How Jonathan Tucker and Adam Lowy are Helping to Address the Growing Challenge of Food Insecurity

Thank you so much for doing this with us! Before we dig in, our readers would like to get to know you a bit more. Can you tell us a bit about your “backstory”? What led you to this particular career path?

Tucker: I grew up in a military family and went to college out of high school but left college right at the start of the Gulf War. I did about six and a half years in the military and met someone that happened to be in the multifamily business, but never thought anything of it. But once I got out of the military and went back to school, because I knew someone in the business, I thought, “Alright, this will be a job until I get a ‘real job’.” I started business school and then started applying what I was learning and it ultimately became my career.

Can you share the most interesting story that happened to you since you began your career?

Tucker: Prior to Cortland, I started two management companies, one of which was in Raleigh, North Carolina. I partnered with a development company in Raleigh and went to work. We were probably about two and a half years in and the development arm went bankrupt, which I had no control over. Unfortunately, we were all master branded under the same name. So, I quickly found out how being tied to another entity can be a benefit, but it can also be catastrophic when you rely on that name brand to sell the business. Our business dried up after that. But it was a great experience that taught me a ton about business, how not only your function works, but then also how you partner across the business to make your function work in conjunction with others.

Are you able to identify a “tipping point” in your career when you started to see success? Did you start doing anything different? Are there takeaways or lessons that others can learn from that?

Tucker: I’ll go back to when I was in school. I remember taking a critical thinking course. I grew up in a military family, then went into the military and I approached life and work as, “Do what you’re told and do it to the best of your abilities.” That was what’s bred into you in the military. So, that course was revolutionary for me when I was early in my career. I started to question a lot of things deeper to understand how systems work and how processes work. I questioned the organization’s goals and outputs to really understand the why behind everything we were asked to do and how it ties to other things. I remember distinctly that semester in college really changing the way I looked at my future.

None of us are able to achieve success without some help along the way. Is there a particular person to whom you are grateful who helped get you to where you are? Can you share a story about that?

Tucker: There have been plenty along the way, but certainly there’s been one since I’ve been at Cortland. I’ll credit our CEO Steven DeFrancis. I’d always been successful because I could focus on systems and processes and get those right and create redundancies and eliminate risk. And I felt really good about my ability to do that across multiple organizations. Then he got a call from a resident who was having some significant issues relocating from out of state to one of our properties. He reached out and asked me to investigate what was going on.

I dug in and immediately found the process breakdown. Super excited, I responded with all my answers. But his response back to me was, “But what about her?” I was taken by his response and learned she was nine months pregnant with her third child. All she needed was her new address. But the entire time, all I did was focus on the system and the process and not the actual human whom we serve. While I’d been in this business for multiple decades, I’d never connected that dot in my leadership.

It was an epiphany for me to realize it’s about the people that we serve, not about the organization or how the organization works. That really changed how I started to lead my team. I’ll credit Steven with sending an email to the entire organization that said, “Don’t be afraid to make mistakes. Remember the person you’re serving and get to know them, understand what their needs are.” And then we later bought a nice stroller and wowed this resident when she moved in. It was a big moment for not only me, but I think for the entire organization, to remind us that this is a people business.

You are a successful leader. Which three character traits do you think were most instrumental to your success? Can you please share a story or example for each?

Tucker: Curiosity. I’ve always been a curious person. When I was in the military, I worked in psychiatry for about six and a half years. I learned a lot about the human mind and how it works. To this day, I still believe if you’re going to be a successful leader, you have to be able to understand people and how they think, what motivates them. Being a good leader is how you connect on a deeper level. I really try to take those learnings from the military and use that to get to know the people whom I serve and try to be the leader. If you lead people and you’re not curious about them and what makes them tick, you’re probably falling short.

Determination — I’m also super determined. Early in my career, I decided I wanted to be a manager. I had just finished reading “ The Art of Negotiation,” but I’d never really practiced any of the skills it described. I started applying for jobs, realizing I probably wasn’t seasoned enough to be in those roles, but I wanted to try these interview skills. A few months later, I was in a manager role making three times what I had made prior. It was a big moment for me to realize a little bit of it is selling yourself and a little bit of it is believing in yourself. But a lot of it is just determination to just go be what you want and go get what you want.

Lastly, I’d say discipline. Over my career, I’ve learned success comes from consistency. It’s not intermittent greatness. It’s more of a condition. You get in a routine. You do your research. You focus on where you’re trying to go. You focus on the opportunities. You do a lot of self-reflection to understand what you could do better. I generally try to arrive at work before everyone else. I’m one of the first few here every day. And that quiet time before everyone starts to arrive is really my time of what I call discipline and routine, where I review numbers and look at interactions with my associates and figure out ways to do things better.

