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Our Story

It was the new year of 2012- we met and discovered our common observation; the need for a community of sustainable leaders who work together to support each other, the natural products industry and our environment. While there were many sustainably minded trade organizations and many CEO groups at the time, we observed few mission-driven company leaders gathered on a regular basis to solve the toughest problems we face in our businesses and facing our planet. While many of us were friends, we were not working together on issues too big for any one company to face. So we gathered a group of 7 prospective charter members together in July of 2012 and agreed that if we gathered, we would not just talk, we would get important work done to support each other and our planet.

The name stems from a casual gathering at Expo West, nearly a decade earlier, between Ahmed, Chris Mann and Frederick
Schilling that sparked the idea to build a powerful extended community to create positive change and called this idea OSC²: One Step Closer to an Organic and Sustainable Community.

We updated our name in 2020 to One Step Closer to reflect the evolution of the organization over the past 8 years to represent One Step Closer… to all our collaborative work: zero waste packaging, reversing climate change, conscious leadership, and a just and regenerative society.

~ Ahmed Rahim and Lara Dickinson, OSC co-founders

The OSC Team

The OSC Board