Food Security, Leadership, and Resilience: The Amy Breitmann Story | FTN Ep. 43

How often do you ponder about your personal gifts? What if the key to your leadership journey lies in understanding these unique gifts or superpowers? Join us as we get deep with Amy Breitmann, inspiring CEO of Golden Harvest Food Bank and a published Christian author. She shares her journey from finding therapy in writing to leading a food bank that provides over 12 million meals annually. A conversation that will help you unlock the potential of your personal gifts and understand the power of diverse perspectives.

Amy's story is one of resilience and tenacity. Having traversed the challenging path of cancer, she shares the indispensable lessons she learned along the way. As she transitioned into a leadership role, she embraced the concept of a servant leader. Amy's story is a testament to the importance of personal growth and the courage to face tough situations head-on. Discover how this introverted wordsmith used her love for writing and her faith to navigate her journey to becoming a CEO and serving her community.

The fight against hunger is a significant one, and Amy offers insights into the logistics and challenges of feeding over 25 counties. With rising grocery prices and the cost of living, she challenges common misconceptions surrounding hunger, and highlights the importance of community support in combating it. Tune in to learn how you can support the mission of Golden Harvest Food Bank and make a difference in your community. Join us on this enlightening journey exploring leadership, personal growth, and the power of resilience.

Find Golden Harvest Food Bank here
Amy's personal website here

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Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:00

What is up everyone? Thank you for tuning in to For the Nation Podcast. This is your host, mike Wojcik, and I've got a great episode for you today. Today's guest is Amy Brightman. She is a Christian author and a CEO of Golden Harvest Food Bank, an amazing nonprofit that feeds over 12 million meals a year Without further ado. Let's get right to the episode. Here we go. Alright, I'm Miss Amy Brightman. Thank you, first and foremost. Thank you for your time and coming on the show. I really appreciate it. And, second of all, it's so nice to meet you. As I've learned about you online and getting prepared for this episode, I was. You know. I found myself being inspired, really impressed with your resume and what you've done in life, and just a great sense of leadership from what I've gathered.

Speaker 2: 0:50

So thank you. Thank you, I'm excited to be here.

Speaker 1: 0:53

Awesome, Alrighty. Well, why don't you just kind of introduce yourself, take however long you want and share with the audience? Who is Amy Brightman?

Speaker 2: 1:01

Okay, that's really dangerous. You might be here a while. So, amy Brightman, I'm currently the president CEO at Golden Harvest Food Bank, always been involved in some sort of ministry or leadership of another. I think I'm most proud of to be the wife of Troy and 30 years this fall and the mom to two amazing kids who are now adults Wow, so 25 year old Shelby and Mitchell, who's 22 and live in the dream in Nashville. So, yeah, I feel very much called to Golden Harvest. I think this was a calling and just kind of a culmination of so much of what I had done in my life and truly feel, feel like this is this where I'm supposed to be.

Speaker 1: 1:45

Awesome. Yeah, I wanted in preparation for this. It's beloved in blue jeans. Beloved in blue jeans. Beloved in blue jeans.

Speaker 2: 1:53

So, yes, so I started writing when I was a kid, just scribbling in notebooks, always found comfort in writing in journals, and I was an English major undergrad. My graduate degree is in counseling and so just always felt like there was a lot of therapy in writing and I use that a lot during my cancer journey many years ago and probably processing a lot of what was happening. And so I started Beloved in Blue Jeans it's based on a poem, really. It's actually based on an image by Art Peace, by Norman Rockwell, and it's a girl standing in front of the mirror in blue jeans and she's got like a dress up front, but just how God sees us.

Speaker 2: 2:38

And so started writing kind of publicly online, probably in 2012-ish, something like that, yeah, and was published in a couple of Chicken Soup for the Soul Guideposts magazine, some things like that, just pitched some things out there and was really involved in the blogging community, I think when that was, you know, more of a big deal in 2015-16. And then published, co-authored, a book with my friend Tammy called A God of All Seasons in 2017. And that was just a joy. It was, you know, we both very similar outlook on just seeing the spirituality and God in the seasons in our life, so came in as an author and really feel like I have a lot more books in me.

Speaker 2: 3:23

I've just been a little busy to sit down and hammer those out, but I still I would say that some of my greatest joys, just before coming over here we were working on I was working with the marketing team on some messaging that'll go on the walls in our new building and I still, just, I just really come alive with words like that wordsmithing and just kind of figuring out how to say things. So that's always been a love of mine.

Speaker 1: 3:49

That's awesome. Do you know who Jordan Peterson is by chance? Yeah, so he has a phrase where he says writing is synonymous with thinking. I would assume, agree with that statement. Yes.

Speaker 2: 4:00

And I also believe my husband is a huge, probably his number one fan. He literally I would make is a strong word, but he highly suggested that everyone in our family read all of his books.

Speaker 1: 4:10

Yeah.

Speaker 2: 4:10

And so we've kind of passed him around. But I do believe that, and I believe that it's kind of a conjunction with that that I was just talking to a staff member about this this morning that they're kind of seasons like I find myself writing a lot and then you kind of have to think a lot so that you have more to write, if that makes sense. And I think it's the same way with leadership, like leaders need a lot of downtime just to really process and make the best decisions, and then you go back in the game and and make, make the right choices. And so I think writing is the same.

Speaker 1: 4:42

Awesome. Growing up were you always like, I guess, a writer. In that sense, were you always like really thinking deep about whatever it was at the time?

Speaker 2: 4:51

Yes, too deeply about everything, all the time.

Speaker 1: 4:54

Yes.

