Diane Hazard has announced that she will be stepping down as executive director of the Compost Research & Education Foundation (CREF). She built a team that strengthened the organization from the ground up, with very little existing infrastructure in place. Her hard work and dedication to compost and composting will leave CREF in a strong and growing position. She has expanded the Compost Operations Training Course, secured a variety of new grant funding, brought in new donors, revamped the website and implemented a customer relationship management system. These are huge accomplishments for a dedicated leader with a relatively small staff.
An excerpt from a Biocycle article:
“Hazard came to CREF as the organization’s first executive director since the organization spun off from the US Composting Council (USCC). When she took the job in 2022, CREF and USCC had separate boards but shared an executive director. Lorrie Rossiter, CREF’s Board Chair, remembers when the two organizations also shared a board. “We would adjourn from one meeting and step into the next,” says Rossiter, who recalls being one of the only women in the room when she joined USCC’s board in 1999. Today, she adds, there are many prominent women in the compost industry and more diversity overall.”
As the Vice Chair of the CREF Board of Trustees, Naturcycle founder and president Charles Duprey has worked closely with Diane over the last four years and has been impressed with her remarkable achievements. Everyone here at Naturcycle wishes her well!
