Mark Bordeau recently joined the Food Bank as President and CEO, bringing more than two decades of experience in the hunger relief and nonprofit sectors, as well as nine years as a Food Bank board member.
Mark shares his thoughts on the new position, how his experience prepares him for the role, and how he sees the Food Bank supporting partners in this period of record high food requests.
What inspired you to take this role?
For me, it was many things. I have believed in the mission and vision of the Food Bank since I first started with the BackPack Program in 2006. I saw firsthand how great the program is, and received positive feedback from parents, teachers, and administrators.
From there, the relationship just kept growing. I became a board member for nine years, a financial advocate of the capital campaign, and continued to support the Food Bank monthly. We partnered together on other projects, like creating the Broome County Child Hunger Task Force, working together to distribute food during the flood of 2011, working very closely during the pandemic, advocating together in Albany and Washington, even traveling together to attend a Food Research and Action Center (FRAC) conference, and serving as community leader for Wendy’s Walk for Kids that raised $54,000 for the Food Bank.
All that said, when the opportunity came up to lead an organization that I love, partner with, and believe in, I embraced the challenge.
How have your career and life experiences prepared you for the role?
During my 32-year career, I saw the importance nutritious food has in the development of a child. I was blessed to have an amazing mentor who really guided me and inspired me to get involved at a higher level by visiting soup kitchens in D.C., advocating for better hunger, nutrition, and agriculture policies, and joining boards of directors that have impacts on hunger and nutrition in the community.
What are your plans for the first six months?
I will be learning and observing. I will be doing a lot of visits with our agencies, partners, supporters, and staff. I’ll probably even jump on a truck to ride around with our drivers. This will help me prepare for the second six months, when we will start envisioning and creating our 2025-28 strategic plan.
What do you see as the Food Bank’s role in helping to alleviate some of the burden that our partner agencies are seeing with this year’s record numbers of food requests?
We must help them any way we can. We have to secure more funding and more access to good food. Anything we can do to take that money and make it stretch further for our partners, to leverage for better buying power, is critical.
We need to continually advocate, which we do so well. But we need more. It’s advocating based on the challenges. We need to have a very loud voice in the arena, whether it’s for state or federal programs.
Finally, we need to be more flexible to meet the needs of the partner agencies. That is why on Sept. 25, after months of research, the warehouse team implemented a new delivery schedule that better serves the needs of the agencies and allows them to offer more fresh local items like dairy, eggs and fresh produce.