Speaker 2: 4:55

Yes, and I think most writers are. We're absorbing a lot and you're not always seeing on the surface what's. I'm an introvert, which a lot of people would not guess, but really what that means is that that's where I get my energy is from being alone. I expend a lot of energy to be with people and I get my energy back by being alone, and I did my, my master's thesis on the Myers Briggs personality indicator, which talks about introversion and extroversion, and so my staff find it kind of interesting. But I get up at 430 in the morning just so I can have four hours about myself before.

Speaker 2: 5:29

I go and spend 10 or 12 with the team, because I really need that. I just need the focus, I need the time to regroup and so, yeah, I'm definitely an introvert and I think I've always been that way, I've always been. As a kid I was really shy, sort of you know, kept everything inside, didn't really know how to how to express myself, and I think I mean over time you develop those skills, but I still kind of go back to camping and gardening and reading and the quiet things in my in my free time.

Speaker 1: 6:01

Right, what is your Myers Briggs? What are they called? I guess assessment or number or letter thing.

Speaker 2: 6:06

I'm an INFP, so introverted, intuitive feeling and perspective, so all of those dreamer qualities like, I think, two percent of the population. So we, we see the possibilities. We don't see. We see what's possible ahead. We're very future looking. We need, like finance people in our life.

Speaker 2: 6:30

We need people that spending on numbers and that help with statistics, although I've learned a lot of that, I think I think as you, as you age, you work on your shadow self, they say. So I think I've learned a lot of that business acumen over time. But I am going to be the one, you know, casting the vision. That's always kind of how I see the world.

Speaker 1: 6:48

I completely understand.

Speaker 2: 6:49

I'm an ENFP, so same thing, but more extroverted on that. Just get your energy out there in the world.

Speaker 1: 6:54

That said, there's a quote I want to read from your website, beloved in blue jeans, where you say you believe that you and I are created for a purpose. It is our job to uncover it, own it, celebrate it and share it with the world. Don't wait another minute to tell your story, whether it's your business, your testimony, your nonprofit vision or a recipe you need to share with your children. As an ENFP and, I'm sure, in an INFP how difficult was it to uncover the purpose in your life?

Speaker 2: 7:23

Hmm, well, I think it was just a long and slow journey and I think it's really about trusting that who God creates you to be is really going to be influential.

Speaker 2: 7:37

When I say influential, I don't mean, you know, ceo of a company or I believe that people are, you know, can be, the CEO of their lives. You know that there's, you can make an impression, I think if you read my page on the website about superpowers, you know, I believe, that we all have superpowers, which is really the same conversation yeah, that your job is to go out and to use those, and I think that people are called to use those, whether it's, you know, raising children or or teaching, or as a nurse or as a leader had a conversation this morning about you know that everyone, everyone on our team at Golden Harvest is important. Every employee matters, right, because I can't, I can't do my job unless that job is done well, and that that goes for every aspect of the company. And so, just embracing, I think it's it's just a journey of embracing what. What gifts did God give me and how can I best utilize those? And also surround myself with people that have gifts differing, because I need those qualities in my life.

Speaker 1: 8:40

It's interesting and that's a perspective. The previous guest that episode's coming out tomorrow, actually from the time we're recording this he said that he loves to surround himself with people who have different perspectives and viewpoints because it helps him, like I guess, really figure out his own, how, what he's married to, what he's not married to and how to best get forward. So I really appreciate that yeah 100%.

Speaker 2: 9:03

I actually say to my team that I have seven vice presidents, so I don't expect you to run your department as well as I would expect you to run it better, because you're the expert in that area, right? Oh yeah, that's, that's the place that you own, and so I'm gonna be here to support you in the gift that God's given you to run that particular department.

Speaker 1: 9:25

Yeah, so it's funny. You say that we are all created for a purpose. I 100% believe that and for me the challenge has been figuring out what that is. And I don't know if it's just because I'm too like dense in the head where I just can't figure it out. But how did you figure out what you were talented in? Is that just like hearing other people and say like, oh, you're really good at this? Or how did you figure out your gifts?

Speaker 2: 9:51

Well, I think, just over time, you this is for me. I think I've always been passionate. I've always been empathetic and passionate, and that really came from a lot of things that I went through as a child. I think that I needed empathy, I needed a lot of folks to be mentors to me, you know, in addition to my parents and my siblings, and so I guess I just always knew that I wanted to do something in the helping field, which is really why I went, and, you know, I did my undergraduate degree in English education and what I found.

Speaker 2: 10:27

So I'm, you know, 22 years old or whatever, and I'm teaching English, which I love, and I'm spending most of my time in the hallway talking to a 14-year-old girl whose parents are going through a divorce and trying to help her maneuver the help that she needs to get through that, and what I found myself doing was so much of that that I was like I think I'm supposed to do something more than teach, like I think I'm supposed to be a counselor. I think that's the piece that it really drives me and so that that spun me into my next, you know, into my master's in counseling, and then my first position out of there was working with kids in the foster care system and helping them to maneuver that and representing kids in the courtroom who had been sexually and physically abused, so it's kind of like just a domino. I think I don't really like the term like following your passion, because I mean you have to be smart, you know to be like you have to.

Speaker 1: 11:20

You can't just like trip in.

Speaker 2: 11:22

But I do think that there are little clues like and I felt like that that girl in the hallway for me was a clue, like you're supposed to help people but it doesn't have to look like a classroom you know it could look like something different and then kind of leads you to the next thing. So I think it was a small, like breadcrumbs along the journey that that helped me. But I, I think I knew pretty young that I like to lead, because I was bossy and I'm you can ask my brothers, it's, it's the truth. You know, I liked, I liked to organize things and I liked to for things to be in a certain order and and so you know those can be a gift and a curse, right, right. But but I think that I just sort of knew, you know, I was like the youngest girl. I think I was 15 or 16. I was a manager at McDonald's. You know like who's a manager at 16 getting keys and like opening things up.

