Speakers

Biography

Robynn Shrader was the founding executive director and is currently chief executive officer for the National Cooperative Grocers Association (NCGA), a business services cooperative for retail food co-ops located throughout the United States. NCGA represents 125 food co-ops operating over 160 stores in 35 states with combined annual sales of over $1.4 billion and over 1.3 million consumer-owners. NCGA helps unify natural food co-ops in order to optimize operational and marketing resources, strengthen purchasing power, and ultimately offer more value to natural food co-op owners and shoppers everywhere.

As CEO for NCGA, Shrader is involved daily with the challenges and opportunities facing retail food co-ops of varying sizes across the country. She works directly with a variety of industry organizations and foundations that serve the natural, organic and cooperative communities. Shrader represents food co-ops within the National Organic Coalition, a national sustainable agriculture coalition dedicated to the preservation of organics, family farms, rural development and animal welfare. She also serves on the Boards of the National Cooperative Bank (a wholly owned subsidiary of National Consumer Cooperative Bank, a U.S. government-chartered, member-owned cooperative corporation) and CoopMetrics (a co-op that provides business intelligence tools that improve the competitiveness of local businesses and their associations).

Shrader was named one of the "Top Women in Grocery" by Progressive Grocer magazine in 2007. In 2009, NCGA was awarded the dotCoop Global Award for Cooperative Excellence in recognition of the application of cooperative values and principles to drive cooperative and business success.