Port Main Street names new leader

After Jenna Cawlfield applied to become the event and office manager for Port Main Street Inc. last year, she had some health issues so she passed on the opportunity.

Last week, Cawlfield joined Port Main Street, not as its office manager but as executive director, succeeding former director Kristina Tadeo, who left to become executive director of the Port Washington Tourism Council.

“I’m so excited,” Cawlfield said. “To be able to put all my interests and skills in this position is something I’m thrilled about.

“I love seeing ideas be born and following them through the process to their culmination.”

Cawlfield, a former production manager for Gartner, an information technology research company, said she’s spent the last six years as a stay-at-home mom but wanted to get back into the workforce now that her three sons are older.

“I really missed the day-to-day process of being involved in something bigger than me,” the Belgium resident said. “I wanted to be involved in something that was making a lasting impact.”

She said she enjoyed working with community groups such as Boy Scouts and “wanted to take that to a higher level.”

Cawlfield, who has been working with Tadeo for the past week to get her feet wet, is taking on her new job at a busy time — right before the holiday season and some of Main Street’s biggest events, Christmas on the Corner, the holiday parade and tree lighting.

But that’s all right, Cawlfield said.

She said she plans to spend her first year in the position learning the job and maintaining everything that the organization has gotten up and running.

After that, she said, she will take a “deep dive” into the job and decide what’s missing, what’s needed and how to make any changes.

After all, Cawlfield said, she’s attended many of Main Street’s events but “it’s a lot different attending them and being responsible for everything behind the scenes.”

But there’s one thing she’s determined to do starting now — seek out more volunteers to help Main Street accomplish its goals.

“Port is a place where people have a lot of pride in their city,” she said. “We can get the community to get together and improve things.

“I’m going to do a lot of reaching out to people.”

Part of that, Cawlfield said, is matching volunteers and jobs and ensuring people find things to do that match their strengths.

Cawlfield said this is her first foray into the nonprofit world, but she said her new job will allow her to make use of skills she honed elsewhere — event planning, fundraising and being a project manager.

She said she’s an organized and detail-oriented person, and those traits will help her as she adjusts to her new role.

“I hope I can fill Kristina’s shoes,” Cawlfield said. “I’m really grateful she is just going to be around the corner, and she said she will be available to help me as I learn this job.”