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The mission of Prevent Blindness Texas is to prevent blindness and preserve sight. We are leaders and change agents in the eye health space here to empower you!
Hey, it's your eye health experts Prevent Blindness Texas and welcome to Eyespiring a conversation about all things vision and life.
Heather Patrick:Hi, and welcome to Eyespiring. I'm Heather Patrick, your host and the CEO of Prevent Blindness Texas. This morning we have a special guest, Janna Roberson, who has served as Urban Harvest's Executive Director since 2018. She's an innovative and inspiring leader with over thirty years of experience.
Heather Patrick:She started when she was like 10, working to create positive outcomes for organizations in education, equity, counseling, and marketing. Under her leadership, Urban Harvest has expanded deeper into food access, data driven analysis, and research regarding food deserts culminating in programs designed to provide healthy local food choices in low access neighborhoods. So we're gonna find out all about Janna today. So welcome, we're so happy to have you.
Janna Roberson:Thank you so much.
Heather Patrick:All right, so let's jump in. Just tell us a little bit about you.
Janna Roberson:Well, I feel like that Houston is my home. We're going to have been here for ten years next month. So I definitely feel like it's a city that is very welcoming and we have really enjoyed being here. But my former life pre Houston, I worked in public and private education, I worked in patient counseling psychology, I did marketing, I did all kinds of things.
Janna Roberson:But the school piece really kind of became my niche. And so when I moved here to Houston, I became the assistant head of school at Regis School for Boys, which happened to be the location where my son was going to go to school. And so I was there for a couple of years and really had kind of spent some time in the education field. I'd been in the education field about twenty years at that point. And I was just really thinking, like here I am in this huge metropolitan area, I want to do something different.
Janna Roberson:So I made a radical change for my life and started looking for something in nonprofit. Urban Harvest came to me completely by accident and it has been a really good fit for me. I've been there eight years.
Heather Patrick:That is amazing. And this is why I love these episodes because I had no idea that you were in, I knew you had an education background, but I didn't know you were in education that long. And what a dynamic change then.
Janna Roberson:Yes.
Heather Patrick:So we're going to talk more about that. So what has influenced you before you went into Urban Harvest and now being there, what has changed your leadership? What influenced you?
Janna Roberson:You know, I always in my personal life, I always had a heart for service and a heart for the mission. I was very involved in the Junior League of Tulsa for over ten years and served as president. And so we started a lot of nonprofits there, supported them with strategic planning work and kind of getting them started and volunteers. So I had Pat in my personal life and really kind of got my feet wet because you have to really know what you're doing. You have to run a meeting.
Janna Roberson:You have to be efficient with people's money. You have to really give people strong guidance. And so I knew that I wanted something service related. But I think I didn't realize until I got into the world of nonprofit that it kind of is its own little anomaly. It is a place where you're sometimes I feel like that I'm that little ham ster on the wheel and I'm just running, running, running, trying to raise money, trying to support staff, trying to do new programming, trying to put all the parts and pieces together.
Janna Roberson:And so I think it has made me much more of a flexible leader. I think much quicker to change and accept other possibilities. We were kind of talking about this a second ago. 2025 was a very difficult year for nonprofit. Huge changes in funding streams and support from the federal government and just kind of the way that business had been done for a very long time.
Janna Roberson:And that made me learn all different kinds of lessons that were unexpected. I never knew so much about a budget and finances and cuts and where can I squeeze every dollar and be much more efficient? Those are kind of things that I have learned just kind of by being and doing through osmosis. It's been really professionally I think a really good thing even though it was really a hard year.
Heather Patrick:Yeah, it was a hard year. So making that switch, what has been the most helpful thing for you as a nonprofit CEO since you weren't in this space before? Was there something or someone that helped you over these last eight years that really changed your expertise or growth in the sector? Because I do agree with you. The sector, even though you think you know the way it is, being a CEO in this industry I think is very different.
Janna Roberson:Absolutely, absolutely. You know I think the number one thing is the United Way Leadership Circle. Really? Yeah, absolutely. I knew that when I was coming into nonprofit that I was going to need a different kind of network because the people that I knew from my little two year stint here in Houston were all in the private school kind of realm.
Janna Roberson:And that's very different than the nonprofit circle of people. And so that piece for me connected me to other leaders at like sized organizations, but not like mission organizations. So I will say that it was really helpful in giving me kind of an insight into other nonprofits and kind of how the nonprofit world here in Houston. I mean, I think the last number I heard was like 22,000 nonprofits in the Metroplex. I mean, that's a huge number of organizations all relying on funding coming from the goodness of other people's hearts and pockets.
Janna Roberson:And so I think that piece was really, really helpful because I met this really solid group of supporters and we met on a regular basis. And then COVID came and we met virtually and we all kind of lived that difficult thing together. And so I had a support network and I still am pretty connected to multiple members on my circle. So I think for me that was really a helpful piece. And then, you know, I just think creating those connections.