Can you please give us your favorite “Life Lesson Quote”? Can you share how that was relevant to you in your life?

Tucker: “The secret of change is to focus all of your energy, not fighting the old, but on building the new.” As I started to adapt, evolve and change who I was, this took on new meaning. I began to realize you live life, or life lives you. I relate this saying to how I’ve chosen to live my life. Negative things happen to everybody, both personally and professionally. But refusing to be defined by those things and focusing on living instead of being a victim of what life gives you is really how I look at life.

Ok super. Let’s now shift to the main part of our discussion. Can you describe to our readers how your work is helping to address the challenge of food insecurity?

Tucker: Once a year, our industry gets together to hold a Food-A-Thon. To my point earlier about consistency and routine, the consistency of Cortland’s effort with Move for Hunger is far better than a one-and-done event. And certainly not to knock that. We’ve set records every year and it’s very beneficial. But it’s also just once a year, and there’s still a need the other 11 months. To be able to give every single month and have that positive impact — it makes a ton of sense for us and it’s certainly satisfying personally.

Lowy: There are 42 million Americans struggling with food insecurity in this country, which includes one in six children, plus veterans, women, and LGBTQ+ populations. And the people affected by food insecurity prior to the COVID-19 pandemic have become even more vulnerable. Many who visited food banks as a result of pandemic were doing so for the very first time in their lives. We saw a lot of jobs just disappear. While certainly some have come back, it’s still going to be quite some time before we’re able to get back to “normal.” Prior to the pandemic, that normal was 37 million Americans struggling with hunger. The fact that we’re now at 42 million, even getting back to normal is not a great option.

At the same time, 35% of the food produced in the United States ends up in landfills or is lost in some way. Food loss and food waste are huge issues here. What our organization does is aim to not only educate people about these issues, but provide them really simple ways to take action. And little actions can actually make a significant impact. When you think about creating real sustainable change, it’s not about just holding a food drive every so often around Thanksgiving. But if we can change the business and operating model of entire industries to include food recovery, then all of a sudden those little bits add up.

We started working with multi-family partners like Cortland a few years back, because not everyone hires a mover. In fact, people move through multi-family apartment communities on a much more frequent basis. We’ve got a new audience of people. You’ve got partners like Cortland who are awesome and care about sustainability and don’t want to waste food, and also want to provide that service to the residents to donate their food when they move out. That whole process becomes more sustainable. You’re lowering your carbon footprint. You’re reducing the amount of methane, which is the primary gas that food emits when it decomposes.

We’ve delivered enough food to feed 22 million people since starting. This past year, we’ve fed just shy of 4 million people.

Can you share something about your work that makes you most proud? Is there a particular story or incident that you found most uplifting?

Tucker: I’m just really proud to be in this partnership. One of the exciting things is the idea of residents donating 10% or more of their food to Move for Hunger when they move out. We had a resident who works at a food company who heard about it. They weren’t even moving, but they brought in a bunch of tortilla chips and other food that otherwise the plant would’ve discarded. We were able to donate all of that. It’s that ability to raise the awareness that’ll lead to the power of our collective.

Let’s say there’s 10 or 15 of those people across our portfolio. All of a sudden the ability of Move for Hunger to have a more meaningful impact is going to be that much better. That’s what I’m looking forward to. As our relationship matures, the partnership grows. We’re going to see a lot more of that, and that’s what’s really exciting to me.

Lowy: We’ve been at this for 12 years and have gotten to visit a lot of food banks over these years. I know there’s many instances where we’ll get a thank you from a food bank saying, if we hadn’t dropped off that truckload of food or done this big food drive or this big donation, they probably wouldn’t have had enough food to distribute to all the people that need it this week. It’s stories like that.

It’s also young people who really inspire me. We had a young woman in the Washington, D.C. who had heard about us and wanted to help. Certainly, people weren’t gathering because everyone was being socially distant. We decided to launch our front porch food drive with her and gave her food collection bags and flyers to leave on neighbors’ porches to pick up and deliver to the food bank. She asked for 1,000 bags, and I thought we’d be lucky to get 100! A couple of weeks later, she called to say she had collected almost 600 bags of food in one weekend in the middle of 2020 during the height of the pandemic. That, in essence, launched our front porch food drive campaign. We’ve now organized more than 130 of these across the country with young people, companies and schools. That happened because this young woman in the D.C. area just wanted to do something good.

In your opinion, what should other business and civic leaders do to further address these problems? Can you please share a few things that can be done to further address the problem of food insecurity?

