Congratulations to Sue VanAmburgh for her new role as the Executive Administrator for NEAFA!
By Danielle Penney-Stroop, NEAFA President
Happy Holidays Everyone! Wishing you, your families, and your employees a safe, healthy, and blessed holiday season!
As 2022 closes, I would like to take this opportunity to thank John Mitchell for coming out of retirement and serving as our Interim Executive Director this past year. We appreciate the time, service, and effort John put forth supporting the Alliance, recruiting new members, and assisting with our meetings and summits. He provided us with regular insight on the evolution of the membership and industry. Thank you John!
A huge thank you to Rick Zimmerman, who will officially be retiring December 31. Rick has served for over 15 years as NEAFA’s lobbyist and lead advocate, in addition to his role of Executive Director. We cannot thank Rick enough for all his years of service and dedication to NEAFA, collaborative partners, and the entire agricultural industry. His years of service have been invaluable and critical for many of our legislative successes in New York and New England agriculture. We wish Rick all the best as he pursues this next exciting chapter with his ever-growing family.
The NEAFA board would like to express our sincere gratitude to the backbone of our organization - Sue VanAmburgh. We would not have made it through this transitional year without the support, determination, and endurance from Sue. Sue’s official title was Executive Assistant, although she has lovingly been referred to as our Chaos Coordinator. We are excited to announce that this upcoming year Sue will transition to the role of Executive Administrator for NEAFA.
I would like to commend and thank the NEAFA Executive team and entire Board of Directors for their input and discussions regarding the evolving and dynamic future of our organization. We have been faced with declining membership, mostly due to industry consolidation, budgetary shortfalls, leadership challenges and changes (just to name a few). The decisions have not always been clear or easily navigated, but I commend the board for taking the time to weigh all our options and make the decisions that we are confident are in our members’ best interests moving forward. We continue to recognize that advocacy and lobbying are the largest value proposition to our membership, and will continue to be our key pillar of NEAFA.
The NEAFA board of Directors met Monday December 5th, for our virtual board meeting. During this meeting the board voted on several organizational initiatives for the 2023 calendar year and we are very excited to announce the following:
For our legislative and advocacy efforts, we have hired Hinman Straub Associates to represent us. The month of November the executive team exacted our due diligence as we interviewed 4 various legislative and advocacy firms and presented the proposals and feedback to the Board of Directors. Ultimately the board unanimously selected Hinman Straub, capitalizing on the synergistic relationship with Corning Place Communications (CPP). We will have an increased efficiency on our communications and messaging from both Hinman and CPP, that will elevate our advocacy efforts for our membership. We have an exciting and unique opportunity ahead of us this next year, with the input and leadership of the entire executive team. We are most excited for this collaborative team effort and capitalizing on their expertise! Hinman Straub will be present and introduce themselves to all of you at our annual meeting in February and we are tentatively planning for our lobby day in March. I encourage everyone to come out and attend.
The board of directors also voted that for the 2023 year, we will be operating without an Executive Director. In an effort to be fiscally responsible to our membership, and cover the increased costs of our legislative and advocacy work – the NEAFA Executive team & board of directors have committed their time and effort to cover the various roles assumed by an Executive Director. With the assistance of Sue VanAmburgh and the executive team, I have the utmost confidence that we will continue to Advocate, Collaborate and Educate and bring each of our members the continued value of a healthy, viable, evolving organization.
In regards to our advocacy and lobbying efforts in VT, and the New England states we have started conversations with the VT Dairy Producers Association on collaborative legislative fronts and potential partnerships to maximize the efforts and representation of all our members. More details to come at our annual meeting in February.
In closing, I would like to bring everyone’s attention to this year’s annual meeting, being held February 7-8th in Albany NY, at the Marriott Hotel on Wolf Road. In an effort to get back on our normal schedule for our meeting and networking opportunities – we are happy to announce a collaborative meeting effort with the Northeast Dairy Producer’s Association, New York Dairy Foods Association and other dairy allied partners on Tuesday, February 7 (the day before our annual meeting.)
We invite our membership to this transportation summit as we discuss the Supply Chain and Processing issues we face in the dairy industry with focus on the transportation sector. We will have industry panels highlighting our challenges and solutions / recommendations for tackling our disruptions with government and state agencies presenting as well. This is an amazing opportunity for networking and being a part of collaborative history as we reduce the bottlenecks in our industry and lay the ground work for viable dairy and agriculture sector in NY and New England.
Happy Holidays and we hope to see you at our upcoming Transportation Summit and Annual Meeting February 7-8, 2023 in Albany!