FAYE Longo
Company: VT Foodbank
Title: Outreach Coordinator
Age: 34
Favorite Part of Job? People. I can't help it, I love working with people; even mean people! I like hearing their stories, finding common ground, I like helping them and allowing them to help me. People are what build communities, invoke change, they are what makes a place what it is or isn't.
Tell us something fun about yourself that few people know: The only thing that rivals my love of people is my love of food. I love to eat (not so much cooking).
Favorite Vermont Escape: Visiting Cabot, VT. I love driving there on the back roads (especially in the fall), I love the visitor center at Cabot Cheese (amazing samples), the friendly people (and great sandwiches) at Cabot's General Store, Bert's Apple Orchard, and the covered bridge up on Cabot Plains has the most AMAZING view in the fall (and is a picture perfect picnic area).
Favorite Downtime Activity: Being with my family, hanging out at the river and enjoying goof food and good company!
What is the best career advice you have received? "Sometimes we have to go for something just because it is a good opportunity, we don't always have to act from a place of despair" - Hope Campbell
Where do you see yourself professionally in ten years? Ten years from now I hope to be the Founding Director of Invoke Change; a nonprofit membership organization that leads the way in ending inter-generational poverty through a multi-generational approach to high quality education and peer support networks across this State and the Nation. Encouraging other young and low-income people to become change-makers.
What motivated you to live and work in Vermont? Look around, it is beautiful here! On a more serious note; I chose to move back to Vermont because it is a safe place to raise my family, because there is a strong sense of community here, and because our condensed little State packs a punch. Vermont has historically been a place of firsts and I want to add to that legacy.
Career Highlights: There have been so many! For me, the highlights of my career have not stemmed from the skills I developed or goals I've achieved. Each and every highlight is a person, or group of people, I have had the pleasure of working with. In this way I truly have been blessed.
Community Involvement: I have this innate drive to fill the needs I see in my community, to help people - the way others have helped me. I believe in things coming full circle and I believe I'm a good example of that. I had a difficult upbringing, along the way there were these amazing and wonderful people who saw something in me, that I may have never known was there otherwise and they made all the difference. Now I try to be that kind of change agent for others. It only takes ONE PERSON, just one, that one person can make all the difference.
I am passionate about ending poverty, financial equality, empowering women, girls and our LGBTQ community members, ending domestic violence, caring for our aging population; trust me I could go on.