Dan Woods talks with Meredith Knopp, President and CEO of the St. Louis Area Foodbank. Meredith shares about her career with the St. Louis Area Foodbank and work with veterans. Meredith will be a speaker at the Cape Chamber’s annual Women in Business: At the Heart of it All Celebration on September 20, 2024.
Woods:
This is KRCU's Going Public. I'm here with Meredith Knopp. She's the president and CEO of the St. Louis Area Food Bank. Meredith, good to talk with you today.
Knopp:
Thanks, Dan.
Woods:
And you're going to be coming to Cape Girardeau soon to speak at the Cape Chamber’s Women's Network Luncheon. So, we wanted to talk with you a little bit beforehand to find out more about you and what we can expect when you're here. So first, if you would tell us a little about your background, Meredith.
Knopp:
I was actually born and raised in Pontiac, Michigan, so just outside Detroit. So, I'm not from Missouri. I went to school in Michigan, but then after I graduated, spent my first eight years in the United States Army. So, I served all over, deployed all over. That's how I actually got to Missouri…is after my company command in Korea, they sent me to Fort Leonard Wood. Which I was like, okay, where's that? So, here we are. Fast forward, I spent about five and a half years in the for-profit sector and then worked in a myriad of different nonprofits since 2007. I've been here at the St. Louis Area Foodbank as president and CEO since February of 2018.
Woods:
What drew you to the nonprofit world?
Knopp:
Candidly, I was in a for-profit job, and I was doing some job shadowing to really help students--middle school, high school--translate what they were learning in the classroom into real practical applications for careers. And I quickly realized I loved those days where I felt like I had a sense of purpose and pretty much hated every other day that ended in why. So, I remember calling my husband and saying, “Hey, I think I want to go work in the nonprofit sector." He's like, hey, can we talk about this? I said, “I thought that's what we were doing.” Yeah, it kind of went from there.
Woods:
Okay. So, what's a typical day like there at the foodbank for you? Is there a typical day, I guess is a better question.
Knopp:
There is no such thing. So here at the St. Louis Area Foodbank, we have the honor of serving 26 counties in Missouri. Sorry, 26 counties--14 in Missouri, 12 in Illinois. But where our boundaries end, there's another Feeding America Foodbank that picks up. So down in Cape, you've got the SEMO Foodbank led by my friend, Joey Keys. And so, we're all doing great work, and we're really trying to reduce food insecurity and provide healthy and nutritious foods to families who otherwise would go without or have to make what we call impossible choices, right? Do I buy food, or do I pay for my medicine? Do I buy food or put gas in the car or pay my electric bill? These are terrible choices.
Woods:
How much coordination is there between the food banks here in Missouri?
Knopp:
Quite a bit. So, obviously we're all trying to source food and get it to our individual networks. So here in St. Louis, I've got about 600 food pantries that actually receive food from us. And Joey does something very similar down there in SEMO. And so, we work very collaboratively. So, if we're able to get a truck of food, but we'd only need half of it, maybe there's space, maybe we have other product, we'll actually send it down to SEMO, or we'll send it to our friends in Columbia or in Kansas City. And they do the same, right? Food banking is not a competitive sport, right? So, when we win, everybody wins. And so, we're very, very collaborative, and I love the opportunity to do so.
Woods:
What kind of things are you looking for in the future to maybe reach more people? I'm sure you guys are always looking to serve more and to try to make sure families don't have to answer those questions you were just referencing.
Knopp:
Sure, and so we've been doing that. I've been here about six and a half years. And so, we have really been innovating around our programs. We have programs called school markets, which are pantries inside local schools, but done with school colors and school mascots, and kids run them. So, it really destigmatizes the need to ask for help in the first place. So instead of saying, wow, did you see Meredith at the school market? It's like, hey, Meredith, you want to go to the market? And so, they're nice, and they're free for the kids and their family. We innovate with our food on the move, which are a series of tractor trailers that we've retrofitted to be grocery stores on wheels. And so, we can take these to places where there's high food insecurity and maybe transportation's a barrier. We do mobile distributions called FARMS. We do two of these per county. We just launched this in July. And so, we're able to feed 500 families with each distribution. We're doing 52 a month. And so, we're really innovating to focus on equity, focus on meeting people where they are, and just reducing barriers to access.
Woods:
I get the sense, Meredith, that you really enjoy your work.
Knopp:
I do. I love what I do. Unfortunately, I'm what they call naturally caffeinated. I think if I started to drink coffee, my team would probably all walk out the door. So, what you see is what you get 24-7.
