Karen Franczyk Email & Phone Number

• Managed grants for food waste reduction in multiple states, from multiple agencies/sources• Responsible for planning, budgeting, and accomplishing goals set in grants

Massachusetts

In this role, I successfully merged facility maintenance and energy efficiency programs with ongoing food waste and sustainability efforts, executing additional strategy to optimize energy usage for 42 stores and 2 facilities. I tracked, monitored, and assessed physical plant issues, energy usage, and prioritized capital projects, operational changes, and upgrades. I designed support and coaching programs for maintenance team members including monthly calls, semi-annual in-person meetings, toolkits, and resources. I negotiated contracts for maintenance and waste vendors, managed bid processes, and held regular strategic meetings with vendors to establish and continuously maintain a 5-year infrastructure upgrade priority list. Additionally, I continuously pursued and researched sustainability and energy management best practices for practical business application.Key accomplishments in this role included:● Managing a $17M equipment and energy upgrade program, achieving a 21% sustained energy reduction, $2.5M in free utility incentives and 20% ROIC (including depreciation) across the region.● Proactively monitoring a refrigerant tracking program in partnership with vendors, to achieve zero reportable incidents in 2019.● Partnering with major refrigeration vendor to drive down costs and reduce overall service visits from 2018 to 2019.

In this role, I designed and implemented sustainability and waste reduction strategies, devising food donation programs, waste initiatives and employee activations that engaged customer, suppliers and community and advanced corporate sustainability objectives across multiple states and regions. I orchestrated internal stakeholder collaborations, determined appropriate vendor partners, and designed store green teams to enhance knowledge base, deliver on and champion organizational initiatives. I sourced, prioritized, and gained approval for sustainability programs and policies, developed KPIs to measure success, and monitored the collection of data to determine program performance. I also managed initiative-specific budgets and led public relations efforts to engage the community in a position reporting directly to regional C-suite leadership.While in this position, I:● Doubled annual food donations with the introduction of the food donation program in 2014, creating direct financial savings and a significant tax credit for the company with over 3M pounds donated annually for the region.● Designed and founded Zero Waste Day, an employee engagement and education initiative to complement our waste diversion and reduction initiatives. ● Researched various waste diversion pilot programs and then partnered with a vendor to roll it out to 20 stores in the region, plus 4 stores in other regions, ultimately improving waste diversion by 15%.● Represented Whole Foods Market at local colleges, local and national conferences on food donation and Zero Waste initiatives, including twice at the US Food Waste Summit at Harvard Law School and SWANApalooza national conference in 2016, 2018, and 2019, respectively.

Responsible for all Operations at each store, overseeing team of 100-170 total Team Members.Oversaw 4 different Renovations during that time, including complicated 8-month project that impacted Team Members and customers, requiring careful, thoughtful communication. Partnered closely with Regional Marketing team to develop store events and outreach campaign to increase store visibility in community. Established solid training programs in multiple stores, with a focus on leadership development and mentoring, as well as creating a dedicated space (Training Room) when needed. Consistently delivered strong financial performance and hit Financial goals.

Winchendon Ma

Shared all aspects of running an organic farm with my husband. This included planning, green house production, planting, weeding, harvesting, in addition to distribution and marketing. After 2 years as a CSA, we then sold wholesale to Whole Foods Market.