Tonya Antle
Co-founder and executive vice president of Organic Produce Network 5 Harris Court, Monterey (831) 884-5058, organicproducenetwork.com
In 1980s, Tonya Antle was already hard at work in the organic produce world. In fact, she was shaping the organic produce world as we know it. She was selling organic table grapes out of the San Joaquin Valley and made history in 1989 when she landed the first sale of organic West Coast produce to a major East Coast grocery store, a Stop & Shop in Boston. “That’s my claim to fame,” she says. This was even before the U.S. Department of Agriculture established the organic definition (in 1990) that’s still in use today. That leadership instinct never went away; more recently, in 2017, Antle co-founded the Organic Produce Network in Monterey, bringing information and networking events to the industry she helped mold.