Grant Kendzior | Founder, EcoBreakthroughs

The Founder

IamGrantKendzior,FounderandPrincipalStrategistofEcoBreakthroughsandHeadofStrategicPartnershipsat4ocean.Myworksitsonbothsidesoftheimpacteconomy,whichisanunusualplacetostandandausefulone.

TheShortVersion

I help founder-led companies find the cause their business should own, and I help environmental organizations package their work into partnerships brands will actually fund.

I have helped raise $18M+ for environmental causes, and built partnerships that funded the removal of 50M+ pounds of ocean plastic.

None of that came from a framework. It came from doing the work, mostly in rooms where somebody had to justify the spend.

TheStory

How I got here.

I did not start out in sustainability. I started out as an entrepreneur who kept noticing the same gap.

Companies I worked with genuinely wanted to do something meaningful about the environment. They wrote checks, ran a campaign, put a badge on the packaging. Almost none of it moved the business, so almost none of it survived a hard quarter. Meanwhile the environmental organizations doing extraordinary work could not get those same companies to commit, because they were asking for support instead of offering something a brand could use.

Both sides wanted the same outcome. Neither could speak the other's language.

So I learned both. I spent years building corporate partnerships that had to produce revenue, not just goodwill, and years working alongside the organizations on the receiving end of that money. That is the whole business now. I sit in the middle and translate.

BothSidesoftheTable

Why the vantage point matters.

At 4ocean

As Head of Strategic Partnerships, I sit on the brand side of cause partnerships every week. I see which partnership memos get approved and which quietly die in a review. I see what a company needs before it will renew, and how rarely anyone tells the cause what that is.

At EcoBreakthroughs

I take that knowledge to both sides. For founder-led companies, I help find the one cause their business should own and prove it well enough to survive a skeptical customer. For causes, I show them exactly how a corporate partner is scoring them, before the partner does.

TheFieldWork

The work is not theoretical.

I have spent time in the places these partnerships fund. It changed how I evaluate whether an impact claim can actually be traced, and it is the reason I am hard to sell to.

Grant with two Mayan women in traditional dress in front of a painted mural in Guatemala — GuatemalaWorking with Mayan indigenous women in the rural jungle.

Grant with a group in front of a painted container in Uganda reading 'It is only waste if we waste it' — UgandaOn the garbage heaps near refugee camps.

When someone tells me their impact is measurable, I have a specific picture in my head of what measuring it actually requires.

In the Field

The work, up close.

From shoreline cleanups to the partnerships that fund them: the real work behind the strategy.

Grant outside the United Nations offices in Geneva — United Nations, Geneva

Grant with local partners in front of a painted mural in Uganda — Partners on the ground, Uganda

Grant carrying a recovered fishing net out of a mangrove — Ghost nets, out of the mangroves

Grant speaking on a TEDx stage — The stage, TEDx

Grant kneeling with community members, painting a mural panel together on the ground — Painting the plan together

Two 4ocean crew hauling a net-loaded boat through shallow water — Crew work, not campaign work

Grant with a colleague at Microsoft's offices — Inside the buyer's building

Grant with two women in traditional dress in front of a mural in Guatemala — Guatemala: the community's wall

Grant standing on a shoreline stack of bagged plastic recovered from the coast — Every haul, counted

Children eating lunch at long tables in a community kitchen — Lunch, funded

A 4ocean boat working a mangrove channel — On the water with 4ocean

Grant addressing a school hall packed with students — The room, not the report

Grant in the crowd at a climate march — In the crowd, not above it

Grant beside a 4ocean boat loaded with bags of recovered plastic — Bagged, weighed, shipped

Children crowding into a photo with Grant — Who it is for

A 4ocean crew member carrying a collection bag along the shoreline — Shoreline, bag by bag

Speaking

On stages.

I have spoken at the United Nations in both Geneva and New York, at EarthX, Sustainable Brands, Global Citizen Forum, Concordia, Expo West, and Roth Capital, and in classrooms and universities that had no budget and paid more attention than most boardrooms.

The talk is usually some version of the same argument: business is the fastest lever we have, and it only moves when the case is commercial as well as moral.

Explore speaking

Education

Master's in Entrepreneurship, University of Florida
Bachelor's in Business Management, University of Florida
Sustainable Business Strategy, Harvard Business School Online

Outside the work.

I am an avid traveler, an outdoor person, and a committed mindfulness practitioner. Adventure is where most of my conviction about this work came from in the first place, and time outside is still how I think clearly.

My friends call me Grateful Grant. I have made peace with it.

StarttheConversation

The best way to understand how I work is to work with me for thirty minutes.

No deck. No pitch. A working conversation about your business and where impact could actually carry commercial weight.

Plant the SeedBook a Strategy Call30 minutes, no charge

I have spent 15+ years proving that impact and profit are not opposing forces.