Janna Roberson:You know, Urban Harvest in its early days wasn't the best partner because we were kind of alone in the garden education space and there weren't anybody else doing what we were doing really. And so we have really, as an organization, moved towards a lot more collaboration, a lot more partnerships with other people, staying in our lane, using other people's expertise and lanes to kind of help us to do what we do best and do better. And so I think those people that I have met connected to that have been great supporters and really helpful.
Heather Patrick:I think it's pretty cool how you took something from your past and married it into your future, right? And we're gonna talk more about what Urban Harvest does, but I just, this is, it's just so fascinating to me, right? And you said it earlier, it fell into your lap basically by accident, but it didn't really, right?
Janna Roberson:Yes, I mean, I definitely had a soft spot in my heart there.
Heather Patrick:Yeah, So what is the most rewarding part of the work you do?
Janna Roberson:I think the most rewarding piece of the organization is we are authentic. I do come across some nonprofits that they do one thing and that's what they do and they do that thing very, very well. But Urban Harvest teaches classes to adults, to kids. We run community gardens. We support community gardens.
Janna Roberson:We run farmers markets. We support farmers and ranchers and food artisans. We're connected to the restaurant and the chef industry for people who are doing local sourcing. And we are in neighborhoods where they don't have a lot of food choice. And we really have allowed people to pick and choose the things that they like knowing that that product was in the ground forty eight hours before it's out on the table to them.
Janna Roberson:And so I think for me that food centric, being able to touch people in a lot of different ways and then being able to come to us in different ways from different locations because we do so much work. I think that is probably the most rewarding. We really say what we mean and we mean what we say and we do what we say.
Heather Patrick:Yeah, it is a really fascinating organization and it is really cool, kind of all the tentacles you have out in the community. So what keeps you going on the hard days? Because there are a lot of hard days in this work. So what keeps you going?
Janna Roberson:You know, I think the people. The farmers market has a really great supportive community. It's a real feel good space. Even in the darkest days of COVID, we were classified as an outdoor grocery store. And so we were able to still cooperate.
Janna Roberson:And while there couldn't be this close connections, hugs close ties to people and being really close to the tables and those kinds of things, there still was this still sense of connectedness. Community. Community. And the market still had we still had music. We still had people getting their coffee.
Janna Roberson:We still had people shopping for their groceries. We saw a big influx during COVID of previous vendors and chefs that had gone on to brick and mortar and trying to kind of help people in the restaurant industry to keep people working. We did a lot of pickup kinds of things. We did a lot of support kinds of outreach for people working in that restaurant industry. And so that to me is kind of the piece that really takes the hard day and makes me think about that sense of interconnectedness and people around food because it really is very community building.
Heather Patrick:Yeah. Is there a story that stays with you or that resonates that, you know, over the years you saw someone in the community or something happened that just stays with you, you know?
Janna Roberson:Yeah, I think my most, one of my most favorite things about Urban Harvest is, you know, we have a network now of about 180 community gardens in a And 100 mile radius of they are all independent and they take care of themselves and serve themselves and they all operate differently and we just connect them together and support them in their needs.
Janna Roberson:But every year in October, the end of October, the first month of November, we do an event called Harvest Celebration. And we invite all the community gardens to come. And Urban Harvest does the main course. And then it's potluck.
Janna Roberson:And so it brings together, I think we had like 80 gardens represented last year. And we did it at Alabama Gardens, which is the oldest garden in the network, which is on TSU land. And we had a cookout, like very throwback to my childhood. So we had these they have these huge cookers. That's a part of their culture at Urban Heart I mean at Alabama Gardens.
Janna Roberson:And so they had these huge cookers. We did chicken and we did pork and had so we had this hot kind of food piece and then everybody had like all of their dishes laid out on these giant tables. And people eat and they visit and they talk about all kinds of crazy gardening topics that you've never heard of before. Someone was having an issue with mice and they were talking about what they do because they were eating their sweet potatoes. So it's these topics that you would never hear at a normal restaurant conversation with someone probably.
Janna Roberson:But just how special that time is and how special those people are. Our founder, one of our founders, Doctor. Bob Randall, comes every year and we have an award that's named after him that we give to kind of the, you know, to the big garden of the year. We give a Green Jeans award to the school garden. Then, so we have some awards we give.
Janna Roberson:We do this huge raffle drawing, plant starts, tools. People get so excited about the raffle. And just for me, it's just such a warm, fuzzy thing. Because I remember church potlucks when I was a kid with my grandparents and with my parents. And that's just something that really we don't do very much of anymore.
Janna Roberson:And so it's really kind of a look back at a different time. But those people, regardless of where they're coming from, regardless of where their garden is, you know, they really look forward to that time together. And it's one of my favorite things.
Heather Patrick:That is amazing. So I have to share with you, this was probably, well, Landry Eyes, he graduated so I think this was his freshman year. He was part of an organization that, you know, did service things for young men we volunteered at one of the community gardens, him and several of his friends, that was near U of H. And they had such an interesting and remarkable time. One, had never really done any kind of work like that before.
