Meet Carla Pellegrini, The Tyee’s Chief Operating Officer

When Carla Pellegrini was in grad school studying international development at Columbia University in New York, she was told over and over, “Pick a specific sector, whether it’s health or education or sanitation or agriculture or whatever.”

“I was like, ‘I don’t care about any specific sector enough to dedicate my whole career to it,’” she recalls. “I like the big picture and understanding how things fit together. So, I took a couple operations management courses in grad school. They were super nerdy, doing, like, decision modelling and optimizing systems. I loved it.”

Pellegrini’s first job out of school was formative. Before she moved to Canada, she worked in rural western Kenya at the agricultural service provider One Acre Fund. She ran warehousing, logistics and distribution, and bridged gaps between departments, helping to deliver 10,000 tonnes of seed and fertilizer to 150,000 smallholder farmers in 45 days.

“It was validating. Like, this is the kind of stuff I love doing. Finding the world's biggest whiteboard, bringing people from each department into one room and being like, ‘How do we get from start to finish?’”

Throughout the years, Pellegrini has led and managed across a diverse range of social-impact sectors, from social finance to affordable housing. Prior to joining The Tyee, Pellegrini was executive director at Food Stash Foundation, a Vancouver-based charity that reduces food waste and provides food access — which The Tyee happens to have profiled.

She even gave a compelling TEDx talk for the organization’s Surrey division on global food waste and what to do about it.

Now, Pellegrini adds independent journalism to her roster. We caught up with her on what non-profit success means to her, what she’s excited to tackle at The Tyee and what she does to unplug. This interview was edited for length and clarity.

The Tyee: Well, I’ll bite. What is a chief operating officer?

Carla Pellegrini: A lot of times the COO is the person who's working behind the scenes. You may not always know what they're doing daily, but if they're not there, things might start to fall apart. In this case, I'll be doing a lot of financial management, HR processes, [looking at] how the team works together, smoothing out kinks. Just trying to make things run as smoothly as possible. It's a newly created role, so we'll be figuring out what it means together.

That’s also how I joined The Tyee — in a newly created role. Have you been in that position before, where you have to invent it as you go, which can be fun, but also a lot?

I've worked at a lot of startups and young companies where either my role was brand new, or everything was brand new. Generally, in young organizations, “operations” means everything that [doesn’t have] a dedicated [person].

I love those roles because they’re super dynamic. You don't necessarily know what every day is going to look like, and your underlying purpose is to help everyone else do their jobs really well.

So, spending lots of time asking questions, trying to understand how things work or don't, and where there are opportunities to make people's lives easier so they can focus on what they're doing — which is usually writing important editorial content — and not get bogged down by some annoying operational thing.

That reminds me of what excites many journalists: whatever they are writing about, what matters is what they can bring to it, how they bring all the pieces together and tell it to the public. Does independent journalism feel like a much different place from all the past social-impact work you've done, or do they kind of all feel like cousins?

I like the idea of them all being cousins. The environment and motivations are similar. We're here to move the dial on something rather than make more money. I've seen a lot of commonalities in [how] we need to measure our impact. In any non-profit, you need to kind of justify your existence, so people keep supporting you.

I came here from an emergency food access setting where there are thousands of people relying on you to meet their basic human needs and rights every day. The Tyee is catalyzing a lot of systemic change, which can have an even more profound effect than giving someone a meal that addresses their needs today but not tomorrow.

I told you this would be a fun interview, but we've been talking about serious stuff. We've heard rumblings of a Slack channel cleanup. I had “gasp” written here. What project are you most excited to take on at The Tyee, big or small?

I may or may not have created a spreadsheet with all The Tyee team’s 39 Slack channels.

I'm coming into an established organization and not wanting to be a bull in a china shop. I want to understand and assimilate before proposing any crazy changes. Seems mundane and small potatoes, but even a little thing like tweaking our Slack channels could make people’s everyday lives a bit easier.

Given The Tyee in the past few years became a non-profit, I’m also excited to work on a system to closely track our contracts and grants and things we've committed to do in order to get dollars. Having a good handle on that revenue source is another project I'll be working on soon.

Funding journalism can be challenging. We're in a journalism crisis — a resource crisis, really — where everybody's trying to figure out the silver bullet to sustainable and ethical models. What guides you in pursuing stability and longevity for independent journalism?

It has to exist. Diversified revenue streams are key to any business or non-profit’s success. When at least some of that revenue is coming from staunch supporters, that's a great sign. We have a huge community of people who want to see us succeed, and they're actively contributing to help that happen.

On one of my first days, [our editor-in-chief] Dave gave me a walk-through of the website, and the one thing he kept coming back to was at the very top left corner: “independent,” “fearless” and “reader funded.” Those three nuggets are so important for us to stay true to.

We do have control over the content we publish. We [don’t have] this “mission creep” that is so prevalent in the non-profit space, where you chase the money because you need the money to survive, but then the money dictates what you can do.

I love the fearless piece. When you produce such quality journalism you can publish it with conviction, even if it might rock the boat. When you know your writers are top-notch. The content is fact-based. You’ve got a good lawyer in your corner. It emboldens you to be fearless and say what needs to be said, because so many outlets that are saying what needs to be said are increasingly getting shut down or censored.

Our reader funding just underlies all of it — fuels the independence.

I heard you love the project management app Asana. In this age of arguably too much tech, too many apps, too much productivity, how do you wind down and unplug?

Someone a couple years ago told me about this iPhone feature that I'm sure has been around way longer than just a couple years: the focus modes. It [helps me] resist that instinctual urge to click on the email app. I've been trying little things like leaving my phone at home when I take the dogs for a walk.

Moments of phone-free existence have been liberating. My husband and I, as of last week, decided to, once a week, compare our screen time and shame each other about it — compete to see who had less.

I cherish my morning workouts. I don't bring my phone to the gym. I love lifting weights and feeling physically strong — it helps with self-esteem. For any women out there interested in learning how to lift weights, you know where to find me.

I play ultimate frisbee, although I'm increasingly worried I'm going to blow out one of my knees.

I’ve been reading a lot of sappy fiction books.

Got any fun plans this weekend?

My mother-in-law is turning 70 and we’re surprising her — and hopefully not inducing a heart attack.