Because the CEO of Patagonia, Rose Marcario stood out as one of the crucial outspoken voices in enterprise in opposition to President Donald Trump throughout his first time period. Beneath her management, Patagonia even sued the Trump administration after he issued a proclamation to shrink public land in two nationwide monuments in Utah.
Now, within the midst of Trump’s second time period, Marcario is now not on the helm of the progressive outside attire firm, however she’s nonetheless taking a stand. As firms pull back on DEI initiatives, backtrack on climate commitments, and usually take a quieter approach to politics, Marcario is doubling down on her perception that companies can—and should—be “the best pressure for good,” as she says. “It’s solely a failure of creativeness that makes us assume any otherwise.”
This isn’t a brand new combat for Marcario. Because the CEO of Patagonia, she expanded the outside attire model’s environmental commitments, oversaw its foray into sustainable meals by means of Patagonia Provisions, and launched into ambitious political activism, together with Patagonia’s combat to protect public land. And she or he did all that whereas turning Patagonia from a $100 million firm to a $1.5 billion firm over the course of her 12-year tenure.
Marcario left Patagonia in 2020. The next yr, she became a partner at ReGen Ventures, a climate-focused enterprise fund investing in early-stage founders who’re constructing regenerative applied sciences, akin to making meals from CO2 or cleansing up wastewater whereas additionally sequestering carbon emissions. She’s additionally now the chair of EV company Rivian’s nonprofit, Rivian Basis, and founding board member of SPUN, the Society for the Safety of Underground Networks, a scientific initiative to map and defend the planet’s trillions of miles of underground fungi. (Marcario was additionally beforehand on the board of plant-based meat model Meati, however left that position a few yr in the past; Meati remains to be a part of ReGen’s portfolio.)
It’s these wide-ranging roles that permit her to double down on her imaginative and prescient. Being at ReGen offers her a “breadth” that she didn’t have as a CEO, she says. As an alternative of simply steering one firm, she’s supporting a swath of purpose-driven companies, investing in options throughout agriculture, sustainable supplies (like leather made from food waste), and extra.
That features BurnBot, a startup that’s mitigating wildfire danger with automated machines to hold out prescribed burns, for which ReGen led the $20 million Collection A funding spherical in April 2024. Or Aigen, a fleet of solar-powered weeding robots that eliminates the necessity for dangerous herbicides. ReGen led its $12 million Collection A in 2023.
“Rose has delivered financial outcomes pretty much as good as anybody—billions in gross sales, exponential development, category-leading profitability . . . and constructed generational manufacturers that stand for issues that everybody else shies away from,” says Dan Fitzgerald, managing companion and founding father of ReGen.
Even at Patagonia, although, Marcario was pondering past attire. She cofounded the Regenerative Natural Alliance, a program to certify growers on essentially the most climate-friendly agricultural practices, and spearheaded the formation of Patagonia Provisions, the clothes firm’s sustainable meals arm. These efforts converse to Marcario’s capability to be on the forefront of innovation, says Robyn O’Brien, a meals and local weather professional who consulted with Marcario when she was first conceptualizing Patagonia Provisions. “In any business, there’s all the time the tip of the sphere, the early adopters, the early whistleblowers. And she or he’s simply persistently been that,” says O’Brien.
Supporting an array of purpose-driven entrepreneurs performs to Marcario’s strengths. “She possesses the uncommon capability to see—actually see—and empower people,” says Birgit Cameron, cofounder and former head of Patagonia Provisions. By working outdoors of Patagonia, Marcario can take her daring mind-set and “ripple it out” to different firms and industries, Cameron provides.
That was Marcario’s aim. “I left Patagonia primarily as a result of I felt like I had extra to supply the world,” she says. “Promoting outside clothes at a time when our planetary disaster is so dire didn’t really feel like the perfect utilization of my time and my abilities. Specializing in entrepreneurship that’s based mostly on regenerating the planet, and making a regenerative future, to me felt like a way more optimistic and impactful technique to spend this subsequent season of my profession.”
A regenerative future means constructing an financial system based mostly on companies and applied sciences that restore ecosystems and planetary assets, relatively than simply depleting them. “We’ve got to base our financial exercise within the coming many years not on doing much less harm, however on an financial system that actively heals,” she says. Firstly of 2025, Marcario penned an op-ed in Time concerning the significance of this fashion of doing enterprise. Our present harmful financial mannequin is “operating out of runway,” she wrote.
That sounds alarming, and it’s: The world is warming at file ranges, and because the planet heats up, financial efficiency goes down. Each 1 diploma Celsius that the Earth’s temperature will increase will be linked to a 12% drop in world GDP. The Trump administration is exacerbating this disaster. The president has once again pulled the U.S. out of the Paris climate agreement, decimated millions in climate research, weakened environmental protections, and has given industrial firms free rein to pollute. He’s additionally launched attacks in opposition to DEI packages, inflicting some firms to again away from their commitments to inclusion and variety, together with their help for LGBTQ+ rights.
Marcario isn’t shrinking within the face of these challenges. “It’s so essential, as an LGBTQ individual, to be out, to be seen, to help particularly our trans neighborhood that’s getting used as a political device proper now in such a unfavorable means,” she says. “It turns into much more essential to double down and to point out braveness and management.”
Regardless of these challenges, she says she’s nonetheless hopeful concerning the future, particularly when she appears at ReGen’s portfolio. Together with BurnBot and Aigen, ReGen has invested in Arkeon, which turns CO2 into proteins; Banyu Carbon, which sequesters carbon dioxide from seawater; and Ulysses, which makes use of robots to revive seagrass; amongst different firms.
These are all options “which might be about making the world higher and extra livable for everyone,” Marcario says. “[These companies are] not spending time debating whether or not inclusivity and variety is an effective factor. They understand it, and so they’re transferring ahead.” She’s additionally excited to be working with chef Dan Barber who began Row 7 Seed Company, which has lately been rolling out its new non-GMO breeds of produce at Complete Meals, and she or he’s wanting ahead to the debut of Rivian’s R2 electrical truck, set to start manufacturing within the first half of 2026.
Marcario is supporting all these improvements as a result of she doesn’t change her values based mostly on how the political winds are blowing. She advises different enterprise leaders who wish to have a long-lasting influence to do the identical. “Domesticate your braveness, don’t obey upfront, belief that prospects will vote with their {dollars} and reward your commitments to your long-term values,” she says. “The manufacturers of long-term views, robust identities and followership, they don’t equivocate.”