Heather Patrick:So just the work alone to clear out the garden. I mean, we were there for several hours, but he actually wrote about that experience on his college essays and how much that experience meant to him and the things he learned. That's amazing. So I think it's pretty remarkable to your point, but there are always ripple effects and impact impact beyond what even the things we do and know about way beyond that. So I think it's pretty cool that, you know, an organization like yours can have that kind of impact years beyond that one experience.
Janna Roberson:Absolutely. I'm so glad to hear that.
Heather Patrick:Yeah, he loved it. I mean, reading about his experience and his essay was really meaningful. What advice, speaking of that, what advice would you give to people that are trying to get connected and have some kind of impact in their community as it relates to organization like yours or something similar, but to really help in that food way.
Janna Roberson:I think it kind of depends. We really tell volunteers who come to us to follow their heart. What is their interest? Are they interested in learning how to grow their own food? Are they interested in being in a community garden space?
Janna Roberson:That's the number one thing that community gardens ask us for is volunteers. Volunteering in a community garden is a luxury for most people because it is very time consuming and people have busy lives and children and work and activities and things to do. And so it is a very aged population of people that have that time in retirement or in their life where their life has slowed down. And so turning a garden over, doing heavy mulching or weeding or refurbishing the dirt or putting down fertilizer, like those things are really physically demanding. And so we are always talking to people about, you know, if lot of people come to us, they want to start a community garden.
Janna Roberson:And our first response is, let's see if there's a community garden in your area, in your neighborhood, close to where you reside and work or kind of do your life. And let's try to plug you in because that is something that we recognize is that we don't see a lot of young people in the community garden space because their lives are busy.
Janna Roberson:So I think that piece, we really try to have some dialogue with people about what they're interested in. Some people come to us and they're like, oh, I have a black thumb. Gosh, if I had a dime for every time somebody says that to me.
Janna Roberson:And I've said, you don't have a black thumb. It's just that the approach in the Gulf Coast because it's hot, it's humid, it's raining, it's wet, it's cold, it's freezing. It's doing all these crazy things that you kind of have to think about it in a little bit of a different way. And a lot of people don't have that. We kind of have that lack of seasonality in our lives.
Heather Patrick:Oh yes.
Janna Roberson:That we don't understand that things only grow in a certain season. When that season's over, then something else begins to grow. So we try to encourage people to take. We have some very basic classes, very inexpensive. We give scholars scholarships that people cannot afford to pay.
Janna Roberson:We want people, if that's what they want to learn, we want to be their teacher. So that's kind of conflict. And then other people are like, No, I don't want to grow it. I don't want to work in it. I just want to buy it.
Janna Roberson:And so that's where the farmer's market and the mobile market come into play. Because we buy everything from a network of our farmers and ranchers, from the big farmer's market or from other people that are in the network that we know. And so we try to provide a very high quality, nutritious, very fresh product. So it looks really pretty when it's on the table. And it looks like that because it hasn't been treated with a million pesticides, it hasn't been sitting in a box truck, moved to an 18 wheeler, come across the country, picked when it wasn't ripe.
Janna Roberson:It doesn't have that transition life. You know, it really is. It was in the ground day before yesterday or two days prior and now it's for sale to you.
Heather Patrick:And it totally makes a difference. Yes. It is. There's a farmer's market not far from my house and they're open from April to August and I'm like there every weekend and it is amazing truly how different the taste is.
Janna Roberson:Yes, for sure.
Heather Patrick:It is incredible. So let's talk a little bit about food access and public health and the relationship. So many people hear the term food desert, right? And so what does that really mean? Kind of in your work, what do you think people think it is and what does it really mean?
Janna Roberson:I think people think it means that there are no choices, that it's barren. And what we find is it's not necessarily that it's barren, it's that the food choices are very limited and the quality of those products are mostly packaged, processed, have a long shelf life. Many of the neighborhoods that the mobile market goes into, there is a grocery store. But when you go into that grocery store, you might only see hothouse tomatoes. And those tomatoes have been sitting there and have a really long shelf life.
Janna Roberson:Literally, will sit there for two weeks before somebody buys them. And they'll be iceberg lettuce. That'll be the selection. So the selection is super limited. We do hear a lot of feedback that the cost is significant, which is why the mission of the mobile market is wholesale pricing. So we buy it at the price and sell it at the price that we buy it from the farmers and the ranchers.
Janna Roberson:We have a little bit of subsidy work that we've had to start doing since inflation and food costs have kind of skyrocketed. So we subsidize meat and eggs. We have a new bread vendor that has really brought the cost down, so we're not having to subsidize that. But we really try to control the cost for people so that that access point is not the problem. Now, do you have to be at our location at a certain time on a certain day?
Janna Roberson:Yes. And that is sometimes hard for people, but we really try to kind of we have a map and we have all this information about the days and the times that we're there and those kinds of things. But I think that that freshness of the product in a neighborhood where they're used to maybe shopping at a convenience store or going through a drive through, that's a whole another piece.
Janna Roberson:A lot of the neighborhoods we work in, there are lots of fast food feeder options, whether that's in the convenience store or that's a freestanding fast food location that's relatively inexpensive, easy, open twenty four hours or open a long extended day. And it becomes just an easy access point for people.