Speaker 2: 12:14

I just I liked to be in charge of things, not really because of the ego, it was more about I just really loved like groups working together. You know I like to see something come to life and so just sort of followed that, I think.

Speaker 1: 12:29

Were you the only? You said brothers, do you have any sisters, or were you the only girl?

Speaker 2: 12:34

I was the only girl.

Speaker 1: 12:35

You think that contributes to the bossiness at all.

Speaker 2: 12:38

Probably.

Speaker 1: 12:38

Yeah.

Speaker 2: 12:39

I was two step sisters but I was the oldest of of the three of us. And yeah, I just like to organize things. I like them to be right.

Speaker 1: 12:47

Yeah, that's funny. That was actually one of my questions was like have you always had a knack for, for leadership? Because I think a lot of people, I don't want to say a lot of people leadership to me is a skill that can come naturally, but it can also be worked on.

Speaker 2: 13:04

I think both. I mean, I think I. I think that people have a certain propensity. I have. I have two really close girlfriends that are both CEOs and we support each other a lot and we talk a lot of times about. You know, we, we sort of like to create the wheel that's running over us. You know, we really are like creators and we like to be part of this. You know, not everyone has the personality for the sort of multi-tasking and the different hats that you need to wear, but but some of us just kind of feed off of that. You know it's like oh, the possibilities of all of these things. So I think it's a combination.

Speaker 2: 13:38

I think that I do believe that anyone can be a leader. I think that, you know, I try to instill that in our team all the time. It's like I don't have, I should not be and I will never be the person who comes up with all the great ideas. I can help you implement them, but some of the greatest things we've done at the food bank have been because somebody said well, why, why don't we do it? Have we ever tried this or this might work, and I'm like that's brilliant, let's try that. So I think you know leaders can be created out of. It takes a belief in themselves, and then, you know, seeing that they can make decisions that are impactful. So so I don't, I don't believe that it's just a predisposition. You know that, like, only certain personalities can be leaders, but I do think that it does take a certain personality.

Speaker 2: 14:22

You know, to be able to you know, just this morning, a tough conversation, and it's like I just like to say let's pull everything out from under the rug, because I would rather deal with it than have something creeping around that we are all feeling resentful about. And so it does take a certain personality to be able to confront hard things.

Speaker 1: 14:43

What other traits do you think are characteristics of a characteristic of a good leader?

Speaker 2: 14:49

Well, because because I'm, you know, have such a strong faith and I think that in walking in as the third leader in 40 years, you know, first female, no pressure there, right, I mean you've got two men who really just walked this incredible journey and and and I really honestly kind of fought the calling to even apply because I was like, well, that's big, a little bit scary. And so I think another characteristic of a really good leader is someone who's a servant leader, because I don't believe that I can ask anyone on the team to do something I would not willing to roll my sleeves and do myself.

Speaker 2: 15:31

It's just my, and I think that's how Jesus led and that's, you know, that's what I believe, and so I have to be able to model that, and it's part of the reason that, you know, I never went home and worked remotely during the pandemic. I was on the front lines with the team putting boxes of food in the trunk, alongside National Guards, people that were on mission with us. You know, could I work at home? Sure, I mean, I guess I'm not sure what I would do other than send emails. That really didn't matter.

Speaker 2: 15:58

But, I, but I think that you know good leadership. I believe there are people respect that. Oh, I know you know they would roll their sleeves up and do it too. They're not just sitting up there making decisions.

Speaker 1: 16:11

Yeah, they don't understand what it really takes the big difference between a manager and a, or a boss and a leader, or manager and a leader. In my opinion, I think vocabulary like words matter in that sense, so that's cool. You actually touched on two other questions that I had, and I'll just ask about the CEO thing now. Well, I'm going to hold that one. It was you said that you, you like, fought the calling to apply for the CEO position at Golden Harvest. Why?

Speaker 2: 16:46

Well, I really, I really at that point had and I said this to Travis McNeil, who's the our previous leader I said, you know, I've been in charge of things. I helped to start a nonprofit, I've run, you know, teams remotely, I've been vice president of marketing here, and I'm just really, I really just want to help y'all raise money. I don't really want to be in charge of a lot of things, I don't know. That just kind of was where I felt like my space was, and then all of these things unraveled where he, you know, was called to to the Oliver gospel mission in Columbia, south Carolina, and the position became open, and so it became pretty clear to me early on that I was supposed to apply for that. I actually had this moment it's. I've only had a few of these in my life. So it's not like I just see visions on a regular basis, but I was. I was really.

Speaker 2: 17:41

We were in an all staff meeting and Travis had announced that he was leaving and I literally had. It was like a slideshow in my head and it can really only be God. It was just like everything that I had done. It was my work in Haiti. It was leading this team in Iowa that I worked with and it was starting the Lydia project and my cancer journey. It was just like everything was like this weird feeling like they talk about, like like the end of your life. You have this like slideshow of things that happen. And I was like, oh, this is the next thing, like, this is, this is the next thing. And so that's when it just kind of started struggling with it a little bit more.

Speaker 2: 18:18

But you know, I eventually threw my hat in the ring. I mean, they were taking applications. There were a lot of applicants. I know that they interviewed five or six folks and it was a presentation in front of 20, some business people, and it was where do you see Golden Harvest in six months, a year, five years? And just casting a vision. And so I went in and just did my presentation. But before I did I said would it be okay if I showed you a quick PowerPoint slideshow, because this is what the vision that I had before I applied, like this is my story, right? And and I played it and it was just like here's, here's how God laid this plan out for me to end up here.

