to spread? And if so many were hungry, how could so much of this abundance be going to waste?

And that's how Apeel was born.

Founded in 2012 with a grant from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, Apeel continues to develop products for dozens of USDA Organic Certified and conventional produce categories. We work with partners ranging from small family-owned farmers and local organic growers to the world’s largest food brands.

We’re on a mission to make better quality, more sustainable, and longer-lasting produce a reality—creating value throughout the supply chain and a more abundant future for us all.

Culture is about people, and at Apeel we put people first. We work to reinforce our people-first culture through every facet of the business - from global recruiting, to talent development, to the ways in which we reward and grow our employees. Our company values of ingenuity, leadership, teamwork and humility underpin and reinforce our culture. To ensure that the culture we build continues to grow and evolve with our global business, we apply our values to decisions across setting global objectives and key results, employee recognition and performance management.

The result of this value-centric philosophy is that Apeel is comprised of highly talented and driven team members who are excited by the opportunity to challenge the status quo, are obsessed with solving problems, and are truly committed to living and breathing our values in their everyday work. We believe that our culture of supporting and empowering our employees is absolutely fundamental to our company’s success and continued growth, and that this in turn enables us to continue investing in our employee base.

We also recognize that every employee has a life beyond our organization. We do our best to bring awareness to current events in our community and the world, and we flex wherever we can to provide support – whether that be updating our benefits offerings, encouraging personal time off, providing support groups, suggesting learning opportunities or partnering with outside organizations for assistance.

If you look around our organization, what do you see? Employees embodying our values in their every-day decisions – not to serve themselves - but to help the Apeel team as a whole strategically and collectively realize its shared mission and vision.

Apeel Sciences strives to develop innovations that solve today’s challenges without compromising the needs of the future.

A core competency of Sustainability at Apeel involves using Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) to make informed decisions around product development and business strategy that aim to maximize the environmental benefits of Apeel’s technology in the market. Since sustainability is part of everything we do at Apeel, the Sustainability Team is focused on measuring progress and guiding decision making through collaborative efforts across the entire organization. With a current focus on technologies that extend the shelf-life of produce, Apeel’s plant-derived innovation will help to solve a very big problem: One-third to half of all food produced worldwide is wasted.

Food waste is responsible for:

Cropland area the size of China
8% of global greenhouse emissions
25% of all water used by agriculture
Apeel is proud to be recognized as a contributor to halving food loss and waste by 2030 in alignment with the United Nation’s Sustainable Development Goal 12.3.

At Apeel, we believe that we can work toward a more just and equitable world by first committing to creating a just and equitable company and culture. We also believe it is essential to create a culture of constant learning around what diversity and inclusion means for our organization globally across varying cultures and geographies. As a global organization, we are currently focused on:

- Establishing baseline data and metrics on the self-identified makeup of our staff
- Collecting voluntary EEOC identification information from our candidates to critically assess the fairness of our hiring processes
- Rolling out company-wide unconscious bias and inclusive interviewing trainings and focusing on more competency-based interview processes
- Building lasting partnerships with universities and programs to enhance our sourcing of underrepresented talent
- Providing all employees with Learning and Development workshop opportunities focused on our DEI initiatives, including: Cultural Competancy, Behaviors of Inclusion, Coffee with a Black Guy
- Supporting our parents in the workplace through a number of holistic benefits, including: flexible working hours and paid time off, Apeel virtual tutoring sessions during COVID, fertility assistance
- Supporting social justice and equality movements including Black Lives Matter and Stop Asian Hate in partnership with our employee-led Black Lives Matter Task Force, which owns internal and external initiatives like facilitated conversations about race, resilience book club meetings addressing racial equality and equity in the US

Please visit our blog for more information on:
- An Update From Our BLM Task Force
- Our Statement On Stop Asian Hate (Including Resources)

Beyond these initiatives, we recognize that the journey toward justice and equity is ongoing and takes sustained commitment. As such, we are continually focused on building a foundation of awareness, understanding, education and data within our organization, with the intention to evolve and expand our DEI efforts even further.

2021
- Glassdoor: Top CEOs: 2021: #3
- 2021 Forbes America's Best Startup Employers, Forbes, 2021
- The 10 Most Innovative Food Companies of 2021, Fast Company, 2021
- CNBC Disruptor 50, CNBC, 2021
- 2021 LearningElite Finalist, Chief Learning Officer (CLO) Magazine, 2021
- Fast Company World Changing Ideas (Honorable Mention), Fast Company, 2021
- Breakthrough Brands of 2021, Interbrand, 2021
- Entrepreneur of the Year, South Coast Business and Technology Awards, 2021
- Glassdoor's Top CEOs, Glassdoor, 2021
- Impact Award: Sustainability and Resource Conservation, Progressive Grocer, 2021
- Inc. Female Founders 100, Inc., 2021
- Chief Learning Officer Business Impact Award, Silver, Chief Learning Officer (CLO) Magazine, 2021
- Chief Learning Officer Business Partnership Award, Bronze, Chief Learning Officer (CLO) Magazine, 2021
- Fortune Impact 20, Fortune, 2021
- Inc. Best in Business 2021, Silver Medal, Food Insecurity & Hunger, Inc., 2021


2020
- Top 100 Startups, Business Insider, 2020
- WayUp Top 100 Internship Programs, WayUp, 2020
- Learning in Practice Award, Chief Learning Officer (CLO) Magazine, 2020
- CNBC Disruptor 50, CNBC, 2020
- Fast Company World Changing Ideas (Honorable Mention), Fast Company, 2020
- 2020 Forbes America's Best Startup Employers, Forbes, 2020
- 2020 AgTech Breakthrough Award, S2G, 2020
- R&D 100 Award Winner: Gold, Green Tech, R&D World Magazine, 2020
- The FoodTech 500: 4th Place, Forward Fooding, 2020


2019
- The World's 50 Most Innovative Companies, Fast Company, 2019
- Katerva Awards for Sustainable Innovations, Katerva, 2019
- TIME: 2019 Best Inventions, TIME, 2019
- Fast Company World Changing Ideas, Fast Company, 2019
- CNBC Disruptor 50, CNBC, 2019
- 40 Under 40, Fortune, 2019
- 40 Under 40, Produce Business, 2019
- United Fresh Innovation Award for Best New Food Product, United Fresh Produce Association, 2019
- Produce Business Innovation Award, Produce Business, 2019
- Best in Show, PMA Fresh Summit, 2019

2018
- TIME's 50 Most Genius Companies, Time, 2018
- United Fresh Innovation Award for Best New Food Product, United Fresh Produce Association, 2018
- Rabobank 2018 Emerging Leader in Innovation, Rabobank, 2018
- Technology Pioneer, World Economic Forum, 2018
- AgFunder Innovation Award, AgFunder, 2018
- Innovation Award, The Packer, 2018
- CNBC Disruptor 50, CNBC, 2018