Mary Jo Cook
Ganaz, Inc.
Chair of the Board of Directors
Mary Jo has held CEO, COO, VP, and Board roles in the consumer-packaged goods, small business lending and impact investing sectors. Mary Jo’s skills in strategy, innovation, marketing, stakeholder engagement and organization effectiveness have driven growth in both for-profit and not-for-profit organizations. She brings Fortune 500 experience to small, growing companies, helping them generate outstanding financial, social and environmental results.
At The Clorox Company, Mary Jo held senior management roles in Innovation, Sustainability, Strategy Development and Marketing. She created and led innovation groups which integrated Consumer Insights, Product Design, Open Innovation, and Advanced Technology to develop pipelines of new product lines, including natural (GreenWorks HomeCare line, launched with a Sierra Club endorsement; BurtBees acquisition) and tool/cleaner combinations (like Clorox BleachPen). She was recognized by BusinessWeek as a Top 25 Innovation Champion. As the company’s first Vice President of Sustainability, Mary Jo championed incorporating sustainability into decision making by simultaneously evaluating risk, cost reduction, and growth. She also created and led a 75 person team charged with developing Clorox’s corporate strategy. Reporting to the CEO and Executive Committee, the team identified external trends and core competencies; challenged many of Clorox’s current business practices; and conducted a “listening tour” across the U.S. and Latin America to incorporate multiple points of view into the new strategic plan.
As Chief Impact Officer at Fair Trade USA, a 70 person $10M social enterprise, Mary Jo influenced global supply chains to improve the lives of farmers and workers while enabling people to purchase products aligned with their values. She led all operations from “origin to shelf”, including Business Development, Supply Chain & Producer Services, Marketing Communications, Grass Roots Advocacy, and Impact Management. Under her new “Fair Trade for All” strategy, revenue grew 30%, largely through partnerships with companies like Whole Foods, Honest Tea, Patagonia and West Elm, in industries including food, personal care and apparel. She also redesigned marketing communications, including new logo, positioning, website, and messaging, increasing consumer awareness by 40%.
Most recently, as CEO of Pacific Community Ventures (PCV), she launched a new vision, mission, strategy and marketing plan to offer affordable loans paired with pro-bono mentoring to diverse, low-income entrepreneurs, doubling the number of small businesses served. Strategy included expanding PCV’s BusinessAdvising.org mentoring platform nationally by partnering with organizations like Google, PayPal, eBay, Intuit, DoorDash and JPMorgan Chase. She also grew PCV’s impact investing consulting practice by 50%, by providing foundations and investment managers with strategies and tools to better align their capital with their financial, social, and environmental objectives.
Mary Jo has an MBA from the University of Chicago and a B.S. from the University of Illinois. She began her career at KPMG, after passing the CPA exam with honors. Mary Jo currently serves as founding Board Chair of Ganaz, a social enterprise start-up developing a workforce management platform to help growers find, manage, train and retain workers. The platform strengthens the growers’ business while improving worker livelihoods. Under her leadership, Ganaz has raised $3M+ in venture funding while serving over 50,000 workers to date. She is also an Advisory Board member of Sustainable Brands, helping corporations like Kind Bar, Target and Keurig drive growth by embedding sustainability into their brand strategies. Mary Jo is an Aspen Institute fellow and in 2019 was recognized as one of the most influential women in the Bay Area by SF Business Times.