Speaker 2: 19:00

So I think that callings are a funny thing, because it's not like my husband said it this way the only choice you really had was whether you're going to accept the calling or whether you're going to deny it. Now, that's not I don't say that with any ego, as if I'm the only person who could ever run Goldilocks, I don't mean that but I do think that that type of position, especially in a faith based organization that is 41 years old, is a definite calling, and and that it does take a business acumen and also the spiritual side of things. And so so I did find it at first, but I, but I also knew in my heart that the first time I had walked in that building and met that team, I felt like at home. It's like these people are passionate, they're driven, this is, that's the kind of stuff that gets me excited. So that team inspired me.

Speaker 1: 19:56

That's incredible. Um, you've briefly have talked about your your journey and your experience with cancer. Would you be willing to share a little bit about that journey and what that was like?

Speaker 2: 20:08

Sure, well, how long do you have? So I, in a nutshell, I was, I was 29. I was pregnant with our daughter, shelby, who is now 25. And there was, uh, we did an ultrasound, just like, you know, all pregnant couples do, and and it was at 17 or 18 weeks, something like that.

Speaker 2: 20:34

And, uh, at the time I was really addicted to watching the Oprah Winfrey show and so she was really my hero, and so at the time we had VHS tapes and so the VHS tape would be in the recorder and every day at four o'clock, oprah would record because I was at work or whatever. And so, uh, oprah taped over my first ultrasound of Shelby, and so I was kind of distraught because, you know, back then that was kind of new-ish technology and I was kind of excited to be able to see and it was the first grandchild on both sides. And so I called my doctor and said, uh, look, I just taped over this and she's like well, I think we have enough reason. You know, we weren't able to see some things. We can do another one in a few weeks. And so when they did the second one is when they saw a force I think it was a seven centimeter, uh, cyst on my ovary. So I say Oprah saved my life, but it's really the absolute truth. Uh, because that tape happened, uh, the doctor found that and so they referred me to an oncologist, which was very surreal because I was, you know, 25 weeks pregnant and also talking about, well, not really sure. It's probably benign, but there's no way. We're going to know until we take it out.

Speaker 2: 21:43

So long story, very short. Uh, I literally dealt with life and potential death inside of me at the same time. You know, as as a, as a new, new mom I mean, this is going to be our first child. So it was really precarious, and that's really when I I started clinging to Hebrews 11, one which is believing in things that you don't see. And what ultimately ended up happening is I went into labor. They gave us three choices we could lose the baby, go ahead and have surgery and get that thing out and see what it was. We could wait until I went into labor naturally. Or they could induce me and do a C-section when we thought it was safe. They were gonna try to keep Shelby into steroids and all kinds of stuff to get her ready faster to enter the world.

Speaker 2: 22:33

And so what ended up happening is I went into labor December 10th 1997. The tumor had just gotten so large that it was rubbing against the baby, and so I went into labor. They operated on me while my daughter was still there, which is crazy to me still to this day. I think I had every medical student in town in my office in my room at some point, because it was just such a medical miracle Took the tumor out. It was an aggressive form of ovarian cancer, and so they decided that they would induce labor a week later and we'd start chemotherapy. So everything's precarious. I was in the ICU for like five days pregnant, staples in my stomach, and the bottom line is I survived all of that. Shelby was born Christmas morning. I'm not making it up Like people are like that's not real. She was born Christmas morning. They induced me on the 23rd. I was in labor for 36 hours with 25 staples in my stomach. So I don't usually like to tell new moms any of my labor stories because they're not appreciated.

Speaker 2: 23:45

She was born Christmas morning. She was really healthy but small and I started. They literally wheeled me from the labor and delivery floor to the cancer floor on the 26th of December. So I started my you know, being a mom as a cancer patient, and so I did four months of really intense chemotherapy. They wanted me to do it in the hospital A lot of chances of kidney failure and things, and I was like I'm not staying here, I have a baby and I want to go home and so just tell me what I need to do to make that happen.

Speaker 2: 24:18

And so husband's parents moved in with us and helped take care of Shelby. She came home, she and I both went home on on New Year's Day 1998. And I started my cancer treatment and you know, without getting into a lot of details, I've been healthy ever since. I did four months of chemo. I was really emotionally and physically wrecking and really emotionally wrecking for much longer than four months and the miraculous piece is that we had a son two and a half years later. Our son, mitchell, was born two and a half. So they had only done surgery, they took one ovary and all the cancer and and then two and a half years later we had Mitchell. So so he's also a miracle. And then I was done after that. He was not an easy, easy delivery either, so I was kind of finished.

Speaker 2: 25:09

But out of all of that journey it just you know it's really surreal now but I think it really implanted in our whole family and I think that the the intense importance of community I mean we had so many people that brought us food and that helped with Shelby as I was recovering, cause you know you have chemo for four months, but the side effects are really take a long time to get over, and so we had a lot of just support in this community and, I think, eventually springboarded the Lydia project.

Speaker 2: 25:42

Many years later, I always I just always knew someone said to me she was a mentor of mine and I was really angry at her for saying it to me at the time, cause I was like I really didn't ask for this, quite frankly, and I'm a little angry about it. But she said you know there's no one better to go through this journey because you're going to use it for good. You know you're going to, you're going to do something good with us. And I was like, well, yay me, you know I hope that, but I but truly, you know I. I laughed, but but she was right, yeah.

