Nominee: Becky McGuigan
Becky McGuigan, Associate Director & Social Impact Program Director, Forge City Works
Nominated by co-worker, Ben Dubow:
Becky leads the charge on our social impact programs (job training and food access) as well as many of the operations around our food-based social enterprises. Her day runs the gamut from making sure our trainees' issues are being addressed, developing curriculum, thinking through how to improve trainee outcomes longterm, and also managing many of the day-to-day operational challenges of a small organization. Pretty much every day is focused on our core mission of helping people overcome barriers to employment. She is a coach, mentor, leader, cheerleader and visionary for our organization.
Becky has been with this program for 12 years now. She is dedicated, passionate and totally mission-focused. Her authentic care for trainees and the staff is contagious. She is an operational genius who makes things happen -- but never at the expense of people, always in service to them.
Becky has sustained our organization through COVID and the tragic loss of our founder. She served as interim executive director, and has stayed on as associate director when new ED came on. She is currently focused on how we scale our impact through training both in terms of number of trainees, and the outcomes for those trainees. She is constantly looking for ways to increase and improve our impact. She is leading the charge on extending our 12-week Level 1 core program to 16 weeks, and developing new Level 2 and Level training opportunities. Under her leadership, more than 85% of our culinary graduates are getting employment post-program.