Janna Roberson:And so we have done a lot of work around recipe cards, around demonstrations, trying to let people sample things. We have some Egyptian cucumbers that have come on from one of our farms in Alief, and they have a striped they have a lime green and dark green stripe to them. And so people see them and they don't recognize them because they don't look like a cucumber in a grocery store. But they are delicious and they have a very sweet flavor, very mild, low seeds. And so once we sample them and people are like, oh my goodness, then all of a sudden it kind of opens up a door, I think, for people.
Janna Roberson:So the term food desert, I think, has become a very popular one. But really in our kind of world, that low income, low access piece is the piece that we are trying to work on every day. It is how do we give people options and choices. In the early days at the mobile market, did boxes, prepackaged boxes. And we learned very quickly that people do not want that.
Janna Roberson:They don't want someone choosing for them. So they would literally unpack the box and they would sort the things that they wanted and they didn't want. And then they would take those things. Interesting. And so what we found over time is that it was much better just to buy it from the farmers in bulk, set it out, and let people choose because they wanted the third row of strawberries in that container.
Janna Roberson:And they wanted those two tomatoes. And they were very conversational in the fact that they really wanted to be able to pick and choose And gave us great feedback too. Mean even cuts of meat. You know we have neighborhoods that we serve that we only sell whole chickens at that location. We don't sell parts because that was what the neighborhood wanted.
Janna Roberson:They wanted to use every piece of it. That was part of their culture. And so we really try to listen to what people are looking for and wanting. We try to work on the times that we're there. We try to have some times that are during the week and lots of times on Saturday.
Janna Roberson:Saturdays are definitely the highest volume for us. And so I think we are trying to think about what's happening in that community every day and how do we address their needs from their point of view.
Heather Patrick:So do you think that approach has shifted over the years for you?
Janna Roberson:Yes, 100%. When I started with Urban Harvest, nobody talked about food as medicine. Really? No one. We had no partners in the health community in the early days.
Janna Roberson:And just that kind of the popularity of Food Rx where doctors and nurses and social workers are giving prescriptions for fresh and healthy food. And us working with clinics who are trying to provide product to their clients and kind of give them some classes and nutrition education and cooking demonstrations and things like that. That has really become a new world for us.
Heather Patrick:That is amazing. But what a connection, I mean again innovation.
Janna Roberson:Yes.
Heather Patrick:Right? I love that.
Janna Roberson:Yes.
Heather Patrick:That is really amazing. So how do you think, you know, in terms of when you're looking at the whole city, right, and it's so diverse, when you go in do you assess each community of, okay, we know that transportation is an issue here so this is we're gonna do the mobile.
Heather Patrick:Or how does that work for you? Because you also talk about the evolution of data and having basically data driven decisions, right? And I really do think we're in the same place, right? But it's also there's so much data. And so it's do you find the right data and then use it to make better decisions.
Heather Patrick:And so the example you just gave of instead of boxing everything but then that didn't really work. So you took that data and changed your delivery.
Janna Roberson:For sure.
Heather Patrick:But how does that work for you?
Janna Roberson:So we actually use a rubric we developed when the mobile market really got rolling in the post COVID world and we received a large grant from ARPA from Harris County. And we knew that we had to make choices about location based upon all kinds of factors on the partner, on the clients, on the client base that they were operating on, on the activities that were going on. The mobile market is very successful at places where there's a lot of density of activity.
Janna Roberson:And so places like Baker Ripley, Gulfton, Sharpstown. That's a great location for us because they're doing everything from they have a charter school on-site to they have a health clinic with Legacy to they are doing all different kinds of legal advice and giving people tax classes.
Janna Roberson:They are doing all kinds of English as a second language. They're doing all kinds of promotion and outreach and community service. And so what we find is those locations for us become a better spot. And we needed something to be able to kind of score. So the rubric has all different kinds of questions and it has a score associated with it.
Janna Roberson:And it's quick and easy to do. And so the partners answer all these questions and then we kind of say, okay, this is what we know about the neighborhood, the community, the traffic counts, you know, is it in a USDA concern, you know, food desert neighborhood, like what are the SNAP participation in that neighborhood. We kind of have all these little factors that kind of go into play. And so what we found is the ones that scored the highest on the rubric when we did the first build out. Because we were doing at the height under ARPA grant 18 markets a month.
Janna Roberson:So we had a full time staff. We were operating two full service vehicles. And so we learned pretty quickly, okay, this is kind of what we're seeing. So we used the rubric for the selection of the additions that we made for the sites. But then also it helped us when ARPA was defunded and we lost the grant, and we went down to five markets a month.
Janna Roberson:That's where we are right now. We went down to five markets a month, and it made us be able to compare and contrast. So it was like, okay, what are the most successful ones we were doing? What was their original Rubik's score? And what were the outcomes that we saw in customer counts and in produce purchases and snap dollars, those kinds of things.
Janna Roberson:So it gave us, unfortunately, an enormous hole in funding, but it also gave us a minute to go back and say, test it. Like what do we really learn here? What do we know? Gave you a roadmap. It gave us a roadmap.
