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W W W. M A I N E B I Z . B I Z 27 M A R C H 2 3 , 2 0 2 0 AWARDS ARE PRESENTED IN 7 CATEGORIES: Renys Large Business (25 + employees) ♦ Chalmers Insurance Group Customer Service ♦ Holiday Inn By The Bay First Generation People's United Bank Innovation & Technology ♦ Shep Lee Community Service Cumberland Crossing by OceanView Environmental Leadership Maddy Corson Small Business (less than 25 employees) Nominate a Family-Owned Business Today NOMINATE A BUSINESS AT WWW.FAMBUSINESS.ORG FOR THE Self-nominations are welcome and encouraged! ANNUAL MAINE FAMILY BUSINESS AWARDS 21 ST 5 1994 - 2019 2 Learn More 4 NonprofitMaine.org/AddingUpImpact #NonprofitsWorkForME 1 IN Maine workers 98,000 6 employed Maine nonprofit jobs in Maine That's over by a is An advocate to end hunger in Maine Kristen Miale has changed the way Good Shepherd delivers food B Y L a u r i e S c h r e i b e r K risten Miale recalls a pivotal moment in her career. She was working as an invest- ment analyst. A self-admitted geek who loves crunching numbers, she enjoyed the work and the people. But when 2008 and the recession barreled in, she was profoundly dismayed by its impact on ordi- nary people. "The people who paid the price were everyday folks," she says. "I just couldn't take it anymore." She began volunteering for hunger- relief organizations. Thus began a trajec- tory that led to her October 2012 appoint- ment as president of Good Shepherd Food Bank. Her most visible accomplishment is the opening last September of a 40,000-square-foot warehouse in Hampden, a size that accommodates increased food distribution and a location chosen to better serve central, northern and eastern Maine. With her training in business and com- puter science and a previous career as a financial analyst and business consul- tant, Miale is guiding Good Shepherd, Maine's largest food bank, well beyond its traditional role as a food distribution organization. Miale, a 2015 Mainebiz Woman to Watch, is an advocate for ending food insecurity. Under her leadership, Good Shepherd has increased distribution from 12 million pounds per year in 2012 to 30 million pounds today, working with a network of more than 450 nonprofits. With her leadership team, she's shifted the sourcing model, growing fresh pro- duce distribution from 16% to 37%; and distribution of healthy foods overall from 58% to 78%. Her hires, in areas like logis- tics and public policy, are creating a data- driven operation, advocating and growing organizational partnerships at all levels of government and community in order to tackle systemic issues. The goals? By 2025, end food inse- curity through access to nutritious food. Long-term, she wants to eliminate the need for Good Shepherd itself by solving systemic issues. "Those issues won't be solved by 2025," Miale says. "We need to talk about the policies that prevent people from accessing healthy food. Our partners do amazing work and fill a huge need, but nobody in the United States should have to wait in line to get a hand-out for food." "To see someone with that kind of tal- ent and acumen in the business sector move over and apply those skills to the nonprofit sector — and to see the kind of track record and results she's created over the last number of years — has just been truly impressive," says Mike Vail, president of Hannaford Supermarkets. Crunching numbers Miale's trajectory was less than obvi- ous. Born and raised in Derry, N.H., to par- ents originally from South Portland, she graduated from Boston College in 1993 with a degree in computer science, then worked as a programmer for Motorola Inc. in Schaumburg, Ill. The cubicle life was not for her. She enrolled at Boston University for an MBA and, in 2006, went to work as an invest- ment analyst for Black Point Group, a Portland private investment partnership run by IDEXX Laboratories founder David Shaw and his son Ben Shaw. She loved the people and the work. "I loved the analytical work," she says. "But what I really loved was getting to know the people who founded these busi- nesses and hearing how they created their businesses." She was also getting a glimpse into the world of privilege and the access that the wealthy have to investment networks. The recession was a turning point. Sure, the wealthy lost out, but they usually navi- gated to safe places pretty quickly. It was the lives and livelihoods of average people that were devastated. She began thinking about how she could help the less fortunate. Still at Black Point, she volunteered for hunger relief organizations and noticed that, to a large degree, fresh and healthy foods were unavailable for distribution. "I saw a lot of unhealthy food being given to people — a lot of soda and junk food," she says. "Many people using food pantries were in visibly poor health." She began inquiring into why the orga- nizations didn't have healthier foods and found that they couldn't get it or, if they could, they had trouble giving it away

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