 Good morning, and welcome to Moments with Melinda. I am so glad to have you with me today. My guest is Ellen Kaler. Ellen, how are you? I'm doing well. Thanks for asking me to be on with you, Melinda. I've always been a big fan of yours. Well, I'm a big fan of yours as well, and we've known each other for many, many years. So I'm just delighted to have you on my show. Let me tell my viewers a little bit about you. So Ellen Kaler is the executive director of the Vermont Sustainable Jobs Fund, and she was awarded the Con Hogan Award for Creative Entrepreneurial and Community Leadership from the Vermont Community Foundation. She also was awarded the Arthur Gibb Award for Individual Leadership from the Vermont Natural Resources Council, and an award with the John Eastman Excellence in Leadership Award from the Snelling Center for Government. And Ellen, when I went on to do my research a few days ago to start my research on you, there's pages about you. I mean, you're an icon here in Vermont, and so I hope I don't want to embarrass you, and I know you're one of the most tumble women I know, people I know, but your credentials and life's work are outstanding. And there's so much information about you. I could talk to you all day, but we only have a half an hour on this. So I'm going to jump right in. So Ellen, you grew up in Buffalo. Can you talk to us a little bit about your parents and growing up and the impact that your parents had on you? Sure. Sure. Happy to. I had great parents. My mom is still on the planet. She was a nurse for many years and then took time out from being a nurse to raise us four kids. I have three younger brothers. And after my youngest brother started to be in school full-time, she went back and got a second degree in anthropology and then got a master's in communicative diseases and various other things that she was interested in, epidemiology. That's what it was, not communicative diseases, epidemiology. And she did a lot of work in the Buffalo area supporting the refugee community with getting health care, access to health care, because she was just always very motivated by travel and by meeting people from all over the world and about 25% of all of the folks coming into the United States come through Canada through the entryway in Buffalo. So there was a huge need, especially during the Central American crises when we were at war with Salvador and Nicaragua, there was Guatemala, there was just a lot of folks traveling up through Buffalo. So that was always interesting to hear stories and tales of people that she had met. And my dad was an orthopedic surgeon. He passed about six and a half years ago and was a fabulous father, very supportive of us kids. Both of my parents really encouraged us to be who we wanted to be. I just feel so fortunate to have grown up in a household where self-confidence was really instilled in us, that we could be what we wanted to be. We had opportunities and definitely had privilege that many others didn't have because of our circumstances with what my parents did for work and such. But it was a great childhood. We spent a lot of time out in nature, spent a lot of time playing sports. And overall, you know, I am who I am because of my parents and their parents and my three younger brothers. And you say you're the only girl in the family? Yes. Are you the oldest? I am, which explains a lot. Oh my gosh, that explains so much. The oldest sister of three younger brothers. Yes. And if you know Myers-Briggs, I'm also an ENTJ and born in April, so I'm an Aries, so it explains a lot. But you have tremendous self-confidence and you have tremendous vision, so that explains a lot. So now I found it really, really wonderful to learn that you were an early entrepreneur because you really are an entrepreneur in your life. You come up with these great ideas and then you make them happen. You were an early entrepreneur. You started your own ski-tuning business in grade school. Yeah. I mean, you know, I was not registered, of course. No. I just, I had gotten... We always did downhill skiing on the hills of Western New York. It's nothing like the hills here and mountains here in Vermont. But I had just, you know, I had gotten into tuning my own skis and talking to other people in my neighborhood who also skied. They were like, yeah, I don't know how to do this. And yeah, my skis have got ruts in them and my edges aren't sharp. So I just, you know, used a little mimeograph maker and I just, you know, made little half-page things and stuck it in people's mailboxes and, you know, I mean, I didn't have very many, many folks take me up on it, but it was fun and it was a good start and it definitely, I think, got me thinking in that kind of entrepreneurial way. Well, it shows who you are because that's who you're an ideas person and then you take the idea and you put it into place. So you were also, as you got older, you also got involved in the anti-nuclear movement. Yeah. And you were spurred by Dr. Helen Caldecott. Yes. Talked to us a little bit about that and about the shutting down of Yankee here in Vermont. Well, I wasn't involved with the Yankee shutdown at that point. I had moved on to the jobs fund and so had plenty on my plate, but very supportive of moving in that direction, of course, cheerleader on the sidelines on that one. But yeah, back in college, Dr. Helen Caldecott, this was the, you know, height of the Cold War really, the mid and late 80s, before the Berlin Wall came down, before the Soviet