PCC Board of Trustees report, February 2017

This article was originally published in February 2017

Board meeting report

There was no board meeting in December. The January 31 board meeting report will be published in the March Sound Consumer. The next regularly scheduled board meeting will be on Tuesday, March 28 at 2:30 p.m. at the PCC Co-Op Office: 3131 Elliott Avenue, Suite 500, Seattle, WA 98121. The member comment period is during the first 10 minutes of the meeting and comments are limited to three minutes unless additional time is previously approved by the board chair. For agenda planning, please email us at board@pccmarkets.com if you plan to attend.

Get to know your trustees

Catherine L. Walker

Catherine L. Walker: Appointed by the Board in November 2016. Term ends 2017.

Since joining PCC many years ago, Catherine has been both a shopper and an observer of the co-op’s trajectory. Through her board service and executive role at REI, she had the chance to study and learn about cooperative businesses while helping to guide and run the largest consumer co-op in the U.S. Over those years, Catherine interacted with PCC’s board from time to time to compare notes on co-op governance and other relevant topics. Catherine is committed to nurturing and challenging the PCC co-op to keep it responsive to the evolving needs and aspirations of members and shoppers.

Though Catherine has lived in Seattle her entire life, she has traveled around the world and the U.S. for work and for pleasure since the early 1980s. Her travel for work has been primarily to dense urban cities (like Shanghai, Jakarta and New York) and her travel for pleasure has been mostly the opposite — long bicycle rides (like across the U.S. in 2004) and camping trips to wild places (like the Alaska Wildlife Refuge and Big Bend National Park).

Catherine finds that the breadth of these experiences has challenged her to be a more thoughtful, engaged and responsible person by exposing her to new ideas and ways of being, and by introducing her to other peoples and cultures. Curiosity, open-mindedness, community-building and critical thinking are important values to Catherine, and she looks forward to applying them to her service as a trustee for PCC.

Contact the Board of Trustees

Email us at board@pccmarkets.com. Postal mail should go to the Co-op Office.

Also in this issue

GMOs 2.0

New, experimental genetic engineering techniques are altering food and other products while racing ahead of regulations. What are the consequences and will they be allowed in organics?

Nutritionists' picks

TDE Mandarins, Pixie Tangerines and Gold Nugget Tangerines are brightening our produce departments this month. Also try a few of our nutritionists' favorite products: locally made beeswax candles; an organic, Fair Trade chocolate bar with crunchy popped quinoa; a spicy, superbly nutritious turmeric elixir; and more!

Seed industry consolidation continues. So should our resistance.

Three major megamergers in the seed industry are on the horizon: Bayer and Monsanto, DuPont and Dow, and ChemChina and Syngenta. This means three corporations will own nearly 60 percent of the world's seed supply. Learn why that's a problem, and what we as consumers can do to fight back.