Four years ago, General Mills Inc. marketing manager Lauren Mehler Pradhan was reading the Business Journal when she came across an article about Grow North MN, an organization meant to support food and agriculture startups. At the time, Grow North was looking for a founding director.
Pradhan was that founding director and has led Grow North for the past four years. Now, she plans to step down and hand the organization over to someone else.
"Lauren did a great job of placing Minnesota's food and [agriculture] entrepreneurship on the map," said John Stavig, the director of the Holmes Center for Entrepreneurship at the University of Minnesota. Grow North is a part of the Holmes Center.
Stavig and Pradhan expect the new director to help the organization grow in scale and add new programming throughout the year to complement its flagship Food/Ag/Ideas Week event in the fall. The programming will focus on public education and creating connections between people in the food and agriculture industry.
Grow North was initially funded for three years by a grant from General Mills. General Mills has extended its relationship with the organization, and Grow North now gets additional funding from partners like The Schwan Food Co.
Working for an entrepreneurship ecosystem organization is difficult, Pradhan said, because the temptation to strike out on one's own is high. She's going to start her own, as-yet unnamed consulting group in the coming months.
"I've also been bitten by the [entrepreneurship] bug," she said.
Pradhan said that she will remain on board with the company until her successor is found. She's also joined the advisory board of the Holmes Center. She wonders if her successor might find the job the same way she did.
"I hope someone is reading this right now and thinking about that opportunity," she said.
