Exclusive: Flashfood names Megan Martinelli chief people officer
Flashfood has tapped Megan Martinelli as its chief people officer.
The Toronto-based executive, who returns to the company after a year-long maternity leave, will lead its people function with an expanded role covering legal, compliance and sustainability.
Martinelli is Flashfood’s first c-suite appointment since January, when Nicholas Bertram and Jordan Schenck took up the posts of CEO and CCO, respectively.
“My personal mission is to ensure that Flashfood teammates feel a sense of belonging, particularly as we grow and our team gets bigger,” Martinelli said in a release. “It is my responsibility to ensure they are given the tools and leadership they need to succeed in their roles at Flashfood."
Prior to Flashfood, Martinelli held key people and culture roles at Points International. Before that, she served in a variety of human resource roles at Toronto General.
READ: Flashfood hits major milestone in fight against food waste
Flashfood is also promoting current director of partnerships Calli Brannan to the role of head of customer success to lead the customer experience for Flashfood’s two-sided marketplace.
Brannan has worked in the food insecurity and food waste reduction space for a decade. She is the founder of Detroit-based One More Meal, and was a community nutrition program instructor at Michigan State University Extension and served as a board member at the Detroit Food Policy Council.
“Megan and Calli will have a tremendous impact on our culture and performance, and will help shape our strategy for growth,” Bertram added. “Our company is lucky to rely on their leadership and responsibility that will surely accelerate our growing momentum as an organization.”
Flashfood connects shoppers with fresh produce, meat and other groceries at up to 50% off. It is currently partnered with more than 2,000 stores across 20 store banners, 21 states in the U.S. and 10 provinces in Canada.
Canadian Grocer caught up with Martinelli to discuss her new role.
CG: Can you share some of your priorities for the remainder of the year as you step into this new role at Flashfood?
MM: As I step into the role of chief people officer, my immediate focus will be to build people-centric initiatives that support our strategic objectives: using data and people analytics to guide our decisions, while incorporating feedback to balance employee needs with business goals. This starts with understanding the immediate challenges of our people leaders. Long-term, I will prioritize enhancing our employee engagement by fostering a positive workplace culture that can scale with our organization, emphasizing continuous improvement and professional growth, and strengthening our talent strategy to ensure we attract and retain top talent.
What are the key ways Flashfood supports a healthy workplace culture?
It starts with hiring people who believe in and support the mission of the organization: to feed families, not landfills. This is the foundation to building a mission-aligned workforce that can scale with us. As a leadership team, we work hard to keep lines of communication open across the organization and foster a culture of trust. We encourage open feedback during our monthly town halls where we share key change initiatives and communicate how we are trending towards company goals. We celebrate and reward company and team accomplishments and our people leaders focus on the personal and professional growth of their teams. We’re a fully remote company and prioritize the architecture that enables a healthy work-life balance, with efficient remote work tools and strong async communication, generous PTO and an annual team-wide gathering.
How do you balance changing employee expectations and the needs of the business in 2024?
That’s the ultimate challenge for any organization in the phase of growth that Flashfood is in because this balance is always evolving. We approach it with strategy but flexibility: we do our best to align work arrangements with employee preferences, while maintaining productivity through collaborative tools and a robust shared resource library. We emphasize that the door to communication is always open, and the strength and frequency of feedback is part of how we measure the effectiveness of our hybrid work policies. We’re constantly evaluating our company wellness initiatives to meet the needs of our team and foster an inclusive, blame-free culture that embodies the values of our organization, which everyone in the company has signed on to uphold.
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