Steven M. Finn is Vice President of Food Waste Prevention at Leanpath, the global leader in integrated hardware and software solutions for food waste prevention. Steve is a sustainability expert and co-founder of ResponsEcology – a sustainability and change management firm helping organizations reduce waste and drive transformational culture change. Passionate about leveraging innovative solutions and partnerships to maximize resource utilization, Steve’s intense focus on the triple bottom line – people, planet and profits – helps companies secure the competitive advantage needed to compete in today’s “glo-cal” marketplace.
Steve has 25 years of experience in finance, risk management, operations, sales, supply chain, people development and continuous process improvement. His success in reducing operational costs, increasing employee productivity, managing risk and driving internal control and compliance, and achieving aggressive financial and environmental goals combined with his extensive research into the problem of global food waste equips him to drive change inside organizations looking to drive even bigger change in the world.
Pivotal experiences sparked Steve’s interest in reducing food waste and catalyzed a two-year exploration of the topic of global food waste during his Masters Degree studies in Organizational Dynamics at University of Pennsylvania and his studies of stakeholder management and sustainability in France and Sweden.
Steve has since published papers on public-private initiatives and sustainable food recovery programs, piloted public-private partnership programs that led to the capture and distribution of 100,000+ pounds of nutritious produce, and developed a proposal to bring three organizations together who successfully collaborated on mitigating hunger in the Philadelphia area.
Steve continues to lead research in the areas of innovation, sustainability, and food waste. He is a frequent speaker on food waste, food recovery, and food security issues (domestically and internationally) and regularly teaches on these topics with links to related themes of water, energy, and urbanization.
Selected speaking engagements/conferences:
Feb 2012 Hope of the Harvest – Hunger No Longer (Delaware Valley College, PA)
March 2013 Penn State Cooperative Extension (PA)
April 2012 West Virginia University – College of B&E (Morgantown, WV)
November 2012 USEPA Sustainable Food Management Webinar (U.S.)
January 2013 Bucks County Foodshed Alliance (Wrightstown, PA)
February 2013 University of Pennsylvania (Philadelphia, PA)
April 2013 University of Pennsylvania, Penn Vet (Philadelphia, PA)
June 2013 IRAS Conference – Institute for Religion in an Age of Science (Lake George, NY)
March 2014 Penn Career Services, University of Pennsylvania (Philadelphia, PA)
April 2014 League of Women Voters (Warrington, PA)
May 2014 Penn 60-Second Lecture Series, University of Pennsylvania (Philadelphia, PA)
June 2014, 4A’s: Resolve: Advertisers Doing Something to End Hunger (New York, NY)
June 2014 Keep Farming First (Octorara, PA)
November 2014 Wharton Biztech (Philadelphia, PA)
November 2014 Carrier Cold Chain Summit (London, UK)
December 2014 The Last Food Mile Conference, Co-chair, University of Pennsylvania (Philadelphia, PA)
February 2015 Convergence of Childhood Obesity and Hunger conference, Cabrini College (Philadelphia, PA)
March 2015 Knowledge at Wharton Business Radio – Interview (Philadelphia, PA)
May 2015 Thermo-King (Minneapolis, MN)
May 2015 Monterey Bay Aquarium, Sustainable Foods Institute (Monterey, CA)
June 2015 Food Security Forum (Beijing, China)
October 2015 Feeding America, Food Security Summit (Washington, DC)
December 2015 Carrier Corp/UTC – World Cold Chain Summit (Singapore)
March 2016, CBS KYW Radio, Philadelphia
March 2016, Doylestown, PA, Food Waste Panel Discussion
April 2016, BioCycle West Coast, San Diego, CA
June 2016, Harvard, Reduce & Recover: Save Food For People (Cambridge, MA)
September 2016, Feeding America Summit
September 2016, Nutrition Impact Summit, Dallas, TX
October 2016, Feeding the 5000, Portland, ME
October 2016, University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, PA
October 2016, BioCycle, REFOR 16: Renewable Energy from Organics Recycling, Orlando, FL
November 2016, Net Impact, Philadelphia, PA
November 2016, Maine Food System Innovation Challenge, Bowdoin College, ME
November, 2016, NHPR Radio
December 2016, Carrier Corp/UTC – World Cold Chain Summit (Singapore)
December 2016, Drexel University, Philadelphia, PA
April 2017, Pyxera Global Engagement Forum, Washington, DC
May 2017, FAO, Rome, Italy
June 2017, OxyFood Conference, Los Angeles, CA
October 2017, Maine Gleaning Network, Portland, ME
March 2018, NY State Food Insecurity Task Force, Albany, NY
October 2018, Grocerant Solutions Summit, Minneapolis, MN
May 2018, University of Modena y Reggio Emilia – Food Innovation Program
May 2018, Asia Pacific Social Enterprise Summit, Taiwan
May 2018, Seeds and Chips, Milan, Italy
May 2019, Waste Expo, Las Vegas, NV
May 2019, UPenn/UNIBO events, Bologna, Italy
May 2019, FAO, Rome, Italy
May 2019, Eurasia Media Forum, Kazakhstan
June 2019, Managing Food Waste Opportunities in NY, Rochester, NY
August 2019, NASEM, Washington, DC
September 2019, United Nations, New York
food for thoughtful action 
Way to go Steve. You really are changing the world. You should be very proud of your accomplishments.
And you remain thin, and continue to look so youthful.
How do you do that?
Bill Donahue