Speaker 2: 26:14

You know she was right, that that she knew my personality well enough that I was not going to just come out the other end and be like well, that was that, you know. I wanted to make the journey easier for somebody else coming behind me.

Speaker 1: 26:28

I know myself as a new work parent. I have a one year old and for everyone listening who has kids, that's, I mean, like a harrowing story, but on the same token, you know how like much of a blessing it is to have a child, and so it's like I couldn't even imagine the emotions.

Speaker 2: 26:45

I mean just hearing the story, you know it's.

Speaker 1: 26:48

It's one thing, but how and you kind of alluded to this how did that going through that or that experience? How did that help you become a better CEO?

Speaker 2: 26:58

Oh, I mean it in a in a million ways. It did not that I was, in those years, even thinking about being a CEO but I think that it taught me important lessons. One. One of the ones it's kind of silly, but I think of it a lot is that I used to kind of dress up to go get my chemo, like like I just put a skirt on and put my wig on and like I wasn't schlepping in there in yoga pants. You know what I mean.

Speaker 2: 27:24

Like there was something like really mentally about like I'm going to fight this and I'm going to, like, you know, dress, put my, put my like fighting clothes on or something like that. And and I still think about that Like you know, when there's a problem, it's like let's face it. You know, let's like suit up for battle and do it. And and I think that's a life lesson for anybody that wasn't just about cancer journey, but I had a really wise oncologist that I remember sat on the edge of my bed and he's just said you know, this is your journey in your body, with your family, with your resources, with your type of cancer, with all of the things that are in your world, and so you have to advocate for yourself and do what's best for you. And I think that that taught me a lot about standing up for myself and trusting my gut. And you know, cause there were times I was like this medication doesn't seem right and I want to talk about it.

Speaker 2: 28:17

And you know there's a lot of people that would just say, well, that's what my doctor said to do, and so I'm just going to do it. And I think he empowered me to to make decisions and that it was my particular battle, my particular. And then you know, years later, walking that journey with other cancer patients through the Lydia project. I mean, I saw, I saw how they approached things and everyone's. You know, I can't, I don't have anything really in common with another woman with cancer other than you know the word. I mean, everything about our journey was probably very different, but at least we could understand, you know, the initial diagnosis. So I think that I think that in retrospect it helped me a lot, just with tenacity and courage and and also embracing fear and doubt. I mean, because you have to do that too as a leader like you. You know always, you know the most confident person in the room.

Speaker 1: 29:09

Yeah.

Speaker 2: 29:11

Be able to say hey guys, this is a little scary. I mean, I'm still, we're still positive, we're still going to, but like, let's call it what it is, which is not easy, you know.

Speaker 1: 29:22

And that. That leads me to this question. And this is crazy you take on the role of CEO at Golden Harvest and six weeks, six weeks later, code kicks off and you're a fresh CEO. Right what? What is that experience like?

Speaker 2: 29:39

I have no idea.

Speaker 1: 29:42

It's a blur.

Speaker 2: 29:44

Uh, I survived. No, it was, it was surreal, it was absolutely surreal. Uh, I, and it's true, like you know, anybody who's been through trauma, and I think all of us with COVID, in general, you really just have fuzzy patches. But but, in all seriousness, I, I didn't know what, I didn't know, right, and I think that what I realized pretty quickly because I, I sit on, uh, the board of directors for feeding Georgia, so the state of Georgia, also the board of directors for feeding the Carolinas, so I've got access to about 15 to 20 other food bank CEOs and a network of 200 of them across the country that we all work together and, and early on, we'd have zoom meetings, you know, and, uh, I'd have people that had 20 years in where I'm talking about something. They're like that's a really good idea, and I'm like, are you sure? Cause I haven't done, I've done this before, but the reality was that nobody had done that before, right?

Speaker 2: 30:40

So there was no resume. I mean, there were people with a heck of a lot more experience in moving food than me, and and so they sure made probably some smarter decisions at points than I did. But there was, it was a level playing field. It was just like we are triaging food Right.

Speaker 2: 30:55

We are we are just going to figure out, and so I had done some, you know, a little bit of logistics and Haiti with with things, but I had not, um, not at this scale. So it it just took a lot of um trusting the team. I just asked the team what do you think we should do? You know, we just lost 1,200 volunteers overnight. We did get a national guard. Um, we did that really quickly. We asked the governor, for we're like we can't we get. The need is greater than ever and we've got all this food, but we don't have anywhere to get it out to 25 rural counties, and so we were blessed to have that. But, yeah, we just pivoted, but it it was really the team, uh, was this community coming together? It was a lot of collaboration. Uh, I was all about, you know, let's collaborate. If you're doing something, uh, out in the rural community, let's come alongside you and take some food. So I think it taught us a lot about collaboration.

Speaker 1: 31:47

Yeah, that's awesome. I couldn't imagine no-transcript what you're thinking at this point. You're like all right, I'm about to follow Two great men who were called and, you know, built this fantastic organization, and now you're there as a CEO and then, six months later, or six weeks later, you know, something that's literally unprecedented takes place.

Speaker 2: 32:08

Yeah, actually Mike, mike Furman and I well, travis and I talk a lot too, but Mike Furman's coming to the food bank tomorrow and our founder and We've we've joked because he'll, he'll talk about the early days, you know, and how his only Donations were like bars of chocolate and salad dressing. He was trying to figure out how to feed people and I was like, yeah, but you never. Global pandemic, it's so. No, I mean, it's, of course, just joking because I've got their own challenges, but it's just interesting because you know, we all, we all have had our thing, but it was. It was just like wow for such a time as this. You know, it's what I had to kind of tell myself because it was overwhelming, but I said we had a great team, great, this community. I mean just incredible what people did to help us right, how many meals.

