The Renee C. Southard Award for Emerging Healers

The Renee C. Southard Award for Emerging Healers in Natural Retail honors the life and work of Renee Southard—an educator, advocate, and champion of food-based healing who shaped the natural products industry for more than three decades.

Renee founded Organic Marketplace in Gastonia, NC in 1993. She served on the board of SENPA (the Southeast Natural Products Association) from 2013 to 2024, including four years as President from 2020 to 2024. Through her leadership, she launched education roadshows, mentored independent retailers, and fought to preserve the integrity and accessibility of community-rooted health businesses.

This award supports early-career practitioners—herbalists, nutritionists, growers, store-level educators, and caregivers—with funds to travel and learn. Recipients may study with master herbalists, visit working farms, apprentice in healing centers, or embed in community wellness networks. Like Renee, they will learn through lived experience—people to people, place to place.

The initial fundraising goal of $10,000 will:

• Launch the first round of awardees in 2025

• Seed a sustainable, recurring program

• Support a digital archive to preserve and share Renee’s story and contributions

The more that’s raised, the more grants can be offered.

Each additional $4,000–$5,000 will support another healer in training—extending Renee’s legacy across hands, places, and generations.

As Renee said: “Nature is our world. That’s where the promise always was—there would be something in nature for it.”

This award carries that promise forward.