Ryan Pettengill takes reins at Gifts of Love

Gifts of Love’s new executive director started on Oct. 5, and so far, Ryan Pettengill said he loves his new job.

Pettengill grew up in Glastonbury and spent time in a career in sports management, including a stint as a coach at Florida State University. He has also worked for the Grassroot Project and for Team Z, LLC, one of the largest adult triathlon teams in the country.

Seeing people’s lives change through participating in sports and health-related programs lead him to see how some segments of the population are underserved, and that his calling may have more to do with helping the less fortunate.

“It was a bit of a fork in my career path,” he said. “About 10 years ago, I shifted over from the for-profit world to non-profit. I’ve worked for three nonprofit organizations now, that all work to serve under-served populations.”

Gifts of Love began in 1989, when a group of Simsbury residents collaborated to help local families who were experiencing financial difficulty due to corporate downsizing, by providing them with groceries.

Today, the organization sill provides food for those in need, but also reduces financial crises for working individuals and families in the Greater Hartford by area offering short-term programs and education that support and improve sustainability.

Gifts of Love’s mission, he said, spoke to him, and he couldn’t resist giving back to the community in which he grew up.

“It’s been great,” Pettengill said, just more than a week into his new role. “I’ve been blown away at how this organization and everybody around it has done such an incredible job throughout this pandemic, especially with all of the unique barriers we face as an organization and our clients face. We are helping people more now than at any point in our history.”

Thinking longer-term, Pettengill said his goals include helping Gifts of Love to have a greater impact in the region, including Hartford, where it has opened a new office.

“We need to scale up and be able to work with more families and people in need,” he said. “We want to be better connected in Hartford to key stakeholders, community members, and potential clients.”

Gifts of Love also has a farm in Simsbury, in a partnership with the town. There are opportunities there that can be explored and enhanced.

“We have a full time farmer there on-site,” he said. “We also have an education component to it. We have farm-to-table events there. We have an incubator program which people can apply to. People can apply to it and learn right alongside our full time farmer what it takes to run a sustainable farm, and/or feed the community they come from.”

With the holidays approaching, Pettengill said a number of Gifts of Love’s partners are already pledging Thanskgiving turkeys, and other holiday programs are still in the works. The traditional holiday store may not take place as usual this year, because of the virus, but the program may go virtual in some fashion.

Pettengill said his other goals include strengthening the organization’s partnerships with corporations and government agencies. He said there is really no limit to how big Girts of Love can become.

“We have an opportunity to scale so that we are really an important resource throughout the state of Connecticut, and maybe ultimately beyond,” he said. “We very much see our role here as understanding the gaps in services and basic needs provided to Connecticut families, and challenging ourselves to do everything we can to fill those gaps. Our goal for the next few years is to really scale exponentially to fill those gaps.”

Pettengill said he couldn’t resist the chance to come back to Connecticut, and it coincided with the opportunity to move into his childhood home in Glastonbury, which his father and stepmother lived in until recently moving to a retirement community in Mystic.

Pettengill urges people interested in volunteering or donating, or those who may be in need of services, to contact Gifts of Love.

For more information, visit www.giftsoflovect.org.

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