Chief Operating Officer

The Opportunity

Farmlink is at a pivotal moment. What began in 2020 as a group of students building relationships with farmers one call at a time has grown into a national food rescue organization that has moved more than 500 million pounds of donated, surplus food on roughly $10 million a year in philanthropic support, unlocking nearly $90 million in food value, with no trucks or warehouses of its own.

Farmlink runs two food recovery programs, post-harvest and pre-harvest, on one shared operational backbone. Post-harvest rescue is already at scale, delivering nearly 150 million pounds of food a year to communities in need. Pre-harvest, recovering surplus at the farm level before it's ever picked, is the path ahead. Farmlink has piloted it at small scale for several years, but it's more complex and far more expensive than post-harvest, and today only 2% of the 30 billion pounds of on-farm surplus each year gets rescued.

Closing that gap is the innovation: harvest labor, packaging, cold storage, and transport partnerships that bring the cost down until pre-harvest runs at or near cost parity with post-harvest, sustained over time and across more than one crop and region. Long term, closing that gap also depends on government partnerships and policy work that make on-farm recovery and farmer payment sustainable industry-wide.

At the scale Farmlink is aiming for, it means significantly more people are fed.

The Chief Operating Officer will join a growing team of ~25, holding the full picture of this operational network and deciding how to use all of it, post-harvest and pre-harvest together, for the most impactful outcomes. That means owning the operating plan for Farmlink's food recovery network, food operations and logistics, and the supply chain; building the capacity intelligence, data, tools, and systems that match available food to the organizations that can receive it, along with the community partner network that grows and supports those organizations;

delivering program execution and operational technology; developing earned revenue channels; and driving continuous improvement as the network scales.

We're looking for a seasoned executive leader, someone who has run teams and set strategy. Ideally that person came up through hands-on operations, supply chain, or logistics work early in their career, the kind of experience where they learn intimately what packaging and freight actually cost, what motivates a partner to say yes to a deal, and what a counterpart will and won't agree to, and then grew into a seat where they set goals, prioritize across functions, and lead a team.

The right person keeps asking how the whole network, post-harvest and pre-harvest surplus recovery together, adds up to the biggest outcome, and has the ability to execute on that. Pre-harvest and earned revenue are still pilots Farmlink is testing, not final models, and the right person has the judgment to change direction if the data doesn't support the hypothesis, or if it takes Farmlink somewhere unexpected.

• Own Farmlink's operating plan for its food recovery network, translating our 2030 goals into annual targets, resourcing, and sequencing.
• Set strategy and oversee execution of food operations and logistics across post-harvest and pre-harvest: trucking, cold chain, timing, in response to market dynamics.
• Serve as the CEO's operational counterpart on org-wide decisions, and partner with the CEO on strategy for the board and external stakeholders, ensuring Farmlink's vision holds up against operational reality.

• Build and oversee the supply chain: the network of growers, food donors, shippers, carriers, and other logistics partners that make food movement possible.
• Own the strategy for national partner network growth, working with the Senior Strategist of Food Recovery, who leads the on-the-ground relationship and coalition building.
• Drive continuous improvement and operational innovation, piloting new approaches and new operating models, with the judgment to change course when a hypothesis doesn't hold.

• Close the cost gap between pre-harvest and post-harvest food recoveries, testing packaging, harvest labor, and transport partnerships until pre-harvest runs at or near cost parity with post-harvest, blended across the portfolio, sustained over time, and holding up across more than one crop.
• Develop, test, and iterate earned revenue channels to deliver mission-aligned revenue beyond philanthropy.
• Build capacity intelligence, the data, tools, and systems, including surplus risk tracking and our food rescue database, that match available food with the organizations that can receive it.

• Collaborate with the VP of Programs & Impact to ensure all programs deliver our mission in measurable ways.
• Own the operating budget that runs the food rescue network day to day, partnering with the VP of Finance & Administration on forecasting and expense…