Jun 19, 2018

Margi Prueitt to retire from Center for Growing Talent in 2019

During the recent Center for Growing Talent (CGT) Board of Directors meeting in Seattle, Washington, CGT Executive Director and PMA Senior Vice President Margi Prueitt announced her retirement from the organization in February 2019.

During the past eight years, Prueitt grew the CGT into a robust organization that provides tailored solutions to attract, develop and retain the talent the fresh produce and floral communities need to grow. Among her notable accomplishments are:

• Global expansion of the Career Pathways program, which attracts top university students to consider careers in fresh produce and floral. To date, 67 percent of the 1,000+ students who have participated in Career Pathways programs took a job or internship in industry; 78 percent remain in the industry today.
• The launch of the CGT Immersion Academy, which prepares university seniors to immediately begin careers in industry. Seventy percent of the inaugural Immersion Academy class took jobs in the industry.
• Creation of a career continuum suite of programs for senior executives to mid-level managers to emerging leaders to young professionals. To date, 5,430 people from nearly 600 industry companies have taken advantage of CGT’s leadership development offerings.
• Global expansion of the Women’s Fresh Perspectives portfolio, which has grown to include an annual conference, a leadership breakfast, and networking receptions throughout the year.
• Creation of both a mentor-mentee matching program (with more than 350 participants) and an internship toolkit designed to help industry employers to create programs to attract potential employees.

CGT’s newest and perhaps boldest endeavor, HRVest, was Prueitt’s brainchild and marks CGT’s first offering to help industry retain talent. The groundbreaking tool designed by the HR transformation experts at PricewaterhouseCoopers will help industry companies assess and benchmark their HR capabilities, to help them approach HR more strategically.

When speaking about her retirement, Prueitt said, “None of the accomplishments of the past eight years would have been possible without the insight and commitment of the best board leaders an organization could hope for. We also had the wholehearted support of PMA leaders Bryan Silbermann and Cathy Burns, and the PMA staff team. The accelerator of this incredible engine has been the energy and grit of the CGT staff, who are unparalleled in their commitment to our mission and our industry.”

“As a former search executive, I cannot stress enough how important this organization and its mission have become to the future of our industry. Under Margi’s leadership, Center for Growing Talent has grown and matured into the vital organization that it is today, and set us on a path for a strong future. Thank you, Margi, for your many contributions to our industry,” said CGT Board of Directors Chair Leonard Batti, vice president at Taylor Farms.

PMA’s Burns said, “Margi has brought her vision and expertise not just to Center for Growing Talent, but also to PMA’s senior management team. We thank her for her dedicated, tireless service to the global fresh produce and floral communities and wish her and her husband Ned well in their much-deserved retirement.”

A search for Prueitt’s successor is underway. Burns and Batti are leading a search committee that includes CGT Board Chair-Elect Marty Craner, president of B&C Fresh Sales, and CGT Board Director Chris Cervini, president of Lakeside Produce.

CGT was created by the produce and floral industry to grow the people across our industry. We help attract, develop and retain the talent needed to feed our industry’s growth, including educational programming and networking events. We offer a variety of industry-specific solutions across the career continuum, for university students, young professionals, women, emerging leaders, mid-level individuals and senior executives. For more information, visit CenterforGrowingTalent.org.