Meet the Bioneers: Stephanie Ricketts
Posted: 4:57PM September 9th, 2011 | Comments
[This is the fourth in a series of five profiles of the individuals who belong to the 2011 class of Badger Bioneers. Remember to visit our dedicated Bioneers page on this site and purchase tickets to this year's Bioneers conference!]
Stephanie Ricketts, Executive Assistant, Willy Street Co-op
Stephanie Ricketts knows the opposite of sustainability:
Pacman.
The ultimate consumptive automaton. He and his lady go through their days doing nothing but mindlessly chomping chomping chomping.
Still, it’s hard to not want to emulate the guy when you walk into Willy Street Co-op, where Ricketts works.
As an outlet for every sort of local, natural, organic delicacy, the Co-op is hard to beat. Its seven short aisles stock a smorgasbord of western and eastern flavors, creating the visual and olfactory sensations of walking through a bazaar (everything minus the snake-charmer). The full service deli stocks staples, as well as left-field fare – thai firecracker rice, emerald sesame kale, Aztec quinoa salad.
Pretty chompable.
But here you can feel good about munching your way up and down, because you’re voting with your dollar, helping to invest in local economies and traditional handcrafting.
And Ricketts is there to make sure that everything behind the scenes is just as sustainable and earth-friendly as the stuff on the shelves.
Stephanie is the co-op’s “executive assistant”, though that’s a title she has been encouraged to respect loosely. Working with the coop’s board and General Manager, Anya Firszt, Stephanie says she has been encouraged to pursue her interests.
Which, unsurprisingly, have a lot to do with food.
“My mom’s side of the family is Lebanese, so we’ve always had a cultural connection to food, definitely,” Stephanie says, over a day-glo colored beet salad at the Goodman Community Center café.
While pursuing social justice coursework at University of Wisconsin, Stephanie was the food coordinator for a 26-person housing cooperative. She spent most of 2010 on an Americorps fellowship with the REAP Food Group, helping Wisconsin schools increase access to local food for their students.
From there it seemed like a small hop to working with other socially-conscious food lovers at a co-op devoted to the subject – Willy Street.
In addition to being Madison’s premier one-stop shop for the quelling of locavoracious appetites, Willy Street has long been at the forefront of sustainable building and energy.
The Willy East location has sported solar paneling on its roof since 2005. It has been fitted with low-flow water systems, heat reclamation intakes, efficient refrigeration units, and motion-detecting lights. The exterior boasts a beautiful rain garden facing Jenifer St, and a “brown” yard composter.
Both Willy East & West retrofitted preexisting buildings, and even have electric car charging ports available for those who make their grocery runs gas-free.
“We’ve checked off a lot of our boxes,” Ricketts says, in regards to the store’s efforts at going green. “We’ve done a lot of things you would expect out of a natural foods co-op.”
Which means, of course, that it’s time to get creative.
Ricketts knows that being the Willy Street neighborhood’s locus for groceries means that the coop can have a profound influence on peoples’ purchasing habits and understanding of “organic” and “natural” foods. But it can also serve as an inspiration to those who are looking for deeper ways to engage in sustainable, community-oriented lifestyles.
Whether promoting charitable giving via the hugely impactful Community CHIP program, educating its owners on local food production, or initiatives like the recently-launched “Eat Local Challenge”, the Co-op helps thousands of individuals come together to support common cause.
“For me it’s about finding little points of action, which will hopefully support other points of action,” Ricketts says.
She says her vision beyond Willy Street is to be part architect, part interior designer, and part farmer. The idea is to make living landscapes a part of everyone’s daily life, in-and-out of the coop.
“Why can’t we have an office full of growing things, beehives on the roof?” Ricketts laughs. “Office chickens? Why not, if you can?”
Beyond the obvious “green” impacts, Ricketts says, creating living workspaces slows things down and gives new perspective on life as a process, rather than a product.
“Nature provides us with all these little things to consider, “ says Ricketts, “and maybe it can help you not see yourself as your own little Pacman.”
