[ad_1]
With more than 25-plus years as an executive in high-tech, advertising and other fast-moving industries, Rebecca Haag helped raise money for companies like IBM, Motorola, Bank of America and General Motors before entering the nonprofit world two decades ago.
“I love business. I love your standards in business,” said Ms. Haag, who lives in Chilmark and has been working in the same discipline since 2016 as executive director of the Island Grown Initiative.
Only the mileposts are different, she told the newspaper during an interview last week at her IGI office in West Tisbury.
“Rather than a return on investment, it’s now a return on your investment in community outcomes,” Ms Haag said.
“We feed people. We teach children how to feed themselves and eat healthy foods. We are committed to changing the way we do agriculture on the island, to a regenerative approach that will help capture carbon from the air and help tackle climate change.”
We can help feed people by being good business people.
Ms Hagg will lead in developing partnerships across the island. – Jeanne Shepard
Ms. Haag came to IGI after more than a decade as CEO of the Massachusetts AIDS Action Committee. She signed on in 2003 for what was supposed to be an interim period while a permanent CEO was sought.
“I ended up working at a nonprofit by accident,” she said. “i agree . . . I came in as a board member and stabilized the organization, I stayed there for about a year, I was there for about 11, but I loved it.
Nonprofit leadership provides a sense of mission not found in the business world, Ms. Haag said.
“For me, nonprofit work gives me the satisfaction of knowing that I’m contributing to my community. [and] Contributing to the lives of those who need support,” she says.
A graduate of Wells College and Boston University School of Business, Ms. Haag became a year-round citizen of the island in 2015, after years of weekend and vacation trips to her husband Mary Breslauer’s home in Chilmark.
I was commuting back and forth from Boston for about five years as I continued to lead the Massachusetts AIDS Action Committee, then merged the organization with Fenway Community Health Center.
“It was time to make it permanent here,” Ms Haag said.
Introduced to IGI by her friend Mary Kenworth, an island restaurateur, Ms. Haag soon found herself the top candidate to lead the company, starting on May 1, 2016.
In its first six years, IGI’s annual budget grew from $750,000 to $3.2 million, with 35 employees and a wide array of services joining the school’s long-standing garden and harvest programs.
In the year The mobile market, introduced in 2017, visits island settlements during the boom, offering local produce at affordable prices.
Also in 2017, Island Grown launched a free summer lunch program that is expected to provide up to 15,000 meals to Island school children and their families this year.
The Island Food Store merged with IGI in 2021, increasing its grocery selection and moving to the PA Club in Oak Bluffs. Island Grown also partnered with Good Shepherd Parish to receive bulk meals from the Greater Boston Food Bank.
Other partnerships Ms. Haag has encouraged include collecting food waste from local restaurants, a hunter donation program during deer hunting season and a network of loaned commercial kitchens where island chefs can turn harvested produce and seafood into frozen soups, stews and baby meals.
“We are now producing 40,000 ready meals this year,” she says.
Ms Haag added: “We are working closely with healthcare institutions to develop medically tailored foods as we go forward.”
Many of IGI’s recent initiatives and partnerships, from summer lunches and prepared-meal programs, to the Food Equity Network, a loosely-knit network of island businesses, nonprofits, community volunteers and IGI staff, brought together Ms. Haag for the first time. Year on the job.
Farmers, grocers, fishermen, health care professionals and people working with the elderly participated in network meetings two or three times a year to set new goals.
“We get people together and ask, ‘How do we go about solving these unmet problems?’ We told them.” she said.
In addition to serving food to the hungry, Island Grown pioneers food waste pickup at local restaurants, turning the scraps into compost that feeds the soil of Thimble Farm, a nonprofit farm and greenhouse in Vineyard Haven.
During Ms. Haag’s time, the organization moved away from the old hydroponic grower model, adding soil-grown vegetables to greenhouses and using regenerative farming techniques in the field.
The rainbow trout tanks are also gone, and with them, Ms. Hagg said, is wasting energy cooling water in a hot greenhouse.
“There was no market for fish on an island, and they liked the cold weather,” she says.
The next step for Island Grown is the addition of staff housing – two two-bedroom units and two one-bedroom units, along with septic systems on the Thimble Farm property.
“Now to be a responsible employer on Martha’s Vineyard, you have to help find a solution to the housing crisis,” she said.
An education and innovation center is also being built at the farm, Ms Haag said.
“We always bring school children to the farm [and] We don’t have a place to gather,” she said.
The education center, already approved by the Martha’s Vineyard Commission, will have indoor classrooms where children and adults can take lessons in regenerative gardening and other food growing techniques, Ms. Haag said.
“We hope to be able to start infrastructure construction this fall and start the actual buildings next spring,” she said.
A third and larger project is on the horizon and developing soon, Ms. Haag said.
“We need an island food hub. We need space to have a commercial kitchen, warehouse and storage space, a large walk-in refrigerator and freezer, she said.
Currently, IGI has storage space for less than a week’s worth of the Boston Food Bank, Ms. Haag said.
“If the weather is bad or the boats don’t run, we have no backup,” she says.
“We’re working out how to manage that right now,” Ms. Haag said, noting that the site must be in a business district and accessible to Islanders with limited means or inconsistent incomes.
“There are many workers who occasionally need assistance with food security,” she said, referring to seasonal employment that provides less than a year’s worth of income.
A fit and energetic 70, Ms. Haag, who loves swimming and tennis, isn’t thinking of retiring anytime soon.
“We have a lot of challenges, and I want to be part of the solution,” Ms. Haag added, praising the island’s growing staff.
“I’m very lucky. It is in your career that you should work with young and active people.
We are building leaders who will make a difference on the island for years to come.
[ad_2]
Source link
