Anthony Zolezzi’s current leadership role in the natural food revolution is, in many ways, one that he has been in preparation for his entire life. It also seems to have followed naturally from his having been literally born into one of the world’s oldest food-gathering traditions -- as the first of four children of a San Diego family that operated one of the most successful and well-respected fishing enterprises in the country. In fact, for decades before coming to this country, the name Zolezzi was synonymous with the maritime industry in Genoa, Italy.

Like his parents, grandparents and great grandparents on both sides, Zolezzi was taught how to fish as a young child. His grandfather, John Zolezzi, was something of a West Coast legend among anglers for consistently reeling in the biggest fish.

His grandmother, Antoinette, ran the AFL-CIO United Cannery Workers' Union for 35 years. "She was a dynamo," Zolezzi says. "She ran the union in its heyday when there were thousands and thousands of female canners.

"All of my relatives were involved in the industry,” he recalls. “But they didn't just own fishing boats. They were always involved in everything. They practiced vertical integration of their businesses before management experts created the terminology. If they needed something for their businesses, they built it whenever possible.

"They were strong-willed, progressive, talented, hardworking people who were always involved in many businesses at one time."

These are qualities Zolezzi learned to value, qualities that he feels are as instinctive to him as baiting a line or setting a net.

"My family taught me the confidence to try anything," he says. "They brought me up to be physically and mentally tough. I think that's why I'm good at thinking for myself and at bringing the right people together to accomplish a goal.

"I'm very people oriented. In my family, we all had to learn to work closely together. Commercial fishing is physically and mentally demanding. If there is a problem on a boat, it is very serious. All of your attention has got to be focused on the problem." From the time he was 12, it was instilled in him that running a business is a 24-hour-a-day, seven-day-a-week proposition. Perhaps even more important, however, were the other things Zolezzi learned that were part of being a fisherman’s son – the “back-to-nature” aspects of the fishing trade that would help shape his future leadership role in endeavors aimed at preserving the integrity of planet Earth. “We where taught to look for variations of water color, to know the temperature, to look to birds like the albatross and seagull as our best guide to conditions, and to always treat Mother Nature and our fellow creatures, be they birds, fish, or mammals, with the deepest respect.”

Gaining a reputation in the course of learning all the ropes

After winning top honors as a student/athlete in high school, Zolezzi earned a degree in biology from Loyola University, and had planned to attend medical school. But before doing so, he decided to work briefly and got an entry-level hourly job at Foodmaker, a division of Jack-In-The-Box in San Diego, which proved to be a pivotal point in determining the direction his career would take.

Finding he had a natural affinity for the food business, he decided against going into medicine, and instead focused his efforts on getting a bigger job with the corporate parent, Ralston Purina.

Three years before his 30th birthday, Ralston Purina recruited him into an executive training program at the company’s headquarters in St. Louis to learn all facets of its huge food operations. He became fascinated with the science of food production, along with the various aspects of marketing, creating budgets, business plans, and competitive strategies, and mergers and acquisitions, as well as with the art of managing people.

"I got the reputation of being an expeditious problem solver and also what I would call a junkyard dog marketer, which simply means I had a tendency to trust my own instincts and experience in these matters, even when they ran counter to the conventional wisdom," Zolezzi says.

Ralston Purina introduced Zolezzi to all aspects of the food chain, including CPG marketing, food manufacturing and fast-food operations. He was soon on a fast track to upper management at the company, where he spent time in every division, became a member of the management advisory group to the board of directors, and was mentored by Vice Chairman Paul Corneilson.

Striking Out On His Own

After 10 years of moving up the corporate ladder, his family’s entrepreneurial juices sought greater release. After working on the team that sold Purina Mills to British Petroleum, Zolezzi returned to southern California to embark on his own ventures, including initial forays into the natural and organic arena.