Speaker 1: 32:57

I think I saw you guys did 23 million meals over coven sounds about right.

Speaker 2: 33:02

We, we do about. We do around 12 million a year and that's just on a regular year and we everything jacked up that year we just did so many mobile distributions and what's crazy about that is we had every reason to do. I mean, everything was hard. Everything was hard, you know. Getting truck drivers was hard, getting places to distribute the food was hard, getting the food Transported out there was hard. We didn't have any volunteers, no, but you know, all the seniors who were running little food pantries out in rural counties had gone home to stay safe, right. So like it was, like everywhere we turned, everything was just upside down and wrong and backwards and it was a perfect storm. And yet somehow, you know, we figured out what we needed to do and got it done, and that that happened across the country.

Speaker 2: 33:51

With food banks, I mean, I just, I just stand at comfort national conferences and of like what collectively this people was able to do. Because you, really, you know, drive, driving to work. In those days there was not no cars on the road, right, because the malls closed, everything's closed, except for people that are working retail, our health care workers and the food banks. That was it. That was pretty much all that was out there. You know there was. I didn't know what was going on Netflix for a good two and a half years.

Speaker 2: 34:21

You know that wasn't yeah, I didn't know how, like a lot of us didn't know how to relate to people who were, who were at home, because we were not. You know, we were ramped way up. That's why it's it's a little blurry, I think, to some of us.

Speaker 1: 34:35

Yeah, one could imagine, and just to kind of put this in a perspective for people, I think I read that you guys deal to 25 counties Across the CSRI. That spans 11,000 square miles, right? So yeah, I could imagine like the transportation and logistics of getting the food out there is challenging in and of itself right even on on right, it's challenging, excluded absolutely.

Speaker 2: 34:59

I mean we run about 25 truck routes a week and and then we have agencies that pick up from us. So there's a lot of logistics involved. On a good day, but that was really, really a challenge. I.

Speaker 1: 35:12

You know it's funny and I guess it's not funny. But one thing I didn't realize, and when I first saw the stat that you guys do 12 million roughly a year, I didn't think that people were that hungry, so to speak, like I didn't realize that hunger was, was that big of a Deal. And I think I saw another stat on there. He says one in nine people are struggling with hunger in our area. What is like the main driver, but behind hunger.

Speaker 2: 35:39

Well, there, that's a very complicated question, so there's a lot of different answers I could give you, but here's here's how I'll frame my initial answer. I literally showed a picture this morning to one of my team members. I had taken a picture of mayonnaise at the grocery store yesterday and it was $7.85 for mayonnaise. The other brand, which was Dukes, was $8 and 25 cents for a jar of mayonnaise and I'm like how, how do people like, how do people do this right?

Speaker 2: 36:10

So there's a lot of different reasons that people struggle with hunger and I think one of the Misconceptions that most people have is like these are people that are not working or that are Seniors at home on a fixed income, or you know, there's there's a lot of like it's all about poverty. Right, it's all about poverty, and there's there's definitely it's definitely related to poverty and we definitely have a lot of that going on. But what's more common is you've got a family that has a budget and our grocery prices have just gone up. What 38% or something like that it's ridiculous and so, and our cost of living.

Speaker 2: 36:47

So rental Costs if you can find an apartment that's, that's safe and convenient and offers transportation for your job is what? A minimum $1100 a month or something crazy. And so it simply becomes a math problem. You know, if you're making even 30, 40 thousand dollars a year, or even more, and you've got certain expenses, how, what, what do you give up? Right, you give up prescriptions, do you give up your housing, do you give up Food, and so what most people end up doing is giving up food, and so a Big proportion of food insecurity is just a simple reflection of the economy right now.

Speaker 2: 37:26

On what people? I think I read something recently that the Americans were polled and it was a large bowl and something like 42% of people had said that they put things back at the checkout when they were checking out at the grocery store, because they're, you know, they're thinking through and they're like, well, really shouldn't get this expensive piece of meat or whatever this week. Like, well, let's do some more macaroni and cheese or something, yeah, and so those kind of decisions are being made now. So we also have situational hunger, right, you've got someone, you know, a grandmother who's taking care of grandkids who has a surgery or you know, something happens, we've got a child with autism or you've got some kind of medical issue. I mean there's. It's just like me saying this is my cancer journey.

Speaker 2: 38:09

Everyone who's struggled with hunger has their own journey and why. They may have struggled with that for a period of time or Sometimes for you know, generations. I mean it really goes, goes always. I will tell you that what we're seeing down at our master's table soup kitchen so we serve over 200 hot meals every single day of the year down there and these are. We have five full-time chefs and then we have hundreds of volunteers that help us. We're seeing more families with children, especially in the summer. We're seeing more disabled folks come in there. So our numbers are really skyrocketing. So that's really just telling me that people are that who were able to afford even after the pandemic. We're kind of seeing this spike back up because of Grocery prices and other housing costs, things like that.

Speaker 1: 38:52

Yeah, one term that I came across doing some research is a food desert. Could you kind of explain that to me and what that is? As far as, what I Learned or took from it is that it's just kind of like rural areas where there's not many options to go and buy groceries.

Speaker 2: 39:09

It can be rural areas, but we also have a real problem in downtown Augusta because if you think about, like, the Harrisburg area, there's no grocery stores within like, if you don't have a car, how do you get to a grocery store? If you live in downtown Augusta? There is no grocery store so, and some of the bus routes don't go certain places, so it's just the lack of access. You know, even if you were to have the funds, where do you, where do you go and what does transportation look like for that? So we really, our service area is 25 counties and about 21 of our counties have at least areas that are food desert. So we really have a challenge in our, in our service area, because it's a lot of rural counties, a lot of. If they do have a Store, it's Doesn't get a lot of fresh produce, right, you've got a dollar, a general or a dollar tree, which you know they're doing their best. I mean, they're providing something right.

