Cambridge Local First, a small-business advocacy nonprofit with more than 500 members, celebrated former executive director Theodora Skeadas on Sunday as it welcomed Katie Labrie, who returned to Cambridge to take the reins with a vision for storytelling.
Skeadas stepped down to pursue opportunities in tech, but will remain on the group’s advisory board. Labrie comes to the organization off a 25-year run in the entertainment industry in Los Angeles.
“The way I see CLF is really as a mouthpiece for small business, as a place that serves to not just support small business but to amplify their story,” Labrie said, “so that people have a greater understanding of what the place on the corner means to them.”
On the agenda for Labrie is expanding membership and providing services and resources not found anywhere else. The organization’s website is being pulled apart and rebuilt as a place small-business owners can find social media management tips, financial management best practices and easy access to city policies and regulations – a library of everything from municipal codes “all the way up to ’How do I start a TikTok?’” Labrie said. She took over the position officially Sept. 1.
As Cambridge Local First nears its 20th anniversary, Labrie said the organization she inherited from Skeadas’ stewardship – one that persisted and adapted through a global pandemic – has been built to its greatest potential since the organization’s inception in 2005.
“It’s always really exciting to take over from somebody who was truly kind of at the top of their game when they left,” Labrie said of Skeadas. “And in this case, I think it was this really unique situation where Theo decided to move on right as CLF got on top of the hill.”
Skeadas said that timing was intentional. The nonprofit had received two major grants it has just begun to implement: one for $150,000 authorized by U.S. Sen. Ed Markey, and one for $185,000 from the city through the American Rescue Plan Act in the aftermath of the pandemic. Another $1 million in Arpa money is earmarked for the Cambridge-Somerville Black Business Network, a project co-founded with CLF, to support new food businesses.
“It’s unfinished by design, because it was a good time to transition,” Skeadas said in an interview at Luxor Cafe, a newly opened Egyptian small business in Cambridge.
Skeadas’ handover
In addition to helping found the Black Business Network since coming aboard at CLF in 2019, Skeadas has served on the board of directors of the American Independent Business Alliance, through which she helped launch Resilient Local Economies, a national internship that engaged more than 100 university students. Under her leadership, the organization also issued its first State of Small Business report and studied Cambridge’s shifting gentrification trends.
“The value that Theo brought to CLF cannot be overstated,” said board chair Kari Kuelzer, owner of Grendel’s Den in Harvard Square, in a statement Oct. 15. “Without her leadership over the past [5.5] years, I’m not sure we would have survived.”
Skeadas comes from a family of small-business owners, her parents being lifelong restaurant owners in New York, including a Greek spot that became a steakhouse and a seafood restaurant in the Bronx that is still going. Aunts and uncles, too – when her family came to the United States from Greece, they all started businesses. Skeadas’ work has been different: public policy at the former Twitter or, in her next position, working to ensure artificial intelligence technology is applied responsibly. “I see problems, social, public problems, and I like to help make the world a better place,” Skeadas said. “Like, it’s a bit corny, but public impact is something that motivates me. I really like community building.”
At a celebration of her leadership held Sunday at Urban Hearth, a North Cambridge restaurant, a couple of dozen CLF members, leaders and friends honored Skeadas. (Labrie was unable to attend.) The most common theme, or running joke, was that her work had been part time – intended to take up only 15 hours a week. “What’s four times 15?” asked Michael Kanter of the store Cambridge Naturals, a founding member of Cambridge Local First.
Labrie’s return
Labrie was born and raised in Cambridge and attended Rindge and Latin High School, but moved to Los Angeles to work in in digital media marketing and production in film, television and podcasting. Though she involved herself deeply in her adopted neighborhood of Venice, “it never felt 100 percent like home.”
During the pandemic, Labrie got calls from friends, associates and friends of friends who owned bricks-and-mortar small businesses.
“Restaurants, after-school programs, art galleries, music schools, they all desperately needed to find a way to bring their businesses online when they couldn’t be in the same space with people,” Labrie said. “There was this opportunity to take the skill set that I learned, the telling stories, providing entertainment, providing connection, providing warmth, and bring it to the small-business community.”
She founded Kat Lab Consulting. All of its clients are still thriving post-pandemic, she said – none went under.
One client was Kuelzer, Labrie’s high school friend, and Grendel’s Den.
“We did amazing things,” Labrie said. During the pandemic, they hosted virtual drag brunches, oyster-shucking tutorials with deliveries, cocktail demonstrations to pair with the oysters – “these outrageous parties that people love, virtual parties” – and created a podcast for Grendel’s 50-year anniversary called “A People’s History of Food and Drink.” Its eight episodes explored the history of Harvard Square through the “beer goggles” of the people and patrons of “The Den.”
One foot was already back on the East Coast when the offer from CLF “sealed the deal.” Labrie accepted the job officially at the end of July.
Many of her best friends still live here in Cambridge. “I’m not just reintroducing myself to Cambridge Local First,” Labrie said. “I’m sort of reintroducing myself to Cambridge.”
“It just feels like I’m having an enormous high school reunion,” she said. Returning has been “a very evocative, emotional experience, but also very energizing.”
Vice mayor Marc McGovern, one of those friends Labrie said she has known “since we were single digits,” has helped in shepherding things during Labrie’s return. A City Council resolution welcomed her back in the new role.
Plans for months to come
Labrie said it’s been incredibly busy – “the proverbial ‘drinking from a fire hose’ thing” – since starting work, and she’s at work on several initiatives.
Through CLF, Labrie plans on throwing the “best parties” for small-business owners to create spaces for networking and sharing institutional knowledge. “The storytelling goes both ways,” she said. “We want to tell everyone the stories of our businesses, but we also want our businesses to get the information and the stories that they need in order to get best decisions for themselves.”’
In her second six months of leadership, Labrie said she hopes to work with the city and Cambridge Community Television to create a series of short documentaries featuring small businesses and to explore expanding into Somerville. “I don’t see why you would draw borders around those communities,” she said. Skeadas had been a proponent of the expansion as well, and under her leadership the organization has taken on some cross-border members, though the pandemic-era board opted against making it a priority when there was so much else going on.
“Theo did such amazing work, and it’s an absolute honor to inherit it, but also really exciting to be able to take it into a new space as well,” Labrie said.
As for advice to Labrie, Skeadas said building community is at the heart of CLF.
“We hope that she will continue to embrace a democratic governance and spirit for the organization, because I think that that is at the core of its legitimacy, is that it truly, meaningfully gives voice to small-business owners, and hopefully their employees as well,” she said.
A stronger
Please consider making a financial contribution to maintain, expand and improve Cambridge Day.
We are now a 501(c)3 nonprofit and all donations are tax deductible.
Please consider a recurring contribution.