Lowy: I think we need to make it easier for people to donate food and ban food waste. There’s no reason that we should be wasting food. I think as we talk to companies like Cortland, we’ve got a real opportunity because you’re now getting this company that manages portfolios of thousands and thousands of apartment units to start thinking about food waste, to start thinking about food insecurity a little bit different in their own operations. You start by getting people to donate food when you move out and you do the fun resident engagement and food drives, which is wonderful in Cortland.

Are there other leaders or organizations who have done good work to address the challenge of food scarcity? Can you tell us what they have done? What specifically impresses you about their work? Perhaps we can reach out to them to include them in this series.

Lowy: There are so many organizations in this space. You’ve got the whole food banking system with food banks across every state and every city. I’ve visited a number of them, and each has its own process and does things a little bit differently, because fighting hunger isn’t just about handing out food to people in need. What it’s really about is helping people get out of poverty.

Hunger is a symptom of poverty. Food Banks have different skilled development programs and culinary programs. They’re helping people with their taxes or doing advanced education and continue development that way. There are farms that grow fresh food to give to food banks. To me, that’s really important because there’s not enough fresh produce in the system as it is. If we can get more fresh food to people in need, it becomes that much more impactful.

If you had the power to influence legislation, are there laws that you would like to see introduced that might help you in your work?

First and foremost, legislation is always a good thing. Less about food insecurity, but more about food waste. California just passed a law basically banning food waste. That is an awesome first step. France has banned food waste for years. Our country does an OK job of it, but we’re still one of the worst.

I think we should put legislation and laws in place that not only incentivize individuals and companies not to waste food, but help facilitate that ability to actually donate or compost or whatever it might be.

What are your “5 things I wish someone told me when I first started” and why? Please share a story or example for each.

Lowy: When I first started, a lot of people told me I was crazy because I was quitting a good job in marketing to start a nonprofit about a cause I really didn’t know anything about. Glad I didn’t take that advice! I don’t think anyone told me how hard it was to build something from the ground up. Maybe I’m glad they didn’t. I think that’s all part of the journey. I think I took for granted in some of those early days like, “People will just say yes, because it’s the right thing to do.” It’s a struggle to get people’s attention. It’s a struggle to get them to care. Once they do care, that was what became amazing.

I learn a lot from other organizations and other leaders. I’m constantly trying to connect and create relationships and think about collaborations. Collaborating is hard too, especially in the nonprofit sector. It’s harder than I thought it would be. People are very protective of what they’ve built and the network they’ve built. I think we collaborate really well, because ultimately, we’re delivering food to food banks and the food banks like us because we’re providing transportation resources. Companies like Cortland like us because we’re providing them with turnkey ways to become more sustainable and engage their communities.

You are a person of enormous influence. If you could inspire a movement that would bring the most amount of good to the most amount of people, what would that be? You never know what your idea can trigger. :-)

Lowy: I think at the end of the day, many nonprofits should try to work themselves out of existence. If you’re trying to inspire change, it’s not building the bigger movement or organization. It’s about getting enough people, companies and legislators to care. How do you get enough people to care that you’re able to move the needle and say, “We’re going to implement a minimum wage significantly higher to get people out of the out of poverty,” or, “Instead of spending billions of dollars on X, we’re going to spend billions of dollars on health insurance,” because that’s one of the reasons that people find themselves struggling with debt. Or, “We’re going to subsidize not just corn, but let’s subsidize fresh fruits and vegetables because it’s important that people get more healthy nutrition.”

I think the only way to actually move the needle is someone’s got to be incentivized to fix this problem. Our government hasn’t agreed on many things for a very long time. You can’t fully rely on them, which is why we haven’t. We’re a very apolitical organization. We can’t get people to ban food waste? I get it. Instead, let’s make food recovery a part of the way industries operate. We can do that. I can do that without any government intervention.

That’s been really exciting for us because a company like Cortland — we knew they were involved with sustainability when they joined us as a partner, but they certainly weren’t involved with food recovery. Now it’s one of the things that they champion. It’s part of their social media. It’s part of their awareness. They care.

Is there a person in the world, or in the US with whom you would love to have a private breakfast or lunch with, and why? He or she might just see this, especially if we tag them. :-)

Lowy: I’d say Elon Musk. To me, he’s just a good example of someone who has big vision. People say no to him all the time and sometimes he is wrong. Yet, you’re watching his rockets launch and land. That’s happened in a very short period of time, like popularizing electric vehicles. It’s crazy what that guy has done. I think it’d be just very interesting to learn more about process and more about what drives him. I’m fascinated with his ability to put the thing on the map and then just laser focus, “I’m going to do it. I don’t care and I will figure it out.”