Union dissolved, the rhetoric at that time was still so fierce around the Cold War and the risk of nuclear annihilation. And Dr. Helen Caldecott is this amazing, she was a pediatrician from Australia and she was so taken by the way that radioactive fallout from the above ground test before they went underground were impacting mother's milk and children and their health. And so she just became such a champion globally and just traveled tirelessly talking about the risk of nuclear war. And when she came to my campus, when I was a freshman, I just, I got the bug, it just hit me so hard. And I just had that fire in the belly that, wow, we've got to change this. This is not okay. This is, this is scary. This is like, you know, they just really captured me. And that really set me on a course for being an activist for many, many years. And yeah, how do you feel now? So how are you feeling now with where we are in our world with, I mean, do you think we've made strides or do you think we're going backwards? Where do you, what's your? Well, I mean, there's definitely, there's definitely fewer nukes out there. But I, but I don't think we're anywhere close to having anything locked down of never happening. I mean, you think about the way that North Korea keeps sabre rattling and all the testing that they are doing and how unstable they are. Like, I don't think we're in any way out of, out of danger. Do you feel that we haven't even an anti-nuclear movement today? No, I don't, it doesn't feel like it to me. I mean, do you see anything? I mean, well, no, I mean, our generation, I mean, I don't know, I think you're quite a bit younger than I am, but our generation was really, you know, really in their marching. Now, so, so from there, from all of this, from your upbringing, your growth, your mother's influence, you, you came to Vermont, you used to come to Vermont skiing and you eventually journeyed your way back here and you became the executive director of the Peace and Justice Center. And then you, with Doug Hoffer at the Vermont State Otter, talk to us about, because the Peace and Justice Center must have been, it must have been in kind of its early days when you first came up here. Yes. Yeah. I mean, I think it got started in 1979. And so I joined in 1990. So 11 years in, 12 years in. And Greg Gouma was then the, the center director, remember Greg? And yeah. And when I first arrived in September of 1990, I had, I don't know, for whatever reason, Greg saw something in me and he said, well, I've got this bookstore called Maverick Bookstore on College Street. Remember that? And he's like, I need somebody to run that part time. I'm like, OK, sure. I had no idea how to run a bookstore. I had, I wasn't even a reader. I never really have been a big reader. So like, it was just pretty funny, actually, but it was interesting. It got me in the mix. I got to know a lot of people at the Peace and Justice Center and the Peace and Justice Store. And then eventually all the books basically got bought into the Peace and Justice Store eventually and Maverick went away. But yeah, that's how I got started. And then when Greg, Greg stepped down about nine months after that. And I just, you know, I applied. I had gotten to know folks. I applied and I got really lucky and they hired me and I was only 23. So they took a big chance on me. And look where they are today and where you are today. So then then you went to work and I think you said, you know, I think it's Doug Hoffer at the Vermont State Otter. And Doug, as you and I both know, is probably one of the most brilliant statisticians, minds of this man. I mean, I got to tell you that I've ever met. I mean, he and so you got to go work with Doug and he got to go work with you. I mean, that was, that must have been a match made in heaven. Well, what happened was actually my mother went out was out in Minnesota at an epidemiological conference and she came upon this thing called the Minnesota Job Gap Study. This was in 1995 and they had just released it. And it was a methodology of calculating basic needs and a livable wage. And she said, I think you might be interested in this. So I showed it to Jane Nodell and Doug Hoffer and Phil Fremonti and said, hey, do you think we should do something like this for Vermont? And Doug was like, yeah, this sounds great. He was then working at CEDO office in Burlington a long way away from being auditor. And so I reached out to the Vermont Community Foundation, got a little bit of CED money from them. And from when Robbie Harold was at USDA Rural Development, got a little bit of money from her. And we were able to put Doug on contract to basically start working on developing the Vermont version. And then that led to multiple additions of the Job Gap Study, different phases that we did. And that work really, I think probably defines most, you know, the biggest part of my contribution in those days to Vermont with through the Peace and Justice Center was working on that and creating a livable wage campaign around the state, which got a lot of minimum wage increases to happen. It led to the state legislature actually adopting the basic needs budget, livable wage calculation, which now the Joint Fiscal Office does for the state every two years, so that the legislature has that document for policy purposes. And, you know, and Doug, as an independent financial and economic analyst, went on to really support a lot of legislative conversations around policy and using data. And now, of