Alison Gruber

CANDIDATE STATEMENT

Having managed fitness centers at the local, regional and international levels, my responsibilities as a VP, Director and General Manager have included finance ($2 million annual budget for the smallest club) and general operations for community-based as well as profit-based centers. Hired on for one fitness center that was struggling, I improved its EBITDA (net earnings) by +204% within two years after a careful assessment of staff, services, and needs of the community. We coordinated communities to build better bodies, minds and healthy futures: making movement and healthy food choices a daily rhythm. As a parent of both a public-charter and private Waldorf Schools, I volunteered countless hours to support farm to table lunches (the kids grew it, made it and ate it), classroom music and art, outreach to the local community and physical movement that fostered a deep love and loyalty to nature. With a professional pivot to my first and primary love, I shifted to full-time musician (classical singer, pianist, choir director) and music teacher with a knack for teaching the tiny steps that make the large skills achievable and fun. As a child and teenager, I volunteered in soup-kitchens and 3rd world orphanages so that I could proceed with an appreciation for what it takes and why it is so important to support others.

In service to the Merc Co+op as a member of the Board of Directors, I would bring my understanding for why local farm coordination is crucial for every community, how fiscal responsibility includes the care of the employees and vendors, how realistic expectations for health can only happen when good food is within reach and how one must see past the veils that exist to distract from truth.

My husband worked at the Merc in the early 1990s as a college student and upon our return to Lawrence five years ago, we have been in the store every single day as a constant presence. I come from a long line of committed farmers growing fields along the Two Rivers of the North (eastern Minnesota) that fed into The Red River -- they knew the treasures of their soil and what it produced. From this heritage and my own musings, I became fascinated by how food made my body feel and therefore really shaped my life. To be a part of the system that brings whole foods to my community would feel like a worthy extension of that heritage in the realm of a few of my passions: food, health, community, fiscal responsibility.