Spotlight Series: Brendon Steele
Meet our VP, Brendon Steele: Bridging Worlds to Build a Better Future
“I was drawn to help build that Star Trek future.”
For Brendon, the path into this work started with Star Trek: The Next Generation. Growing up, he was captivated by the show, and only later realized how much Gene Roddenberry’s vision of a future—one where humanity evolves beyond its divisions, and where progress is not just technological, but deeply human—became engrained within him. “I don’t think I can overstate the influence that this show had in my young life,” he says.
When it came time to choose a career, that vision quietly guided him toward a broader goal: helping build a future where people with different perspectives can actually work together.
Finding the Work
Brendon’s journey into Future 500 was both personal and professional. He grew up in a conservative family in the progressive Bay Area; his father worked in the oil industry, while Brendon developed a deep concern for climate and ecological issues. Holding both of those realities at once was not easy. “Straddling these different worlds, I felt I saw a truth in all of them,” he reflects. “So-called ‘straw-men’ fell apart for me.”
That tension created what he describes as a kind of cognitive dissonance in his younger years. But over time, it became a way of seeing more of the full picture. So when he found Future 500, it clicked. “The mission of bridging divides really spoke to me,” he says. “I suppose that’s why I never left.”
What began as an internship turned into something more enduring.
Seeing Trust for What It Is
At the heart of Brendon’s work is something difficult to define and even harder to build: trust. “Trust is intangible,” he says. “I can’t convince you to trust anyone. You have to feel it yourself.”
Over time, he has noticed a pattern that shows up again and again in stakeholder work. Groups that don’t trust each other often describe each other in almost identical ways. “I remember hearing from a company that an NGO wasn’t acting with integrity,” he recalls. “And that same NGO said the exact same thing about the company.”
From the outside, the symmetry is striking. But from within, it’s nearly invisible. For Brendon, that’s where the work begins. Helping people step back just enough to see that the distance between them is often shaped as much by perception as by reality. “That lack of trust leads each side to take actions that push the other further away,” he says. “Part of our challenge is helping people see the world through another’s eyes.”
Holding Tensions, Not Choosing Sides
One of the things Brendon wishes more people would talk about is the way major issues intersect and also sometimes conflict. “There are a wide set of societal concerns, and many dimensions to each one as well,” he says. “Sustainability, democracy, security, liberty, AI, biotech.” Too often, these issues are treated in isolation, even as they impact one another—sometimes creating challenging trade-offs.
He points to climate protection and energy security, or even nature and climate protection, as two examples. Sometimes the solutions for each align, but sometimes—many times—they don’t. “Rather than choose one or the other,” he says, “how do we forge a path for both that recognizes, even leans into, those points of tension?” It’s not a question with a clean answer; but for Brendon, that’s exactly the point.
Looking Ahead
When he thinks about the future, Brendon comes back to the same instinct that first drew him to this work: integration.
He hopes Future 500 can “play a role in creating a better, integrated agenda for sustainability and other concerns, embed that within companies and help create a durable social license to operate through stakeholder engagement.”
A Perspective Reconsidered
Earlier in his career, Brendon believed there might be a “right” answer to so-called “wicked problems.” He doesn’t see it that way anymore. “There is no objective right answer,” he says, especially when it comes to challenges like climate change. “What one person sees as a good solution, another may genuinely see as a bad one.”
That doesn’t mean progress is impossible. But it does change how you approach it. “There’s not going to be a path forward that satisfies everyone,” he says. “But everyone should be engaged in the process.”
For Brendon, that belief is fundamental not just to this work, but to the idea of democracy itself.
