She Stepped Up

It’s hard to imagine a more wrenching set of circumstances than the ones that presented themselves to the Nucci and Ramsey families in 2005 and 2006.
Equal owners in Salinas, Calif.-based Mann Packing Co., both families were blindsided by the 2005 death of president and CEO Joe Nucci. Just 40, he died suddenly, of a heart attack, while on vacation with his family.
His father, Don, who with partner Bill Ramsey had built the business over the previous three decades, was semi-retired at the time. His next younger sibling, sister Lorri Koster, had been employed at the company before, left to do other work and had come back as a marketing consultant at the time of her brother’s death. Her younger sister, Gina Nucci, was also working in the company and is currently its director of healthy culinary innovation, while their other sister, DeeDee Reyne, is a shareholder.
When Joe died, Don came back in and Koster upped her hours.
“I wanted to be there to help my dad,” Koster said.
But 14 months later, the family was stricken again. This time it was her father. Don Nucci was dead at age 70.
“It was like someone was playing a cruel joke,” she said.
It was never in the plans for Koster to someday lead the company on her family’s behalf. Her older brother was already in that spot, after all. Suddenly, that option was on the table.
“I didn’t have to and no one was forcing me to. I just have a passion for the business and the people working here,” she said, referring to the company’s 525 employees in Salinas. “I wanted security for them and continuity in the business, so I came back full-time.”
Her father’s partner, Bill Ramsey, described it as “a natural course of events.”
“Obviously somebody had to come back from the Nucci family and represent their half,” said Ramsey, whose son, Dick Ramsey, is Mann’s vice president of field operations and vice chairman of the board of directors. “Everything else just fell into place.”
On-the-job training
The passion Koster mentioned goes back to childhood, when she started working at Mann in the eighth grade. The company used to send posters and a broccoli and nutrition newsletter to schools in response to requests from teachers. Her dad would bring the orders home, and it was her job to fill them.
“I’d go out in the garage and bring my little AM-FM radio and, in my garage I had my tape gun and my little system in place,” said Koster, now 46. “It’s funny, we still send out posters to schools, but I’m not doing it out of my garage.”
In high school, she worked in the office at Mann’s.
“From working a 10-key calculator to answering the phones, you learn by osmosis – integrity, work ethic, how to treat people,” she said. “It gets ingrained in you at an early age.”
Koster went on to earn a bachelor of arts degree in public relations with a minor in business marketing from California State University, Chico. She returned to Mann’s to work full-time in 1990, directing the company’s marketing and communications programs until she left after 10 years to try her hand at an online produce venture. When that company was sold, she took an associate publisher position with Produce Business magazine, but eventually returned to Mann’s as a consultant.
When it came time for her to step into the spot once held  by her brother and father, she said it was only possible because her husband, Tom Koster, agreed to step back from his position as Mann’s vice president of sales.
“We had a long discussion,” she said, citing concerns for their two young sons, Jack and Sam, who are now 15 and 13. “To his credit, he said, ‘I’ll step away from the business. People are going to want you to come in and lead.’ He became Mr. Mom, and to this day, it’s worked out pretty well.”

Strong partners
Why else has it worked so well? Koster cites several factors, starting with the cohesion between the two families.
“I think our partners, the Ramsey family, really standing with us” was key, Koster said. “And our growers, certainly, there’s this stability.
“I’m not going to say we didn’t skip a beat,” she added. “But no one circles the wagons like the people around here.”
Koster said the Mann management team has been invaluable. Mike Jarrard, who had been with the company a dozen years when he was hired as CEO after the deaths of her dad and brother, has a “great operations mind” and is like a brother to her. Likewise CFO Bill Beaton, she said.
“I may be the face out there, but I have a lot of wind beneath my wings,” she said.
Jarrard credits Koster, in turn, for her passion.
“It’s not only a passion for her family’s business, but a passion for the health of agriculture in general – a passion for healthy eating lifestyles, I’d say,” Jarrard said. “Whatever we can do to change people’s eating behaviors so we all eat a little healthier – it sounds a little self-serving because we produce healthy vegetables and fruits, but it’s really not.”
And Koster coming on board when she did was a steadying influence, he added.
“It was just positive reinforcement for the employees that we were going to keep the ship sailing in the same direction that it was before,” Jarrard said.
Koster and Jarrard recently changed titles as the company obtained certification as a majority woman-owned company now that the women in the two families are the majority shareholders. That will help in procuring large contracts. Jarrard is now president and COO and Koster is CEO and chairman.
“The women-owned business certification is exciting,” she said. “A lot of publicly traded companies and private companies have vendor diversity initiatives.
“You can’t just hang your hat on that. You’ve got to have the volume, quality and pricing. We always sell that first, and then it’s, ‘Oh, by the way, we’re a certifed women-owned business.’”

Exercise in endurance
Along the way, Koster said she has learned a lot – and still is.
“I think growing up in the industry, I’m used to being the only girl at the board table,” she said.
“And my parents, they were never, ‘You can’t do anything because you’re a girl.’ It was, ‘What do you want to do? Go do it.’”
It’s been a learning curve. On the marketing side, she didn’t have to study P&L statements and balance sheets. Now she does, with ease.
And while opportunities for women in the industry are expanding, some old stereotypes die hard.
“One of my dear friends, she’s a category manager for a major retailer,” Koster said. “She’ll walk these trade shows and people will go, ‘Oh, is your husband here?’ They automatically assume she’s the spouse.’”
It happens to Koster sometimes, too.
“People go, ‘Well, I want to talk to the CEO’ and I say, ‘How can I help you?’” she said. “I think because my last name isn’t Mann and my maiden name is Nucci, it’s a further disconnect. But I kind of like that ‘incognitoness.’”
For her sons, she said, she’s modeling resilience. She recalls going through a rough patch and finding that her husband had put a sticky note on her steering wheel. It said, “Tough times never last. Tough people do.” She keeps that note on the bottom of her computer screen.
“It was endurance there for a while,” she said. “My sisters and I (wonder) how did we get through that? We did.”
It doesn’t hurt that she loves, loves, loves the produce business.
“I’m always glad I’m not selling paint or tires,” she said. “It’s fun to sell stuff you have at home, that you feed your own family.”
Koster is active in the industry, serving on boards and leading initiatives both locally and beyond – on everything from food safety to immigration reform and getting salad bars into schools.
“I just see Lorri always as this leader, this very creative thinker, this very passionate industry leader about increasing fruit and vegetable consumption and kids’ fruit and vegetable consumption,” said Lorelei DiSogra, vice president, nutrition and health, for the United Fresh Produce Association.  “She’s very visible. She’s very vocal. And she helps us get others in the industry to understand what the potential is.”
For Koster, it boils down to one simple fact.
“I love my job,” she said. “Every day is a different day.
“That’s agriculture for you.”

Kathy Gibbons, contributing writer