Woods:
Wow. So, let me ask you this--post pandemic, have you seen an increase in the number of folks that you're serving? Has that changed?
Knopp:
We have. You know, sadly we started to see a slight decrease in 2022, and now with the economy and inflation the way it is, right, that affects all of us. It really, really hurts people who are on fixed incomes, right? We think of our seniors. We think of people who are low income or for whatever reason are just on a fixed income. And so, it works until it doesn't. Here in St. Louis, we see a lot of working families that come to us at the end of the month saying, I'm just out of money. I have nothing left yet, I have to feed myself my kiddos, right? Food is not an option.
Woods:
Right. Do you work to…and I'm sure this is part of probably the outreach that you do…because some folks, like you said, they may not want to come to the food bank because what are our neighbors going to think or what people think? How do you help people overcome that?
Knopp:
Right, so that's really our laser focus. We are really trying to destigmatize the need to ask for help in the first place, right? Everybody needs help in some aspect of their lives. And for some, it just happens to be food. I actually received an email this morning that I read from a neighbor that was at one of our food on the move distributions yesterday and just singing praises for one of our team members, Antonio, because he said he treated him with such dignity, with such respect. He didn't judge him because he was in line. He gave him the foods that he needed, and they were medically tailored to help him because he has some other restrictions on foods that he could eat. It’s really humbling when you know that you can be there for people and ensure they're not suffering in silence.
Woods:
Well, in all of our minds, in the back of our minds, couldn't we all sort of think, you know, if our life circumstances changed, we may be in the same need. And maybe that would help kind of bridge that gap?
Knopp:
I think it does. We saw that during COVID, just how many families were one paycheck, one life event away from needing help, right? Any of us…there's an accident, maybe, heaven forbid. There's a fire in your house. There's a medical condition. All of these things happen to people every single day. And so, we never know how people come to either a food bank or one of our food pantries. It's our job not to ask questions, not to make it difficult, but to make it easy and to say, how can we help you? Right? We don't consider it a handout. It's a hand up. Say, hey, we're going to help you right now, but we want to get you back on your feet. We want you living your best possible lives. We don't want to be feeding you for the next five months, five years. Right? We want to be there when you need us, and then we want you to move on.
Woods:
So, when you have free time…ha ha ha, you probably don't have much free time…what are some other things that you enjoy doing outside of running the food bank?
Knopp:
So, I have the great fortune that I also serve on the Missouri Veterans Commission. Appointed by the governor, I'm the vice chair of that commission. So, still very involved with our veterans and our veterans homes and cemeteries and just taking care of them. I'm also very fortunate. I have a 12 year old daughter. So, she keeps me on my toes. I get to coach her softball team and then attend her various other events from orchestra to volleyball or whatever new event that she says, mom, hey, I want to try. So just kind of keeping up with her certainly keeps me on my toes.
Woods:
That's great. Well, you're going to be here in Cape Girardeau soon. What can folks attending this luncheon expect to hear from you?
Knopp:
So, I'm really honored that I was asked to come down there enjoying one of my dear friends, Maxine Clark, and talk at this event. So, what I'm really going to be sharing is a little bit about my story, but not just my story because…blah, blah, blah, boring, boring, boring. But I’ll really be talking with the attendees that day about defining moments in our lives and those crossroads that we're all going to be faced with, right? And so, we want to talk about it, and I'm going to be talking about the power of perspective and the power of having positive perspective in every situation, because we all have the ability to turn problems into possibilities, if you have the courage to, you know, maybe look at how we frame that. So, I don't want to share all of it, but there's going to be some nuggets in my life and some crossroads that I'm going to share about that power of perspective and a mantra that my daughter and I share. So, we'll leave it there.
Woods:
I think it's kind of interesting because many times we can all get discouraged and sometimes we can want to veer toward the negative. So, trying to think about the perspective, it makes all the difference in how you look at what's going on around you, right? I think that's a powerful message.
Knopp:
It sure does. And candidly, it served me very well throughout my life. And like I said, I'm going to share a few of those key crossroads in my message and also talk about how the choices that we make set us on this path. And we have to sometimes have the courage to make courageous choices or maybe go against the grain. Because had I made some different choices in my life, I would have ended up in a very different position.
Woods:
Very interesting. Well, we look forward to seeing you here in Cape Girardeau, and thank you for spending time with us today, Meredith.
Knopp:
Thanks so much for having me, Dan.