course, he's been the state auditor for many, many years. You must be familiar with the change the story reports. Yes, yes, of course. And I was actually on the board of of Vermont Works for Women when Tiff Blumlee was the executive director for many years. And so, yeah, that was another great piece of work that Tiff was able to project manage through. And we have and we have so much more work to do for this wage and for equality for women. And I mean, those reports were I was on the Vermont Commission for women back then. And but anyway, so thank you for that incredible work that you did. Well, the funny thing is it's never done, right? That's that's the point here. So this past just literally this past fall, one of the things that happened with the legislature last session was that we had a number of us really pushed hard that that the basic needs budget needed to be reviewed. The methodology needed to be reviewed. It had been since 2008. And so there was a summer study committee and I was on it along with some other really terrific people. Alison Clarkson, Senator Alison Clarkson chaired it. And so we spent five sessions really going through that methodology. And now there's going to be some updates for the next report. But the funny thing was, you know, Doug and I were talking a lot and we're like, wait a minute, like we did this 25 years ago. How is that even possible? You know, so it just goes to show you that there's some stuff that just really does take a long time. It does. It takes it takes forever, actually. And we can never we can never let down our guard. So thank you for talking about that, because that was something I wanted to dig into as a livable wage. So see, you also went off to Harvard to study at the Kennedy School of Government. Right. Yeah, that was just that was just for a year. I needed to have a little bit of a break from after I left the Peace and Justice Center. And I didn't know exactly what I wanted to do next. And Jan Eastman, who was then running the Snelling Center for government and people like David Tucker and Lisa Lorimer and some others said, you know, Ellen, it's time for you to leave the Peace and Justice Center. And when I and when they said that to me in 2001, I was like, well, I don't know what I'm going to do next. And they're like, well, you should go to the Kennedy School and get a master's in public public administration. They have a great one year program. So I was like, OK. So, you know, it was it was a wonderful experience. The MPA, the mid career MPA program there is phenomenal. And what one of the things that's so magical about it is that about 40 to 45 percent of the class every year are international students. So you're in classes with people who are like going to be the president of Ghana someday or like people that are running, you know, there are long term diplomats or policy leads at NASA or, you know, folks that are in the Israeli military in a in a policy level. Like, like this, the the the incredible people that you get to meet at the Kennedy School is truly amazing. And it, you know, you're having these case study discussions about all these world problems. And it's just it's a phenomenal window into really learning more about the world and how people tick and how leaders are forged and and and all that. So it was a great experience. And the thing that I learned, you know, I really went into that very open and to try to see what would arise. What did I want to do next? And what kept coming up was economic justice. And so that's that's where I came back to do. And that's where you landed. And we and all of us in Vermont are so fortunate. We're talking to Alan Kaler, who is the executive director of the Vermont Sustainable Jobs Fund. And for all of my viewers, I encourage you to go to V.S.J.F. V.S.J.F.org and check out their website. It's it's a great website. So, Alan, let's move into this. So you started the peer to peer collaborative. Talk to us about that that program. Yeah, so when I when I left the Kennedy School and came back to Vermont, I had this seed of an idea that actually was born out of a number of conversations I had with Lisa Lorimer, who then was the CEO at Vermont Red Company. And she always talked about how having an advisory board was some of the best things that she ever did as a CEO because having outside eyes of other people who are really committed to Vermont Red Company succeeding in her as the CEO, but who had that outside perspective. She always found that incredibly valuable. And my supposition was that if you looked at the most successful businesses in Vermont, many of whom were members of Vermont Businesses for Social Responsibility, doing the best good in the state as a company that they all had had advisory boards or they had some kind of coaches or mentors or something like that. So and they were also the best paying and had the best benefits and the best workplace culture. So I was putting these things together and I was like, well, what would it look like if we actually stood up a project where we had, in essence, people serving as advisory board members temporarily for companies and we work with them over a 12, 18 month period to help them work on their business. And they would pay part of the cost of that. And then that would give me the inside understanding of what are the barriers to paying livable wages, right? Because back during those days when I was giving lots of talks about basic needs, budgets and livable wages, everyone, every doesn't