Zolezzi founded Pacific Basin Foods, which sourced fresh food for wholesalers and restaurants throughout the West Coast, built it into a $50 million operation and sold it to Kyatoru, a large Japanese food company. He then became president of Collins Foodservice Distribution, a $300 million produce processor and foods distributor, improving its profitability and streamlining the operation by selling off assets. He soon became know for a turnaround management style that enabled him to fund the purchase of such entrepreneurial companies as Tina and Holly’s Tamales, a vegetarian Mexican food line made with natural and organic ingredients, and Pasta Pasta Pasta, which was one of the first food companies to make large frozen entrees for Costco.

Because of his reputation for acumen in new product development, Zolezzi was recruited by Meridian Products, which sought to improve its marketing of fresh and frozen seafood. "After a day of what I thought were unproductive meetings at Meridian," he says, "I tried to lift my spirits by going to the movies. We saw 'Forrest Gump', in which Tom Hanks in the title role operates a fictitious shrimp business called 'Bubba Gump Shrimp'." After the movie, his creative juices began to flow.

The next day he met with representatives of Paramount/Viacom, makers of the academy-award winning blockbuster movie. Almost overnight, they entered into a successful licensing agreement and began operating the Bubba Gump Shrimp Co. to supply supermarkets with raw jumbo shrimp and cooked tail-on shrimp. In less than three months, 3,500 grocery stores were selling Bubba Gump Shrimp. Next came the aprons, the caps and the Bubba Gump Shrimp Co. cookbook.

By this time his business was formally incorporated as Zolezzi Foods International, a firm that owned three small natural and organic food companies and provided a full range of food consulting services. Clients included Paramount Pictures, Bumble Bee Seafood, CH Robinson, Jack-In-The-Box Restaurants, Veg Fresh Farms and Cascadian Farms. ”At this time the market for unadulterated whole foods was not yet developed enough to provide much in the way of profit for small companies,” he says, “so I had to continue consulting just to subsidize them.”

A new mission proves abundant with ‘promise’

"With my biology educational background, I've always had an affinity for the science of foods and recognized the importance of the nutritional value of foods to the health of the consumer," Zolezzi says. "I also always have been a strong advocate of physical fitness. But working for Veg Fresh Farms and Cascadian Farms awakened in me a missionary zeal for healthier foods and for reducing farmers' dependency of chemical herbicides, pesticides and synthetic fertilizers."

That new sense of mission led Zolezzi to start Eco-Terra Development LLC in 1996 – a venture that proved so successful that he was soon licensing the Eco Terra brand and sustainable agriculture production criteria to such firms as Con-Agra, CH Robinson, Stahlbush Island Farms, Manning Beef and Westfield Poultry, enabling them to produce commodities to Eco-Terra’s more Earth-friendly specifications.

In 1999, Zolezzi was invited by Robert Samuels of The New Organics Company to become its president. This was a significant opportunity because New Organics was plowing new ground in the organic food business and was dealing directly with Albertson’s and other major retailers. The company had an extensive product line and was a pioneer in creating organic food products and getting plants certified long before the USDA organic regulations were formulated. New Organics products, in fact, were even being stocked by Wal-Mart back in 2000 as the retailing giant’s first entry in the organic category.

Zolezzi , in assessing the gateways through which consumers entered that category, determined that the most likely prospective customers were those with children for whom no real organic foods, other than organic milk, were then being marketed – not even organic graham crackers. So he partnered with Viacom to license an intellectual property owned by the studio, the characters created by author and illustrator Richard Scarry, to star in a new line of organic foods specifically marketed to kids. This strategy proved to be extremely successful, getting the company’s product line, which had previously been available only through conventional retailers, distributed to natural food outlets for the first time.

Unfortunately, the newfound success that Zolezzi’s marketing expertise had brought about was derailed by a quality-control-related issue when the canola oil used in its vanilla cookies – one of the company’s best sellers – exceeded its shelf life, resulting in two consecutive recalls and impacting the growth and distribution of the entire new product line. The irony is that New Organics was partnered with a powerhouse in Viacom and had been named New Products Company of the Year by Prepared Foods Magazine just when the recalls nipped its prospects in the bud.

For Zolezzi, however, the lesson on the possible obstacles that trailblazing organizations were apt to encounter when introducing organic ingredients was one he would never forget. His experience working with the New Organics Company provided him with invaluable insights into the kinds of things that could spell the difference between success or failure of the healthier, more sustainable products that were just starting to come into their own in the conventional marketplace. It would also help guide him in launching a series of new mission-driven endeavors that have since forged his leadership role in the new agricultural revolution.

