Updates

We Don’t Waste’s Executive Director Transition Announcement

March 22, 2024

Arlan Preblud speaks with Ed Greene on stage at Fill a Plate for Hunger 2023.

We Don’t Waste celebrates its 15th year of operation in 2024, and it’s been an incredible, one-of-a-kind ride for our Founder and Executive Director, Arlan Preblud. The organization began first as a food recovery nonprofit out of the back of Arlan’s vehicle with only himself as an employee and has since grown to become a leading food recovery nonprofit in Colorado. Our staff and Board of Directors are incredibly grateful for Arlan’s leadership and his passion to make our shared vision for a Colorado without food insecurity or food waste a reality. 

While we can’t imagine anyone more deserving of time to rest in retirement (running a nonprofit is hard work), it is still bittersweet to share that Arlan will be passing the torch to the next Executive Director of We Don’t Waste in the summer of 2024. 

Arlan may be leaving his title of Executive Director behind, but he will always remain We Don’t Waste’s greatest champion, “I could not be more proud of this organization and the impact our staff, partners, and volunteers have in Denver today. If you had told me when I started recovering food back in 2009 what We Don’t Waste would have become I wouldn’t have believed you. I’m honored to have spent the last 15 years leading this organization and working alongside so many passionate, innovative people, but now I can look forward to continuing to support the organization outside of my current role.”

This now becomes a season of change for We Don’t Waste. We’ve spread our roots and partnered with other incredible nonprofits in the community, grown in size and resilience, and, under Arlan’s guidance, created a stable foundation on which we can confidently grow to feed more people and reduce food waste and its environmental impact. The new Food Recovery Hub is an example of this stability and is a testament both to the strength of the organization and our community’s optimism in the future of food recovery. 

Arlan will be supporting the search for a new Executive Director alongside the Board of Directors, and we are confident that with his guidance during the transition, We Don’t Waste will not skip a beat as we move to the new leader of We Don’t Waste. Arlan is one-of-a-kind and completely irreplaceable, and we’ll miss him dearly (though he’ll still be around supporting We Don’t Waste). Still, our team is excited to continue our work with a new perspective to help us direct our shared love for innovative solutions in supporting food access in Colorado.