Janna Roberson:And we have like our numbered list of what we want to add back. And some of those 18 markets we should not add back because it wasn't the right fit. It wasn't a strong connection. And it's okay to say that didn't work. Like maybe we should do something different.
Janna Roberson:The most successful mobile market in the system right now has always been the original one, which is the Northeast Farmers Market because they're twice a month. They're the first and the third Saturday from nine until twelve. And people know they can come there, Whereas the other markets are single one stop one time a month sites and you have to really be paying attention to shop there that way.
Heather Patrick:So do you think kind of pulling on your educational expert, because when I hear rubric, right, I think of the education component, Sure. And so do you think that is kind of where it came from? Did you use that expertise into this?
Janna Roberson:It really did not come from there. It really came from we had a board matrix that they had designed in the early years of the board to try to strategize about the addition of members as people started coming on
Heather Patrick:That's how we do.
Janna Roberson:The Board and so that little matrix has been really good for them to diversify the board over time. And it has drastically changed I kind of came in. But I think that to me was a good kind of gauge. And then our food access director is really a good person. She wants to ask questions.
Janna Roberson:She's looking for knowledge. And this was a way for her to be like, okay, these things are important. Like, how do we do this? And so the scoring of it and the analysis of the rubric, I mean that really was driven by her. But kind of like I say, we had something that was tried and tested to start with.
Heather Patrick:That's really cool. Okay, how do you balance mission driven work with the realities of the operations of a nonprofit? Me laughing.
Janna Roberson:That's the big question of the day for everyone, I think. You know, I think twenty twenty five across the board, there's a new normal. I was very lucky that the founder of my organization is still involved, still very active. And in my early days with the organization, I met with him once a month. Because I needed to understand the history the makeup, and why things happened the way they did, and who the players were, and to learn from the mistakes of the past.
Janna Roberson:And he was very good about talking consistently about not drifting from the mission. And there are many times where we have conversations about programs and I think, okay, what would Bob say? How would he feel about that idea? And the expansion of the mobile market was a touch and go. He was super concerned about us having vehicles and insurance and paying for gas and having all this maintenance and upkeep.
Janna Roberson:And he thought about that in a different way than I did. Because to me, that's the cost of doing business. But he didn't think about it that way. He thought about it as how would we have made that work in the early days of the organization when we were struggling to pay people salary. And so kind of that voice of reason really overlays into a lot of the work that I do now.
Janna Roberson:Wendy Kelsey was another founder of Urban Harvest and she has been an instrumental influence in me thinking about what we did and how we did it and why we did it, where it came from. And there are lots of times that I just call her and ask her the most random question about something in the past, and she can give me the story. And if she doesn't know the story, she can tell me somebody who does. And so that's a big piece of the puzzle for us. We had our first strategic plan.
Janna Roberson:It was approved in May 2018 and they hired me in July. And so they slid the strategic plan literally across the table when they offered me the job and they said, This is the job that you need to do. And so I had a structure, right? And I had an idea that had been worked on for a year from the organization and all of the community gardeners and all of the people on the committees and people connected the farmers market. They had all this information that they would say, Okay, this is the roadmap.
Janna Roberson:And so that roadmap and that strategic plan really became part of our culture and conversation amongst the staff that I say a lot, How does that tie back to the mission? We don't do nutrition education. That's not part of our mission. But what we have done successfully is find partners who that is their mission. And they are really good at it.
Janna Roberson:And they understand about breaking down the nutrition. They understand about creating recipes. They understand about what is approachable. They understand about what you need if you have hypertension or diabetes or high blood pressure or you're obese. They understand what needs to be happening as far as the diet is concerned.
Janna Roberson:And so that piece is a piece that I've really pushed back against because they're like, oh, could just get somebody on staff. That's not really the mission of what we do. That goes hand in hand with the mission and we should find partners to help us.
Heather Patrick:So two questions for you as I'm listening to you. So you came in with a strategic plan, which is unusual actually. So they were really helping to set you up for success. So over eight years, your vision has likely evolved for the organization. So talk about for you personally and professionally, you came into a sector that you really didn't know, right?
Heather Patrick:So and now you've been CEO for eight years and been successful, right? But what does the vision look like for you personally and professionally? How did it evolve over those eight years?
Janna Roberson:So I think that we launched a strategic plan in 2018 and COVID came in March 2020. And so a big portion of one of the strategic plan initiatives was youth education in schools. And we shut down 26 school sites in two weeks. And some of those school sites never reopened, that the garden went fallow and they had to change their funding stream. And so now we're operating in that traditional six school sites.
Janna Roberson:And that kind of is the new normal for us that COVID made us do different. And it made the schools do different because their priorities drastically changed. Software and teacher education and student education and computers and online learning. I mean, they totally had to make a radical shift. And so outdoor activities like us became just not high priority.