In 2001 Zolezzi became acquainted with Dee Hock, founder and former CEO of Visa, and learned first-hand about Hock’s “Chaordic” theory of chaos and order, along with his belief that agriculture was one of the areas of our economy that was most in need of improvement. Before long, the two were regularly conferring about potential solutions, and Hock introduced Zolezzi to a group of dedicated individuals with whom he was working. “I met Dave Carter at that time,” he says, “ and he and I, along with a handful of others, started on the path of organizing small family farms” – an effort that was soon going by the official name Zolezzi suggested, The Association of Family Farms.

This, in turn, led Zolezzi, Carter and another associate, Myron Lynkanycz, to the founding of a new commercial entity that would not only lead the way to a higher standard of quality, but soon become the leader in its field. The company was Natural Pet Nutrition, whose Pet Promise brand of pet-food products was the first to be free of byproducts, rendered proteins, added antibiotics and hormones.

The creation of Pet Promise, however, would never have come about had it not been for the team’s work with the Association of Family Farms. As Zolezzi explains it, “Dave and I were out to save family farms not create a pet food company. That was put together after we realized the impact that pet food could have on economics for the organic and natural beef and poultry producer, how our companion animals could get better protein sources directly from them, and how this would promote a more humane and sustainable way of raising farm animals. So everyone won – including pets and their owners.”

And today, Pet Promise – whose mission is “changing the way farm animals are raised and companion animals are fed” – enjoys the distinction of being the No. 1 brand in the category of premium, natural pet foods. But that, too, might never have been the case had it not been for Zolezzi’s intimate knowledge of and connections in the food business, which led to his successfully bringing Pet Promise under the corporate umbrella of Nestle-Purina while strictly maintaining its own distinct brand integrity – an arrangement that provided it with the resources to greatly amplify its presence in the marketplace.

But, far from resting on his laurels, Zolezzi has continued to involve himself in the campaign to encourage earth-friendly farming practices and healthier food alternatives.

His other endeavors in this area have included his work in setting up the Horizon Organic Children’s Nutrition Platform, the positioning of Kagome Fruit Juices toward women with the “Live True” mantra, working with the Humane Society on its logo, mission and positioning, and his leadership role as board chairman of The Organic Center (www.organic-center.org)., whose mission is “to generate credible, peer-reviewed scientific information and communicate the verifiable benefits of organic farming and products to society.”

“The Organic Center was formed by a group of organic industry people like Mark Retzloff, Gene Kahn, Katherine DiMatteo and others in the organic industry. The premise was that we needed to promote organic food in a way that would focus not only on its environmental benefit but on its nutrient and health benefits as well. Our first studies, for example, showed 30% more antioxidants in organic versus conventional produce.”

Today Zolezzi is sought out for his expertise in business and his ability to understand the operations and needs of companies ranging from large conglomerates like Nestle to small start-ups. He is currently working with Duchy Originals, one of the United Kingdom’s leading producers of organic and sustainable food products founded by the Prince of Wales, on the viability of expanding to the United States and other countries, including India.

Zolezzi has also used his experiences in these endeavors as the basis for three books, “Chemical-free Kids; How to Safeguard Your Child’s Diet and Environment,” “How Dog Food Saved the Earth,” and “The Detachment Paradox,”, a survival manual for corporate employees (soon to be re-released as “Jobjectivity”). He is also in the process of launching a new book, "Do Something,” which will be the foundation for a new company called “Zcause” that will promote corporate social responsibility and how it can be communicated to the public.

It may be a long way from Zolezzi’s early training in a family fishing business – and yet, in many ways, it represents his having come full circle, back to that “natural channel,” only with a wealth of accumulated expertise and experience in facilitating the kind of cooperation and coordination it takes to get progressive ideas and products to catch on with today’s consumers.

In fact, whenever meeting with a new group of business people or associates, he always introduces himself proudly as “the son of a fisherman.”