matter the political ideology across the board. And I was like, well, of course, if you're working full time, you should be able to pay your bills. Like, of course, that's just fair. That's just right. And so so many business owners were like, I totally believe in this and I don't know how or they thought that they were paying livable wages. Like, honestly, really thought that they weren't. So I wanted to better understand, well, what's what's getting in the way? What is there some structural part of the way businesses are set up or the way they function or something that got in the way of them paying better wages and benefits? And so the peer to peer collaborative was a way to do that. And so I came back and I pitched the idea. I went in and I saw Lisa Ventress, who had just for a year had been in the role of at the Vermont Business Roundtable as the president. And I pitched the idea and I said, yeah, I'm looking to figure out like, where should I land with this? And what do you think? And she's like, well, how about if we incubate you for two years out of our office? And I think that a lot of our members would be very interested in this and giving back and being part of the team. So that's what she did. She pitched it to her board. So I had a home base for two years, a free office space, a copier, a phone, internet, and I tried to make a go of it for two years to have enough enough clients to support myself. And at that time, all of the the folks that that I had recruited to serve in this in this advisor role were doing it for free. And so it just wasn't sustainable, ultimately. So when the position opened up at the Vermont Stimble Jobs Fund in November or the fall of 2005, I applied for that. And then I was lucky enough to get that job and I brought the notion of the collaborative, peer-to-peer collaborative with me to the Jobs Fund. So that now has morphed into what is now our coaching program, business coaching program, but that was the seed of it, actually. And, you know, had Lisa Ventress not been there to say, hey, I like this idea. Let's let's do this. You know, it probably never would have happened. Well, and a lot of those businesses weren't necessarily businesses that were Vermont businesses were social responsibility. I mean, they were businesses that really could benefit from this program. Well, let's move into this. Your job that you've had now for the past 19 years, 2005, you did become the executive director of the Vermont Sustainable Jobs Fund. Share with us how this program came to be and what it does for Vermonters and talk about your creation in particular because we're going to go through some of your programs that you've that you that you're working on. But the creation of the farm to plate network. Yeah, so. So I just add to what moved you into agriculture, which seems to be the direction that you went. And I know you grew up surrounded by a lot of farms and stuff. But what what excited you about agriculture to share with that with our folks? Sure, sure. Yeah, let me do that one in a minute. I'll just say the Stimble Jobs Fund was actually created by an actor, the legislature in 1995. And that happened because a number of people in Vermont businesses social responsibility and business owners like Kevin Harper and Allison Hooper and such really believe that there was a need to have some other entity who could focus on certain sectors of the economy. And in there and what they wanted to see was more sort of the natural resource based those kinds of business sectors like ag and food and forest and energy that were like place based and where we had some ability to to to foster and nurture those types of businesses. And part of it was because the and this is this is still true today in state government. I mean, the Department of Economic Development, the Regional Development Corporations, you know, they all do good work and they have to respond to everybody. That's just in their mandate. They can't pick and choose. They have to be there in service to all types of businesses. And so this group of of VBSR members and such really felt that there was would be a benefit to the state to have some entity that could focus on these particular sectors. So that's why we got created in 1995. And, you know, it there was Wayne Fawbush was the original executive director. And they had back in those days, they had a small pool of funds that they really just did grant making with. They it was early and it was prior to the the Community Foundation really like really growing its asset base. So it was one of the few kind of business oriented funders. And so they funded a lot of really great initiatives. So when I came on board, we were at an inflection point of the organization and the board really wanted to better, you know, after 10 years of sort of some trial and error, what what what where should we focus on? And and so that's when I stepped in and we were very small and we've grown now we're 13 employees. Now we were at like three when I started very, very small budget and this year I think we'll be on track to have about a two point seven million dollar budget. So but then to your point about agriculture. So we had done a bunch of work looking at biofuels, like growing growing oil seed crops, growing grasses, perennial grasses to create fuels that farms could use to to fuel their operations and or potentially heat homes in the form of grass, perennial grasses and VBSR again, along with rural Vermont in 2009, approached the legislature