Speaker 2: 40:04

But yeah but they may not have the variety of what you're gonna get where there's, where there's good food sources. So we spend a lot of our time and energy thinking about how do we get more fresh produce for it. So, for instance, we just invested in five units that are going in South Carolina rural counties. They're kind of freestanding, probably size of this room, actually probably twice sizes through Cooling units, where we can then move more fresh produce into those areas and give them time to distribute it, because Logistically it's hard if it comes into our warehouse. You know we've got cantaloupes in there right now. It just came in from the USDA so we can only storm for a couple days and they're gonna go bad. So we got it. We had to move them right and so if we have no place to move them out into rural counties.

Speaker 2: 40:47

That is refrigerated. If they just got a little Refrigerator in a pantry, it's not. That's not gonna do for soaring bunch of that for a period of time. So so the, so the food deserts really just present large problems for food banks because we have to figure out who we're gonna Partner with and how we're gonna get fresh food out there.

Speaker 1: 41:03

Yeah, do you guys do this might be a dumb question, but you guys do any like resources or helping people, like plant-thrown gardens, so to speak? I know in some areas it's tough, obviously, like South Augusta, downtown Augusta, where it's concrete everywhere, but do you guys do that?

Speaker 2: 41:20

We don't specifically train people, but I will say that we have 350 partners across our area and a lot of them do have their own community gardens. We do have the urban farm downtown which is right behind our master's table soup kitchen and that has 45 raised beds. We grow organic produce that goes right into our soup kitchen, so it goes into the meals that we make.

Speaker 2: 41:41

We also have chickens down there. We have some experts, some folks. We have a master gardener that helps run that and then a couple of staff members that make sure that we're planning the right things for the soup kitchen. They're really willing to help and answer questions and talk to other folks about it. We don't have anything, I guess, formalized in how we go around and train folks, but we do work with local, state and national farmers. A department of ag is good friends of ours. We work with them. How can we connect the resources, the things that might rot in a field? How can we get those to the food bank and to the people that need it? But that is a direction that we're moving. As far as healthy food, we can move pop tarts and little dubbies out to rural counties all day long, but that's not helping people's nutrition. That's part of the challenge too is how do we get the most nutritious food coming in and out of our food bank?

Speaker 1: 42:32

Yeah, I think that's an issue in and of itself. Is all the food that's cheap is crap? I mean processed, just crap. That's an issue in and of itself. Regarding Golden Harvest Food Bank, what's like the overall mission? Obviously it's to feed hungry people, but what would you say is the overall mission?

Speaker 2: 42:53

Well, I will start by saying that our cornerstone scripture is Matthew 2535, which is for you are hungry, for I was hungry and you gave me food. I was thirsty and you gave me drink. I was a stranger and you welcomed me. That's literally, hopefully next week, going to be put up on the wall in our new facility as the cornerstone of what people see when they walk in, because that's really what we're operating out of is that we believe that it's our calling to feed our neighbors. We're charged to do that in these 25 counties.

Speaker 2: 43:26

We're part of the Feeding American Network, so there's 200 food banks across the country and we have several different pillars that we kind of stand health and nutrition as one and we've got a pretty aggressive imagine Amy coming in with an aggressive goal. But we have a kind of an aggressive goal to try and close the meal gap in the next 10 years. So we have an 8.8 million meal gap in our service area. So what that means is that we're not getting all the food out there that needs to go out, and there's a lot of different numbers to get crunched to look at that, and so we're just looking at ways that we can build capacity within our counties, that we can build more relationships with food retailers and increase what we're doing.

Speaker 2: 44:07

And again we're fighting another perfect storm. We're paying 28% more for food right now. It's like everybody else, so it's a challenge, but we are mainly just charged with I call us like the Costco or the Sam's Club, not to discriminate in any of those big wholesalers. We are that for hunger relief, so we are the supplier, we are the procuring and storing and distributing and getting that out to all of these organizations across our service area that do the real front line work of feeding our neighbors. So it's our job to make every dollar go as far as it can to get that food.

Speaker 1: 44:48

When you say there's an 8.8 million meal gap, is that like so? When you guys produce or serve 12 million meals, it's really 20 million that is necessary to close it Interesting. I don't want this to come across the wrong way, but do you think that ending hunger is a feasible goal?

Speaker 2: 45:08

It's a good question, right? I mean, if you look back at quotes over, you know past leadership of gold and harvest. We're going to end hunger by such and such date or such and such date.

Speaker 2: 45:17

It's a complicated it's a complicated problem, right? So so I will tell you my philosophy as a leader of the organization, because the problem is complicated in that you also have to look at the underlying causes of hunger, right, which some of some of which we talked about. And we've got food prices and all that, but you've also got people need to be employed, they need to be educated, they need to fight disease, right, so that they're not dealing with health problems and all of that. And so I feel the golden harvest food bank, our goal is to stay in our lane and to and to get as much food as we can procured to, to feed folks, and that we have really incredible other organizations in this community that deal with some of the other underlying causes.

Speaker 2: 46:02

Now, do we refer, do we assist? Of course, I mean we do, but will hunger ever be ended is a really tough question, because it's not just about the physical food. We have enough physical food in this country to feed everyone. That's not the problem, you know. The problem is getting it to the right people, and and the problem is also all those underlying causes, which is which have to be addressed, and we have to do that collectively, you know it has to be us in United Way and Goodwill and American Red Cross and all of those folks linking arms to to do all the underlying stuff that it that it would take.

