Anne Palermo is the CEO and co-founder of Aqua Cultured Foods, a leading future-food startup in the alt-protein space. Anne is focused on using Aqua’s novel fermentation technology to bring to market nutritionally superior, hyper-realistic, whole cuts of seafood alternatives. Before co-founding Aqua Cultured Foods, Anne started her career in banking at Morgan Stanley, after which she partnered at a hedge fund and then moved on to BMO Capital Markets. However, she was always interested in health and wellness, so she decided to go back to school to learn food science, food tech and culinary innovation. She then started her first company in the food and beverage space. There, she developed two types of proprietary technologies centered around the commercial scale-up of a healthy snacking platform. She also created the formulation for a high-protein snack based on whole food ingredients, without the addition of protein isolates. This positioned the brand favorably to capture significant white space for a sweet snack with nutritional call-outs, and avoided the overcrowded snack-bar aisle, resulting in turns 10x those expected for the category. She quickly scaled the company to a multimillion-dollar platform. She is a guest lecturer in the intersection of sustainability and the law at Northwestern University’s Pritzker School of Law, and an adjunct professor for the 2023-24 school year.