and having this sense that it would be really, really helpful to have a strategic plan for the state around food, strengthening the farm and food sector. So they approached the legislature and said, hey, we think there should be some more planning. This is like right when the recession was was really hitting hard. So there was a lot of of layoffs in state government, the agency of ag was really reduced in size and capacity. And there was a lot of there was a lot of turmoil in the dairy and the dairy crisis with prices. But then there was all this exciting stuff happening with farmers markets and CSAs and farm to school. And and so the legislature was kind of perplexed, like what's going on? You know, we've got dire straits in one part of the the sector and all this hope and optimism and young people enthusiasm on the other. Like, tell us what's going on here. So they approached me and said, would you be interested in and doing this? And I naively said, sure. So they provided a little bit of money and we are on our way with that, what ultimately became known as the Vermont Farm to Plate Initiative. It's it's in statues called the Farm to Plate Investment Program. It's under our regular statute. And yeah, we've been doing that a big part of our work ever since. It's it's a million dollar program that we're we're managing at this point. That's incredible. You're also working with Vermont Tech to create graduates who can create jobs in the growing agricultural and food sectors. Right. Well, yeah. I mean, back in 2020 and April 2020, then Chancellor Jebs Balding announced the idea that maybe the Vermont the Randolph campus at Vermont Tech should be closed. And I was like, wait a minute, you can't do that. Like, we need to graduate. We need more people being graduated in farm and food type degrees because we have all these employers that are expanding and they can't get enough workers. Like, you can't shut this down. So I reached out to then President Pat Moulton and said, hey, what do you think about if I were to pull together a group of people to work with you to really reenvision what the Ag and Food Program could be like at Vermont Tech? Would you be open to that? So she thought about it and she said yes, which I'm grateful for. And I pulled together about 40 of us to all volunteers to work over the next year to come up with a transformation plan for that program. And then unfortunately, there's been a lot of everything has really slowed down because of the consolidation of creation of Vermont State University. But but the good news is I think we're we've turned a corner. We now have at VTS, you Randolph, there's been a director, an executive director named Glenn Evans, who's been hired to run the new Center for Agriculture and Food Entrepreneurship. And it's not accepting students yet, but it's in the revitalization retransformation stage. And I'm hopeful that by the the academic year of 2025 that we'll have a new crop of students starting to go through there. And that would be awesome. So so you also have been working with the legislature on a job creation program, creating a higher level of coordination in our workforce development for jobs that aren't just in the agricultural sector, right? Yeah, I mean, the reason that we get involved in workforce development type initiatives at the systems level is because all of the businesses in the sectors that we work with are all facing workforce challenges. So I had been on the state workforce development board for many years and worked and I and I've just been, you know, I think in systems like I see big picture system stuff. And so what I see in the in the workforce system is a lot of really amazing people, a lot of really very impactful programs and a real lack of coordination and connectivity. A lot of folks working in silos. And that's how the ag system and the food system was when we when it first started and when we first started farm to plate in twenty oh nine. And so I just, you know, I've just offered to be supportive in any way that I can and have worked with a number of legislators who are also very frustrated with that lack of coordination. And so there's been a summer study committee that just released its report. It was actually a two year group of five, five folks. Senator Clarkson was on it and the chair was representative Mike Marcotte from the Commerce Committee and Adam Grinnell from representing the state workforce. The Board is the chair was on it as well as Kendall Smith from the governor's office and Jay Ramsey from the Department of Labor. So the five of them hired consultants to work with them to really understand. Well, what would it look like to really have a coordinated workforce system? And so right now there are a couple of bills in the state in the state house and in the legislature that are being considered that if we're successful could lead to the creation of an office of workforce development and expansion, which I think could provide that level of coordination that's been missing in the system. So I've just been trying to help any way I can with just, you know, thinking and all that you've had your fingers in so many things. And I have I have like six more pages that we've gone through. But we're actually running out of time here. So if you've seen the series, you are what you eat. And it's it's on Netflix and it's a four episode series. And it's basically, you know, analyzing and looking at the meat and dairy impact on climate and how our how our society is