Janna Roberson:And so we saw a lot of people like us that were doing after school programming, Boys and Girls Club, YMCA, people that had come in and done programs like that for the schools. We kind of all just drifted away for a little bit. And so I think that that really influenced year three of the strategic plan. It was supposed to be a five year plan. And so in the spring of twenty twenty four, we approved a new strategic plan.
Janna Roberson:And so it had some pieces of the puzzle from the old strategic the original strategic plan. It had some things that we needed to change. Like the youth education piece is in the new plan, and it looks totally different. And the food access work that we started doing in COVID and the outreach and the community partnerships, that really radically influenced the new plan.
Janna Roberson:And then we wanted something that was super flexible. And thank goodness that we did because then 2025 came and funding radically shifted. And like our pie chart of funding went from one look to complete opposite look in one calendar year. And it made us go back as a staff and as a board and say, okay, like what is the new normal going to look like? And so we made some significant changes in the strategic plan and just said, okay, let's see what this looks like.
Janna Roberson:Let's put this on a two year cycle with a three year extension and let's reset. And so that's kind of what we have done. So we have a little reset that we did with the board that's scheduled to be approved by them at their next board meeting. That should take us into the end of twenty twenty seven.
Heather Patrick:Yeah. And who knows what that will be.
Janna Roberson:Who knows?
Heather Patrick:Who knows? Yeah. So this is something we talk a lot about here because there are in my experience, and I've been in healthcare nonprofit for twenty two years, and I'm interested to see if you feel the same. I feel like we are, and to your point, the hamster's on the wheel, but we are dedicated to providing short term solutions, in a world where we really need to be able to deliver long term solutions.
Janna Roberson:How do we bridge that gap? I think that that gap is hard to bridge in the society we have of instantaneous gratification. We've been having a lot of conversation about the big farmers market. So I have about 75 vendors there every Saturday, rain or shine, and we're there for that one day. So we literally set up a market and we start at 08:00 and we go until noon and we break the entire thing down.
Janna Roberson:So there's no remnants that we were there if you look at that space on a Sunday. And so we've seen people's buying habits and traffic patterns shift because they can have Instacart at their house in two hours with everything they want and everything they need. They can have DoorDash drop something off to them and they don't even have to go out for a nominal fee. And so we have really seen a shift and I think that very is difficult thing for nonprofit. We and our clients and our customers, they want to see change right then.
Janna Roberson:It's like the volunteer day at the community garden. You go in, it's like overgrown, you get the weeds pulled, you get the weed eater done, all of a sudden three hours later you leave there transformed. And the space is beautiful. And people leave and they're like, oh my gosh, I did this amazing thing. But in a month, those weeds are going to be coming back and those gardens are going to be working to maintain what you did over a long period of time.
Janna Roberson:And so I do think it is a very challenging piece. And I think thinking about the long term food access goals for a city of 7,000,000 people, Like it can never be just Urban Harvest, a little tiny organization like running on their hamster wheel. It has to be a collective voice saying these are the priorities for us and this is the roadmap for us moving forward long term. But I think that's a struggle for funders.
Heather Patrick:Yes, I do.
Janna Roberson:That one year grant, we have a few funders that have gone to a two or a three year cycle. That's a game changer. Because you have time to actually see the work more than twelve months. Twelve months comes and goes in a blink. But thirty six months or forty eight months, you can see some real sustained change.
Janna Roberson:People's habits, people's buying patterns, people's usage. Healthcare clinics can track their patients over time and see if they see a benefit to the work that we're doing and the products that we're getting in there. So I don't know that there's an answer. I wish I did know what the answer was. I just keep saying the same thing to funders and to supporters, is, you know, you've got to stay there. There has to be staying power.
Heather Patrick:Yep. That's a good way to put it. So when you think about, because we're in the same place, I come from, I spent ten years in the cancer world, there's a cancer plan for the state, right? There's a roadmap. There is no roadmap for vision in the state of Texas.
Heather Patrick:And that is one of the things that for a long time we talked about, we want, and finally I was like, we're just gonna lead this effort. I mean, part of our new strategic plan is bringing all these different voices together because there is no roadmap. There are different pieces and different organizations doing different pieces, right? But ultimately until there is one I think plan, right, that outlines all those different pieces so that it leverages more effectively the resources and the work that is happening. Just, like that is my vision.
Heather Patrick:But it is really hard to bring all different people together. So do you think of an organization like yours could be that voice to bring people together? What would that look like?
Janna Roberson:I think we've started to have those kinds of conversations. I've talked to a couple of our long time funders, family foundations who are historically steeped in our city that have done amazing things to support nonprofit work. And I have said, you know, while we appreciate the funding, it would be lovely if you could help to support a collective or a group that could come together and maybe you could fund the person that is the administrative assistant for that collective. So there's someone to set meetings, to send invitations out, to collect the information from all of it, to create an agenda, to create the minutes from the meeting, to give people their deliverables. Like that's time that I don't have.
Janna Roberson:And that's time that little small organizations like us, we don't have administrative support to do that work. So I have said, you know, this would be something that I think would be really helpful. Helpful. Years ago, I know Houston Endowment did it for the arts. And they created it for the arts collective and they created it for the homeless group.
