Center for Growing Talent executive director and Produce Marketing Association senior vice president Margi Prueitt will retire in February.
Prueitt announced her plans during the recent Center for Growing Talent board of directors meeting in Seattle, according to a news release.
“Margi has brought her vision and expertise not just to Center for Growing Talent, but also to PMA’s senior management team,” PMA’s CEO Cathy Burns said in the release. “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.”
Under Prueitt’s leadership, Center for Growing Talent has grown and into a vital organization for the industry, center board of directors chairman Leonard Batti, vice president at Taylor Farms, Inc., said in the release.
Among Prueitt’s accomplishment in the past eight years, the release cited:
- Global expansion of the Career Pathways program: to date, the release said 67% of the 1,000+ students who have participated in Career Pathways programs took a job or internship in industry; 78% remain in the industry today.
- The launch of the CGT Immersion Academy: the release said 70% of the inaugural immersion Academy class took jobs in the industry;
- Creation of a career continuum of programs for senior executives to mid-level managers to emerging leaders to young professionals: the release said 5,430 people from nearly 600 industry companies have taken advantage of the center’s leadership development offerings;
- Global expansion of the Women’s Fresh Perspectives portfolio;
- 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; and
- HRVest, the center’s first offering to help industry retain talent: the release said the tool was designed by the HR transformation experts at PricewaterhouseCoopers and will help industry companies assess and benchmark their HR capabilities.
The release said the 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.