moving towards a more plant based focus. And in that I wanted to ask you about, you know, the hope that you have for Vermont with climate change and how we have to sort of change what we're doing. And I'm sure you're involved in things related to that. But have you seen that series? And do you think Vermont can move away from a dairy meat economy over the next 10 or 15 years to more of a plant based economy? I have not seen that series. I've seen a lot of good foods, food shows. High on the hog is one of my favorites, actually, on Netflix right now. But no, I haven't seen that particular series. But I would say this, you know, we are the reason that our landscape of farm fields and farms surrounded by forests looks the way they do is because of animal agriculture, which is dairy and other forms of livestock. So if dairy and other forms of livestock were to be be diminished, it would look very different here physically. So I think it's more in my mind what's important. And this is really where the agency of agriculture, the Laura Ginsburg, who's managing at the agency of the Dairy Business Innovation Center, for instance, some significant funding from USDA that's come to the state and the region and the work that I've been doing, both with farm to plate, but also with a new regional effort called New England Feeding, New England, is really to take a more balanced approach. You know, it's not about specializing on any one type of product. It's really about, you know, think about climate change. You think about resilience. Well, what does resilience? It means that you can bounce back quickly. Well, if you're only producing one or two things like monoculture, like the way they do in the Midwest with corn, wheat and soy, you have a major climate disruption and you could be wiped out. You know, we saw that this summer with the summer floods, how many vegetable farmers got completely wiped out at the at the height of their of their growing season. So I actually think that the that the the thing we need to be doing is is diversifying the the product mix and also as much as we can value add to it, because that's how farms and food businesses can really thrive economically and be around for the long haul is if we're not so dependent on any one commodity. And I if you think if you look back at the data from twenty oh nine, when we first started far into play today, the dairy, we we we said in the first strategic plan, we really thought that the opportunity for dairy was around value added. And they've actually picked that has happened. We have more people today are consuming dairy, but it's in the form of cheese and yogurt and other types of dairy products. And as opposed to even though fluid milk has continued to drop. And then there's, you know, I think grass base is also really important, right? We don't have KFO feedlots like the West does. And I think that's our value add. I don't think we're going to get people to stop eating meat. But if we get if they can eat healthier, better meat that's you mainly raised, you mainly processed on grass. That also has positive climate impacts. Well, grass fed meat and dairy also has a lot of omega three. I mean, as the. Absolutely. So that I mean, the whole thing is about. So so we're coming to a close of the show, which I could go on for 20 hours with you. What words of wisdom do you have for our children today, Ellen, in the world that they're growing up in? It's cultivate self confidence, you know, believe in yourself, believe in your ability to live live a good life, to do the things that inspire you to get out there and just take stuff on and to remain hopeful because there's a lot of really negative stuff out there in the press. I would say get off social media, you know, stop stop bullying and get off social media and do things that are positive, that are about community, that are about your family, that are about your friends and neighbors, about your state and about the world. Because unfortunately, a lot of us have contributed to the circumstances we're in with climate change and the political craziness of today. And, you know, it's always been the next generation that has a way of shaking things up and making things better. So it's really, it's a big part of what we need to be focusing on is, how do we help the, you know, the Gen Zers and the millennials step into leadership and really help us to get out of the mess that we're in? Truly, because we're moving on. Well, Ellen, you are, you're a changemaker. You're a person who people turn to when they want new ideas, new visions, but not only are you a great thinker, you make stuff happen and you take what you see and you've actually put it into practice. And all of us in Vermont have benefited from the years that you have been here and that you've done this great work. So I want to thank you for all of that. I want to thank you, my friend. I admire you so much. And so thank you for being on my show. I really appreciate it. Absolutely. Thanks for having me. I'm a big admirer of yours as well. Everything that you've done down at the waterfront and Main Street Landing is just truly transformational for the city of Burlington. So and your leadership in VBSR all these years, I mean, you have been a real voice of what's possible and our doer, changemaker, right back at you. Thank you, my dear. Thank you. Thank you so much. And to my viewers, I want to thank you for joining us today. And I hope that you're doing well and I will see you very soon. Bye bye.