Janna Roberson:And so they had basically an organization that had structure to it that the individuals weren't like keeping it going. You know, they knew that there was going to be somebody there. I think some of that has drifted away over time.
Janna Roberson:And some of it, like the homeless piece, like they have their own coalition now, which supports itself and which is amazing. It's become self sustaining. But I think the difficulty of the arts piece was just budget cuts and things getting removed from them and those kinds of things that's hard to do. So we have had those kinds of conversations. How can we you know, we're right now doing it through committees.
Janna Roberson:We have working committees like the Food Access has a committee, the Farmers Market has a committee, development has a committee, the community gardens have a committee. And so we're kind of doing it on our own little how can we make it work for us. But as far as a larger network, that piece is tricky.
Heather Patrick:Yeah. So in all of that, how do you also bridge and assess the importance of education And I'll say in public health, but obviously related to you food access, For us, we have debated, right, how to deliver education effectively so that it is beyond awareness and moves people to action, right? And it sounds so obvious, but it is so hard to do. Yes. Right.
Heather Patrick:So especially coming from the world of education, how do you view that?
Janna Roberson:So I think one of the most successful partnerships that we have had around that is that Hope Clinic, they employ a full time chef at Hope Clinic. So they have someone who is teaching classes, who is doing lessons, and they created basically these kind of six and eight week groups where people from certain areas, diabetes, hypertension, obesity, whatever it happened to be, would come in to this group. There was a curriculum. There was a program for change. There was experiential learning.
Janna Roberson:And when they came out, then we had a little partnership with them. And they, FNIP through Texas AgriLife did the same kind of project. They got, recipe cards and a bag of groceries, fresh produce, and we offered a class. They could take a class with us for free. You know, we tried to do something.
Janna Roberson:So there's like this carrot at the end of this journey, but it has to be dedicated and concentrated like that. It can't just be, Oh, we're going to do a little one off chef demo at the farmers market and 20 people from the farmers market are going to come and watch and take their recipe cone and it's going to totally change their eating habits. That's not going happen. And it's very time consuming. Dedicated staff doing just that one task.
Janna Roberson:And I admire the people that are doing wraparound specialists in schools and social workers and CRNs and PRNs that are doing this work and clinic based because it's going to take that to change our eating habits. It's been a long time to get us from 1950 to where we are today. And that instantaneous gratification is right there. And it's really easy just to grab and go and eat it out of a sack in your car on your way to the next destination.
Heather Patrick:Yeah. Well, back then again, was about, it was food was part of a ritual And it was part of building community.
Janna Roberson:And a routine. Mean families had a routine where it came from that traditional structure of meals were prepared at home with the family system and lunches were sent to school with And so there was this kind of continuity and consistency in people's food preparation and food access. People are always furrowed brow when I say that I do food prep on Sundays.
Janna Roberson:But if I don't do it on Sunday, if I miss my routine, there's something out of the ordinary, I'm not there, then I try to scramble for the rest of the week on what am I going to cook for dinner, what am I going to have for my lunch, and it becomes that easy slide into you're not ready to go. You have to do something to get that stuff ready to happen. But that's a process and a procedure.
Heather Patrick:It is. It is. But we always talk about it at the staff. You either pay for it upfront or on the back end. Which one would you rather?
Janna Roberson:That's right.
Heather Patrick:You're gonna pay for it one way or the other. That's Where do you wanna do it? Absolutely. The front end or the back end?
Janna Roberson:That's right.
Heather Patrick:So you've been a CEO for almost a decade, right? Advice would you give to leaders or upcoming leaders in this space, especially women who aspire to be in the CEO role?
Janna Roberson:You have to love your mission. You have to drink the kool aid of the mission. And it needs to be important to you personally and professionally. I have had a lot of people over the years want to visit with me about this role or that role or that, you know, this kind of position or, you know, I'm not a flipper. There is a lot of that in nonprofit where people are someplace for two years or three years and then they're gone on to another place.
Janna Roberson:And they drastically, radically shift and change. But there's also this piece of the puzzle that I find interesting that when people talk to me about other roles, that once we have a conversation, they immediately are like, well, you haven't spent any time in health care. And I'm like, well, I never spend any time in the garden. I wasn't a gardener when I came to Urban Harvest. When I came to education, I had a counseling degree.
Janna Roberson:So I had an MED in counseling psychology. I came to school to become a school counselor with alternative certification, but I had never worked in a school prior to that. So I think people sometimes get too boxed into, oh, my skill set is only X, Y, Z. That's not necessarily true. What you're doing is applicable regardless of where you are.
Janna Roberson:I wasn't a teen mother, but one of the most fulfilling jobs I ever had was working with them in a high school setting. I didn't need to be one to understand their challenges. I just need to listen. Right. And so I think that my piece for people that are in the nonprofit space is choose wisely.
Janna Roberson:Pick that place, that mission that speaks to you. And even if you're like, oh gosh, I could probably make it work. You'd listen to your inner voice there.
Heather Patrick:Not in this role.
Janna Roberson:If you're trying to talk yourself into it, it's not the right one.
