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Conway W. Jensen

New Position: Executive Director, America's Second Harvest of Tampa Bay, Tampa. Previous Position: Vice president, public relations and corporate communications, Sykes Enterprises, Tampa

By FRED W. WRIGHT JR.
Published March 28, 2005

Conway Jensen has a clear agenda. She wants people in the Tampa Bay area to know more about one of state's largest food banks.

America's Second Harvest of Tampa Bay distributes food to agencies in 10 counties: Pinellas, Hillsborough, Pasco, Polk, Citrus, Hardee, Hernando, Manatee, Sarasota and Sumter.

"We're the massive behind-the-scenes program that feeds the hungry," she said, providing food for shelters, residential group homes and foster care facilities, "and then we have 10 "kids cafes' in after-school programs.

The food bank distributed an estimated 10-million pounds of food in 2004, providing nearly 50,000 meals a week, Jensen said.

As executive director of America's Second Harvest, Jensen not only has to oversee the day-to-day operations from the nonprofit organization's massive warehouse on East Adamo Drive in Tampa. She also is responsible for the food bank's community image, fundraising, media relations "and pretty much everything from A to Z," she said. "I'm spending most of my days out of the office, making community contacts."

"Our mission is feeding the hungry today and ending hunger for tomorrow," she said, providing for people with "food insecurities - people in our community who don't have enough food to put on their table on a daily basis," she said.

All this is done from the agency's 41,000-square-foot warehouse where food donations arrive from grocery stores, wholesalers, distributors and community food drives. Many agencies come to the warehouse to "shop" for their daily food needs.

"We're like the distributor and central supply point that secures food, sorts it, stores it and efficiently matches it to those in need," Jensen said.

Jensen first became aware of America's Second Harvest seven years ago when she attended a fundraiser. "It was always a shame to me that they were not well known in the community as a large nonprofit," she said. "One of my goals it to make them one of the top five known charities in the community."

Jensen comes to the food bank from Sykes Enterprises, where her mission was more corporate and more international. "At Sykes, I had global responsibility for community relations," she said, "making sure all employees were being good corporate citizens in offices around the world."

A native Floridian, Jensen was born in Jacksonville and grew up in Tampa, graduating from Plant High School in 1982. She attended Converse College in Spartanburg, S.C., and Hillsborough Community College.

She started her career with Pharmacy Management Services in Tampa in 1986, working first as a field representative, then as an administrative support supervisor. After six years, she took a year off from work to start a family, then joined Sykes Enterprises in 1993, where she remained until joining America's Second Harvest.

Sykes is subsidizing Jensen's salary at the food bank to enable her to take the position at the nonprofit. Sykes "wanted to make a difference in one charity that affects multiple individuals," she said. "I've always been taught as I grew up to give back to those less fortunate," she said. "I always knew I would start my own business or go into nonprofit."

Jensen, 40, and her husband, Erik, have two teenage children and live in Tampa. When she can, Jensen said she likes to pursue her hobby of collecting sharks' teeth. She has thousands in jars, she said, including teeth from mako, tiger and nurse sharks, and large fossilized shark teeth.

[Last modified March 26, 2005, 00:49:02]