Position Announcement
Director
Fresh Taste Initiative
The Fresh Taste Initiative was formed to advance the growth of diverse local agriculture and healthy eating in Chicago and
across Illinois. Initiative partners, including a number of Illinois foundations and the City of Chicago, are committed to
changing the manner in which food is produced, distributed, and consumed in Illinois. Funded by the partners and a
W.K. Kellogg Foundation grant, the three-year Initiative will provide leadership that brings together stakeholders across all
sectors of the state’s food system for conversations and action that will lead to this change.
Public interest in healthy eating and locally-grown food, as well as public concern about the energy and environmental costs
of our current food system, food and health equity issues, and urban and rural economic development, are growing and
converging. The Initiative is well positioned to convene, connect, and enable the public, private, philanthropic, and not-forprofit actors who will be key in reaching its goal of growing 10% of the Chicago region’s food locally.
The Initiative seeks a director to lead this work. Core responsibilities will include identifying opportunities to advance the
Initiative’s objectives, recommending priorities for partner funding, developing a long-term strategy for achieving the 10%
goal, increasing the level of investment in the Initiative’s work, and connecting potential actors, investors, and funders.
The director will report to and work closely with the Initiative’s six-member steering committee. To be housed at The Chicago
Community Trust, the Initiative has a three-year budget of $893,000. In its first year, the Initiative’s staff will include one
support person; a downstate coordinator will be added in the second year.
Responsibilities
• Identify, contact, and convene potential partners across the state: food producers, processors, distributors, and
consumers; assist these actors to develop collaborations, business ventures, and other means of creating changes in the
state’s food system.
• Link opportunities for work that will advance the Initiative’s objectives with possible sources of private investment and
public and philanthropic funding. Develop an inventory of project opportunities and an assessment of prospective
partners, investors, funders, customers, and operators.
• Develop and begin to implement a long-term strategy, based on extensive research and discussion with significant actors
across the food system, for addressing the system’s weaknesses and achieving the Initiative’s 10% goal.
• Communicate the Initiative’s concerns, goals, and work to key public institutions, thought leaders, potential investors and
funders, and the general public in ways that develop momentum for the Initiative’s ideas and work.
• Draft and implement an operating plan for the Initiative’s second and third years that includes goals for fundraising both
for additional project support and for longer-term support for an extended Initiative.
• Manage, report on, and evaluate Initiative work; hire staff; monitor project spending.
Qualifications
• A minimum of 15 years’ relevant experience including successful project leadership and systems change experience.
Knowledge of the way in which the established food system works will be especially valuable as will experience across
multiple sectors and an understanding of the roles of various sectors in maintaining a major economic system.
• Demonstrated conceptual, strategic, planning, networking, and convening abilities, and the demonstrated ability to move
frequently and effectively between the big picture and detail. Entrepreneurial energy and outlook are critical.
• Deep commitment to the Initiative’s goal and objectives. Available for statewide and occasional national travel.
Personal Qualities
The successful candidate will be an effective leader with a keen understanding of the ways in which systems change comes
about. She or he will be equally interested in achieving broad systems change and in the individual partnerships that will
underlie any change. He or she will be a self-starter who brings a sense of urgency to this critically important work.
A selection will be made by August 2007.
The Fresh Taste Initiative is an Equal Opportunity Employer.
Those interested in this position may e-mail a cover letter and résumé to:
freshtaste@himmelfarbgroup.com, to the attention of Susan Himmelfarb.
The Himmelfarb Group 708-848-0086
www.himmelfarbgroup.com