Ecocentricity Blog - Special Issue
We Need a "Ray C. Anderson Prize," they said.
We heard this refrain, in various forms, from the very beginning of our time stewarding Ray’s legacy here at the Foundation. Each time it was echoed, we first felt humbled. What an amazing honor it is to have someone want Ray’s memory preserved in this manner!
The feeling that followed immediately after, though, was intimidation. After all, we thought, the act of creating a prize and the infrastructure around it, and then ushering it onto the world stage, might be beyond our expertise and stray too far from our mission. Aren’t there already many great prizes out there, and what did we know about running a competition? And what if we failed to create something worthy of all that for which Ray stood?
So we waited. We said, “Not yet.” We patiently explained that we wanted to get our feet wet running a Foundation before considering something so bold. Our feet got wet, and then our ankles, and pretty soon we were still waiting with the water line at our shins. We felt like we needed something more before…well…moving.
Turns out that something was a simple nudge.
