VICKI POZZEBON

Vicki Pozzebon is a consultant, a localist, a mentor, and a friend. She works with local businesses, nonprofits, and government agencies by helping evaluate their needs and develop strategies for success. Her work focuses on helping them incorporate social enterprise into their business model and she is excellent at helping forge successful collaborative partnerships - no easy feat.

If you're wondering how I could list the "competition" as a partner, it is because Vicki is the person who showed me the importance of supporting local businesses and started me on my own path. And, when one of the best consultants in the state invited me to partner with her, I couldn't refuse. Competition has its place, but it can skew motivations for doing things. Our goal is to help create stronger local economies, and collaboration is an important part of that. When businesses work together and support one another, we all benefit.

When Vicki moved to New Mexico, she immediately began her work strengthening the local economy. She was the Executive Director of the Santa Fe Independent Business Alliance, which became one of the largest local economy business networks in the US, where she started the successful Farm to Restaurant Project. 

Our paths first crossed in 2015, shortly after I started my work with New Mexico agriculture at the Santa Fe Farmers' Market Institute. And just a few months after meeting Vicki, she helped me secure a full scholarship to the 2015 BALLE annual conference. Vicki was a fellow at BALLE — The Business Alliance for Local Living Economies — which was formed to accelerate the emergence of local economies that are regenerative and sustainable.* This conference was one of the most enriching and inspiring that I've ever attended. This experience is what planted the seed for me to transition out of fundraising for non-profits and begin supporting local business owners. In, 2016, Vicki invited me to join her as a board member of Partnership for Responsible Business​, which is how I learned of significant gaps and obstacles in economic development and growth in New Mexico.

I am unbelievably blessed and privileged to be able to call Vicki Pozzebon a partner. I have learned a lot from her and am excited for her to teach me even more. Her wisdom is available to everyone through articles she has written for several publications, such as Green Fire Times and Philanthropy Journal. I encourage you to read her work, available here, and sign up for her occasional newsletter, here.

Visit Vicki at her consulkting firm's website: https://prosperapartners.org/

* BALLE is now called Common Future