Speaker 1: 46:38

Yeah, I think so, just as you said with your, your cancer journey and you said it takes a village, essentially, you know, to help you. I think it's the same thing on a societal level 100%. So, that said, how does a normal everyday person help? Golden harvest.

Speaker 2: 46:55

We just really rely on the community. So the main ways volunteering we rely on 12 to 1300 volunteers every single month and that is helping at our master's table soup kitchen. We have two shifts there. We have shifts packing food boxes at our warehouse. We're soon to open a new volunteer administration center where we'll have a lot of opportunity to pack backpacks for kids and senior feeding boxes.

Speaker 2: 47:19

So volunteering is huge. Those, you know, our volunteers, really matter. They make all of the difference because 53 employees cannot do this job alone and 350 partners. We need the community Financially. Every dollar creates three meals, so we always just value the, the dollars that are given to our organization. I think we've been really well vetted, you know nationally, for how we spend our money and and those funds go right into the programs and the food that gets out to our community. So we we couldn't do this without our business and individual partners and donors that that make this possible. So really, those are the two main ways to get involved. Yeah, so we just we invite people. We love having volunteers. We're excited to open this volunteer center and see them back on campus where we are.

Speaker 1: 48:05

So yeah, I don't want to misrepresent the business. I think I saw so for those listening nonprofit organizations have to publicly disclose their financial situation, right? I mean, you guys operate a multimillion dollar budget and I don't want to misrepresent this. I think I saw it. 90 plus percent actually goes to you know what you guys are serving which is phenomenal, I mean.

Speaker 2: 48:28

so really hands off, or hats off to y'all for that. Yeah, thank you. We also rely on, we have. We have millions and millions of more dollars that are contributed through food resources, so that's things like the USDA and state programs and food in kind donations, but monetarily, yeah, yeah.

Speaker 1: 48:45

I also saw on the website you guys help with snap advocacy. I actually was watching a podcast with Robert F Kennedy Jr and he that's one of his big things is helping hungry people and he was talking about a story where this gentleman was living off of snap, which provided him. It was like $6 a day or something. I mean, how, how does that even help anybody?

Speaker 2: 49:12

Yeah, Well, so I could, we'll, we'll have a have another podcast.

Speaker 1: 49:15

All right, all right.

Speaker 2: 49:17

But what I will say is I'm going to encourage people to go to our website, which is golden harvestorg backslash act. Now we just created an advocacy page, literally last week. Uh, brittany Burnett, who is the CEO of the United Way of CSRA, and myself wrote an op-ed to the community, a collective letter, about what's happening with the farm bill and what's snap in particular, um cause that's that'll be voted on this fall and over the next coming couple of years. So the short answer is that, uh, the reason we're involved with snap is it's a program that that really provides more than what this, what the food resources that the food bank can, because it provides that that gap for families.

Speaker 2: 49:59

We actually have a employee who runs the snap program on the Georgia side who just got back from Washington DC. She was able to advocate on behalf of the people she serves directly to the white house. It's pretty incredible. So we have a lot of um. We run those nutrition programs, the T-FAT program, which is, which is um emergency food program, and the snap program. So we're very close to the our neighbors who are utilizing those programs and we know that someone getting a $5 raise can cut them off of snap and it completely changes their life Right. So we're we're punishing people for actually becoming employed or getting getting a raise, so so we have to be really cognizant of those programs and and how they're run and what they can do to help our neighbors.

Speaker 1: 50:44

Yeah, yeah, it's definitely a complex issue. Um, you know, you'd like to think it's as easy, as they're making more so you could pull them off, but you know you can't but you also, at the same toe on the same token, you don't want to let them live on it forever.

Speaker 2: 50:59

So it's definitely a complex, it's definitely a complicated issue. So, and then, with our, with our grocery prices going up, you know what? What can you buy for $3 a meal?

Speaker 1: 51:08

I mean.

Speaker 2: 51:09

Chick-fil-A is going to be a minimum of 10 per person. So you know, just looking at that like we've, we've got to be cognizant of all of that when we're looking at these supportive programs that hopefully help people get on their feet.

Speaker 1: 51:19

Awesome, alrighty. Well, um, miss Amy Brightman, thank you so much again for you know taking the time and coming on the show. I really enjoyed this conversation. I was looking forward to it. Um, over the weekend and just getting ready for this, why don't you take the floor and just kind of plug Golden Harvest Food Bank and tell us again how we can?

Speaker 2: 51:36

help. Sure, um, well, like I mentioned before, golden Harvest Food Bank is. What's amazing is it's a collaboration of has just hundreds and hundreds thousands of of people and businesses and employees and volunteers that collectively come together to make sure that our neighbors are seen and and, most essentially, fed, and so just really grateful to be, you know, a part of this story and and encourage the community. You know, if they haven't volunteered, if they haven't been to the soup kitchen or come and pack a box for for a family that's hungry, it's really humbling and beautiful experience to be part of this, this story. That's that's that's still living out. So, um, yeah, just incredibly proud of the team and this community that that does this work and and just, we can't do it, we don't do it in a vacuum.

Speaker 1: 52:26

Awesome, Alrighty. Well, um, like I said again, thank you so much. And just to keep myself accountable, I'm going to say on here, I'm going to volunteer.

Speaker 2: 52:33

I got to come down and volunteer, so now, now it's, we can pull up the app, right now?

Speaker 1: 52:37

Yeah, just signed up Since then. Alrighty, thank you everyone for listening. Bye.