4/30-5/6, Basics Board Election
Basics Board Election 2023
Your co-op is governed by an elected volunteer board made up of 5 Basics Co-op Owners!
The Basics Board establishes policies to advance the mission and goals of the Co-op, not limited to but including long-term financial planning, approval of major plans or commitments, and supervision of the General Manager (excluding staffing and operational details). Learn more about the board and its functions here.
This year, 2 seats are up for election to be filled for the next 2 years. Learn about the candidates below and vote April 30 - May 6. Ballots will be collected online and in store. Thank you for participating!
2023 Candidate Information
Lindsey Jozefiak
Lindsey Jozefiak
1. Why do you want to be elected to the Basics Cooperative Board?
I would like to be elected to serve on the Basics Cooperative Board to ensure the interests of those who shop at Basics are represented in key business decisions.
2. What special skills or experience will you bring to the Board?
Previous board experience, corporate business experience, and personal passion are what I would bring to the Board. For the past three years I have served on the Board of Directors for my son's school and have helped it successfully navigate through many ups and downs during that time. I will also bring more than 15 years of corporate experience and the quantitative skills I've developed throughout my analytics career. And most of all, I will bring my personal passion for health & wellness: I have been health-conscious for as long as I can remember, I have been shopping at Basics for almost a decade, and my keen interest and self-education on the topic will always continue.
3. What role do you think Basics offers in our community?
Basics offers a unique and important role within our Community, in my opinion. Basics is so much more than a grocer or health food store. It is a connection point between local agriculture and community members. It is an education station. It is a gathering place for all who seek to maintain and improve wellness. I would be honored to serve another term on the Basics Cooperative Board.
Andrew Timm
(This photo was taken at a deer petting farm near Anchorage, AK, next to Rocky the moose - inches from my head, not in the photo - who was preparing to plant a wet and sloppy on my face for feeding him.)
Andrew Timm
1. Why do you want to be elected to the Basics Cooperative Board?
Basics seems to me an effort, not just a store, to help people be more healthy. My personal reward is seeing others find what they need to get healthier, or maintain health. I have some background in pragmatic thinking (see below) and a hobby interest in food, farming, and nutrition.
I see a role with the Basics Board to be a position of helping a larger group of customers that are probably shopping there, like me, to be in their best health. I've looked at health from both sides now, from good and bad, and still somehow it's being healthy I recall - although I really don't know biology at all.
2. What special skills or experience will you bring to the Board?
My most direct experience in food production is where I have worked with a couple of local farms - in one case a small dairy, helping with planning, financing, and plugging in with the needed technology to make their direct customer sales less stressful.
Perhaps my second most direct experience is that I've spent much of my adult life reading the labels of the products at the store, then looking up the ingredients :=) You learn a lot that way.
By trade I'm a middle-aged electrical engineer (designing circuit boards, like what goes into phones and computers.) Since my role as a designer is the very beginning of a project, my decisions (good or bad) really have a strong influence on "steering the ship". It's a humbling amount of responsibility. My aim is to be efficient and prepared for what may happen throughout the lifecycle of the product, and a lot of what I have learned there comes from interacting with production manufacturing, not the textbook. I imagine some of this thinking would help in planning or guidance on the Basics board.
3. What role do you think Basics offers in our community?
Basics offers a lot of value by finding local, healthy foods and staffing interesting employees. Quite frankly, I was impressed enough I just signed up as an owner on my second visit. The inside joke among myself and a few coworkers is that I was drawn to Basics because I successfully bribed Seth into getting a particular egg nog (stuff that's easier on my system.)
The larger themes at Basics that stood out to me are the willingness and flexibility to find products, propensity to avoid the low-nutrient Big Ag filler food "machine", and the community engagement days between food producers and customers. Most personal growth happens outside of any kind of mechanism like the internet. Real interactions with real people are where education happens, and Basics does that well, around my favorite subject - food.