Our Story and Mission

Vegan Leaders started in 2014 with one person who had one simple idea. Darina Bockman had felt firsthand the divide between the vegan world and the corporate world, so she began the work of bridging the chasm.

As a high-ranking leader in a Fortune 500 company, Bockman had a vast professional network, and a vast vegan network, but the two did not overlap. So she set out to locate other corporate-minded vegans on LinkedIn. She created a group that quickly grew to 100, and reached over 500 in less than a year.

“I was astonished to keep finding high-up leaders—working on Wall Street, in top technology and engineering firms, in pharma and biotech and so on—who mentioned a vegan interest in their LinkedIn profile. Many of them did not belong to any vegan groups, and many admitted they felt lonely. Once our group grew to an initial critical mass, it became exciting to start connecting people with other vegans within their companies.”

The vision of connecting vegans in the corporate world, helping build visibility and respectability, became a driving force. The pigeonholing of vegans as hippies would be shattered, replaced by a perception of vegans as a diverse, capable presence in the workforce leading productivity, innovation, and business success.

“No other vegan groups were doing this, and I thought it was a huge untapped opportunity” reflects Bockman. “Corporate influencers are some of the best paid and most powerful people in our society, and a potential backbone of any movement.”

Bockman kept building the group and fine-tuning the purpose of the group, strategically recruiting a core management team. In 2017, the Corporative Initiatives Program was launched to help more companies embrace the growing vegan and plant-based trends as part of their employee wellness, diversity, green, or other efforts. For many companies, veganizing their product offering could even grow their market—and VLCM is in a unique position to connect companies with the helpful expertise.

The team published the Vegan Leaders Playbook in 2018, a free e-book designed to help vegan professionals create a more suitable work environment and make information about veganism available using professional messaging. Later that same year, the CI Support Program was added to provide 1-on-1 coaching to professionals launching initiatives within their organizations.

In 2019, the management team worked to create a strategic direction for years to come, and emerged with the Vegan Leaders mission statement.

Emboldened by a clear mission, the team leveraged the growing membership to launch the Vegan Leaders Live Cast Program launched in 2020. This format featured premier professionals across industries, delivering valuable information in a live networking format for our membership.

Vegan Leaders taps the vast intellect of its member base in other ways, too. The group has an active member directory and a discussion group on LinkedIn as a mobilization platform for more initiatives. The group cultivates influencers and works to redefine the social norm with respect to veganism.

“The underlying motive was to change the perception of vegans in the corporate world, and the perception of corporate in the vegan movement,” Bockman concluded. “Vegan and corporate were never previously thought as compatible, and that was nonsense. Our group shows that veganism is a logical answer for high achievers in business, and that far from it being a threat, it could be the next big thing for the corporate world.”