Heather Patrick:Yeah, definitely not in this role. We talk about always remembering your why, so to your point, really knowing why you're doing this work.
Janna Roberson:Absolutely.
Heather Patrick:Why does that matter? Why?
Janna Roberson:Yeah, because it needs to be important because there are going to be difficult times and you're gonna have to figure those out when those come.
Heather Patrick:The other thing I would say is building your circle. I agree with you. That is one of the most important things I think you can do in this space but certainly in this role. Yes. Is really build your circle.
Heather Patrick:Yes. You know I have, we kid often, because marketing and branding, right, which you have expertise in, you know, is usually not a large part of nonprofit conversation, right? And therefore you, unless you really seek it out, you don't always get that experience or learn those skills. And I have found I was fortunate enough to work for a large nonprofit that was a genius actually in that space. But it has served me so well to continue to build those relationships and have that expertise in my circle.
Heather Patrick:And I will say, I think that is a key piece of seek out those that have expertise that you don't add them to your circle. Absolutely. Right. Because I wouldn't have been able to be I think as successful because I didn't, you know, there are skills that I just didn't experiences I just didn't have. HR is another one.
Heather Patrick:I think you learn it on the job. Absolutely. But it's one area that I wish I would have had more exposure to before I got into the role.
Janna Roberson:Yes, absolutely. Would have been very beneficial.
Heather Patrick:Yeah, yeah, yeah. All right, so as we close out, if you had one thing you want our listeners to take away, what would it be?
Janna Roberson:I think the one thing that and I say this to my son a lot, who is going to be a junior in college now. My one one thing for him is to find your place and find your people. And I think that applies whether you're in college, you're crowd in your French professional group of people, the area that you work in, whether it's corporate or nonprofit or whatever, you have to find your people.
Janna Roberson:The people that support you, the people that you feel connected to, the people that you're willing to go to the mat for every single day and to fight for them and to be there for them when times are difficult and hard. And I think that this, my organization, has allowed me to really find my niche and my people.
Heather Patrick:Yeah, I love that. That's awesome. So what does, when you look out, what does a healthier community look like to you? What do you ultimately what are we aspiring to do?
Janna Roberson:Know, mean, obviously, part of our mission is to support local growers, farmers, ranchers, food artisans. Like, that's part of the original mission of the organization. But honestly, that's hard sometimes because in Texas we grow food for animals, not food for people. We are a big ag state. And that is traditionally what we have been.
Janna Roberson:And so I know that 7,000,000 people are not going to eat from a local farmer every single day. But I really wish those 7,000,000 people would make their personal healthy choices on a regular basis. And I wish that they would say, Okay, I'm going to spend two hours on Sunday night getting myself organized for the week, and I'm going to make three healthy choices this week that I didn't make last week.
Janna Roberson:Just small kinds of steps to be thoughtful about the food that we eat and what we put in our bodies because there's so much data and research out there and it's coming out all the time about that food is and can be medicine. It can make you live a healthier, longer life.
Janna Roberson:So I would just like people to just think about the choice and think about how do I make that work for myself in a small way just to get started. Because you're going to fail if you say, oh tomorrow I'm not going to eat any sugar or, processed foods when I've been eating that way for twenty years. Right. You know it has to be small steps towards healthy food choices.
Heather Patrick:And then what is one way if I'm passionate about food access, what's the first step I can take to make a change?
Janna Roberson:What we would offer is that you come to our website. Okay. Because it's all laid out there and we feel like it's easily understood and if your change is I want to learn I want to take a class Those are available to you if your change is I want access. There's the mobile market. There's the farmers market There's I want to do something as a family.
Janna Roberson:I want to connect to a community that's growing. We can help you to do that. There are so many communities and they are really great people that are in those places. And so no matter what you want to do, we want to be able to give you an option for accessing that on your own choice. Not us saying you need to do X, Y, and Z, but there's a lot of ways to get there.
Heather Patrick:Good. So one of the reasons we started the podcast was to open up, no pun intended, the vision Who we are and who we work with and in the public health space, right? And so partners like you that it is ultimately how we feed our bodies, right? Impacts all parts of our health, including our eyes.
Heather Patrick:And so as we continue the podcast, I love having these conversations because while there isn't a tell me about your vision story, we're all connected and I think that is the amazing place and when we talk about all these different things, to your point, every small choice builds, right?
Heather Patrick:And so my pleasure to have partners like you and learn from you and just in the leadership space. It has been amazing to get to know you.
Janna Roberson:Absolutely. Well, thank you so much. I appreciate the invitation and it's been a lovely time together.
Heather Patrick:Yeah, it's been great. Well, with that, we always end with, to Janna's point, you know, to their website, Urban Harvest, come to our website if you're passionate about public health and vision, but there is always a place to get involved. We are always looking for volunteers, health advocates, vision screeners. Like Janna and her team, want to give you all the opportunities.
Heather Patrick:There's not one way to do it and we love connecting. You know we're always welcoming to join the PBT family and we always end with tell us what your vision is. Have a great day!