The Texas County Food Pantry has a new executive director: Licking resident Katie Mutzebaugh.
Mutzebaugh, 26, began her tenure in the position July 16. She is the organization’s fifth director since it was formed in 1989.
“I want everyone to know I’m here for the whole county,” Mutzebaugh said.
Mutzebaugh replaces Tanya Pacheco, who became pantry director in February 2016 and recently resigned to take a position with Rocket Digital, a new branch of the Houston Herald specializing in websites, digital advertising and social media management for businesses.
After growing up in Doniphan and graduating from high school there, Mutzebaugh attended Missouri State University in Springfield, but ended up graduating from the University of Central Missouri in Warrensburg. She majored in music but had an anthropology minor, which she said gives her good insight to her new position.
“Anthropolgy often gets confused with archaeology, but it’s the study of people and culture,” Mutzebaugh said. “That will help me here a lot, because I can look at people and determine things that help me in my position. It also helps keep me sort of detached from what I’m hearing, and not judging harshly.”
Prior to taking the position at the pantry, Mutzebaugh (pronounced muts-a-bah) was a juvenile officer in Johnson County. She taught classes for the kids (regarding issues like anger management and drug, alcohol and tobacco intervention), coordinated community service, accumulated hundreds of hours in volunteer work alongside kids and was even involved in food distribution similar to what the food pantry does.
“That will all help me here, too,” Mutzebaugh said.
As food pantry executive director, Mutzebaugh believes she’s in an ideal environment.
“When I was at the juvenile office, I fell in love with doing community service work, volunteer work and feeling fulfilled through my community by helping people,” she said. “One of my biggest goals when I had juveniles under me was to try to convince them to come back, even after their community service was over. I wanted to make it such a good experience that they would want to keep doing it.
“Ultimately, that made me want to come back, too, and make it my life’s work.”
While she hasn’t been around the food pantry for long, Mutzebaugh has already taken notice of the facility’s unique character and how that positively affects the Texas County.
“It helps people with their utilities, rent and also has the thrift store,” she said. “Usually, those things aren’t combined. You can go to a town and find a Salvation Army office where they assist you, a thrift store on the other side of town and the food pantry won’t even be related to either one of them.
“Here it’s everything in one package. To me, that’s amazing. I don’t know of another place like that.”
Areas Mutzebaugh sees needing attention at the pantry include the thrift store and the overwhelming intake of items on the loading dock.
“We need to move things through the store faster,” she said. “I’m sure most people in the county have seen that our back dock fills up really fast, and I want to look into utilizing techniques to funnel items through the store faster.”
Mutzebaugh also intends to introduce a new look to the pantry’s food distribution area.
“I want it to be more like a grocery store,” she said. “A lot of the people we help lack normalcy, and making it more like a grocery store will make it more normal. I really think that could help with morale.”
On her first day with the pantry, Mutzebaugh more or less hit the ground running. She figures she’s well suited for the job.
“I have lots of ideas, lots of organization and I’m young, so I can be happy and excited to implement new ideas,” she said. “I’m the kind of person who can come up with something, work out its rough edges and then apply it. I try to make sure there’s no possibility of anything going wrong, but it something does, I’m willing to take it back and do something else.
“I think it helps that I’m flexible in that way. You can’t always determine what might go wrong, but you can try.”
Mutzebaugh’s husband, Nathan, is a commercial pilot for Envoy Air, a regional carrier for American Airlines.
“I would like people to know I’m happy to be able to help the community in any way possible,” Mutzebaugh said. “I want them to bear with me as I implement changes and hopefully execute them in a positive way. I’m so glad to be here, and I can’t think of a better community to help than one as closely knit as this one.”
The Texas County Food Pantry’s phone number is 417-967-4484. Mutzebaugh can be reached by email at tcfpdirector@centurytel.net.
I’m so glad to be here, and I can’t think of a better community to help than one as closely knit as this one.”
TEXAS COUNTY FOOD PANTRY DIRECTOR KATIE MUTZEBAUGH