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| Miquela Craytor |
Dear SSBx Supporter,
After five years at Sustainable South Bronx, I will be moving on: Friday, November 4, will be my final day as Executive Director. I have accepted a position with the New York City Economic Development Corporation to oversee the City's Industrial Policy.
After my experience at SSBx I am acutely aware of the critical need to devise ways to ensure that the industrial sector can thrive in urban areas, while remaining responsive to the needs and concerns of local communities. I'll now be able to use this knowledge at a citywide level. Of course I will remain an active and committed part of SSBx's work going forward.
In May 2008, when I became the Executive Director, SSBx had trained nearly 100 individuals in five years of running our BEST ECO program. Today, only three years later, the program has expanded significantly-now known as BEST Academy-and we have trained 300 more people. BEST has expanded, to offer training in two different green collar sectors, and is continuously evolving to stay innovative in this dynamic and now competitive field of green-job training. We have also enriched our programming to connect homeowners to retrofits in the South Bronx. Starting just this year, our work has already led to 50 homes receiving free energy audits, with several retrofits now underway. And in the next month we will be taking this work borough-wide. Additionally, we have constructed 4 greenroof/wall projects, and currently are completing our largest project ever, a 10,000-square-foot greenroof. And our catalyst project, the South Bronx Greenway, is now seeing completion of several of the first phase projects-which began only a year ago.
These achievements are the result of a lot of hard work on the part of our staff and our BEST graduates, but none of our program's growth or advocacy successes would have been possible without our supporters. So I would like to offer my most heartfelt thanks to the generous donors, dedicated volunteers, partner organizations and businesses, not only in the Bronx and but the City as a whole. I would also like to thank SSBx's Board of Directors for giving me the opportunity to lead the organization and for working closely with me over the past three years.
I am so thankful to you for all of your support of the organization and our efforts over the years. Because of that support, and the support of the staff and board, I feel confident about SSBx's next chapter.
I am also pleased to introduce you to our newly appointed interim Executive Director, Michael Brotchner. Michael has been working with me over the past several weeks in advance of my departure. Michael comes to us from Generation Rwanda, having run offices in both New York and Rwanda. He brings tremendous expertise, confidence, personality and energy to the table. He graduated from Wesleyan and has an MBA from Berkeley. I am positive that both Michael (whose email address is mbrotchner@ssbx.org) and SSBx will flourish in his stewardship.
SSBx serves as an amazing model of what is possible when environmental and economic development are addressed simultaneously. We are an action organization that exemplifies the idea that sustainability is possible in every community.
I hope that you will continue to support these efforts going forward.
Gratefully,
Miquela Craytor
Executive Director (Emeritus)
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