Jennifer Moss

"“I recreated a bedroom scene – all the textiles, the bedspread, the pillows, etc. were made from shiny silver and black low-carbon steel. But Michigan is a lot like Savannah. Lots of humidity. The steel started to rust and fall apart.”"

"“When I got to SCAD and took more weaving classes, I thought back to that experience and decided to explore it more. Using their computer-aided weaving, I started blending low-carbon steel with linen, silk, cotton, and other materials. When the fabric came off the loom, the steel was monochromatic gray, but then I’d wash it in salt water to start the color changing process.” That body of work resulted in Transient Structures – her thesis show of huge woven panels of fibers and rusting metal “purposefully designed to fall apart.”"

"I started embroidering on watercolor paper – black on white at first,” but inspired by a black-on-black painting she’d seen in a show in Nashville, “I began to coat wood panels in graphite, drilled holes with my jewelry tools, and embroidered in white. I am in love with graphite because it can be perfectly matte all the way to reflectively shiny.”"

"“I’m thinking about the stitches’ repetitive structures as being an abstraction of the repetitive structures in nature.”"

"“I took a papermaking workshop at Penland last summer and have been making embossed panels out of paper pulp. It’s all recycled computer paper and junk mail.”"

"“I make a 3-D vessel form out of fabric – something I learned at the workshop last summer. I sew the form and then stuff it with perlite (the little white stones in potting soil) and sculpt it.”"

"I’m not a religious person but I find something bigger than myself and something inspiriting in nature. I see connections – the same patterns that are on a microscopic scale are on a macroscopic scale, and the way the world has organized itself into these super-efficient and beautiful patterns. I love reading science books about physics and nature and learning amazing little details about the natural world. My first instinct as an artist is to be representational, but if I abstract my work, it pulls the viewer to spend a little more time with it.”"

"“We were filling this void that maybe people didn’t even know was there. We’ve grown, but at our core are the studios and the space for artists to work and connect.” We discuss how the organization has changed from simply being about “art for artists" to sharing their vision with the community, to reaching outside of Savannah through an international artist residency and showing contemporary work from artists throughout the southeast."

"“I think it was always assumed that you graduate SCAD and move to L.A. or New York or another big city both for work and for the opportunity for community.,"

"”At Sulfur, we created studio spaces, but more than that, we created this sense of community through the artists in the studios, the artists that we show, and the people who come to our events and to all the programming we do. Now, more artists feel they can stay and work in Savannah and have that community. We just need to keep making that space to keep them here, and to make Savannah an art destination.”"

"Leaders are sort of looking to move on,” she said. “There's been some great things that have happened – flexibility and remote work and more conversations around mental health in the workplace, destigmatizing burnout … huge investments made in mental health and wellbeing, but we're still feeling like they're not being actualized at work.”"

"“Fundamentally, employees are going ‘why am I here? Life's too short,” she said. “If we don't realize that people are constantly asking themselves, why am I here? What is the point? If we don't give them the point, then they'll leave or quit or quiet-quit, remain disengaged.”"

"“That should not be a badge of honor. We need to define what ‘above and beyond’ looks like,” Moss said. “If above and beyond is you working 70 hours a week, and that's what I expect, then let's be explicit about that.”"

"We’re not looking to the edges, where there's really special things that are superpowers of people who are neurodivergent – there's the coolest superpowers, and we're just not taking advantage of that in a way that's going to make us better.”"

"“The book really is to help leaders understand that there are these very fundamental important pro-social traits that we need to be adopting within our cultures, to move the needle and to give employees time to heal,”"

"“I've had so many people say to me, ‘how can we get better, we've never had time to heal, we've never had time to recover, it’s always business as usual. It's always about GDP. It's always about productivity and doing more with less, and we've never just had the leader pause and say: ‘you're probably still hurting, and how can I help that?’”"

"“Heart-forward means a few things,” she says. “I can be a caring person and really support your team and your people without being a pushover. It also means that I always want to leave people better than when I found them.”"

"“I’ve set a gigantic goal for myself. I’m going to be in the best shape of my life by the time I’m 40. I just turned 38 in March, so I’ve got time,” she says. “But part of that journey is getting really strong and getting my athlete body back. I’m strong, but I want to be this bad ass who handles it like a boss. So I told myself, ‘I’m doing it. There’s nothing standing in my way.’”"

"“I will never forget the day we lost our largest customer in 2017. It was Feb. 16 at 2 p.m. when he walked in,” she recalls. “We were doing 30% of our business with this one customer at the time. And they walked in and said, ‘We’re liquidating the business. I hope we told you soon enough.’ And my dad sat there and said, 'I’ve got 70% of the seed planted. No, you didn’t tell us soon enough.’ So I hit the ground running. We were in the middle of launching a wholesale houseplant program at the time, so I was already on the road trying to pitch that program,”"

"“I had to pivot very quickly and start to identify a couple of chains that we could gain to make up for the loss. That’s the year I started to really earn my stripes and gain the respect of my coworkers and peers. At the end of the season, I was able to recapture 89% of the sales. It was tough. But that customer had done over a million dollars with us in 2016.”"

"I agreed with them at the time that my brother, who is younger than me, was a better choice to lead the company,” Jennifer says. “He was more level-headed, he was less emotional and he was more consistent. So that was the plan.”"

"“I wasn’t projecting what I wanted to project. I wanted to come across calm, put together, direct and driven,” she says. “So I really worked on changing my responses and my reactions. I was seeing a life coach, Brendon Burchard, who wrote High Performance Habits. It changed my life.”"

"“I outperformed the expectation, I launched myself and I earned my spot,”"

"“My parents felt that I was the good choice for the helm of the ship. My brother and I looked at it and he agreed. And we agreed that we could make this work and he became chief operations officer. My brother is an awesome partner. Where I'm weak, he's strong, and where he's weak, I'm strong. We're a good complement to each other.”"

"“Mom and dad never forced us to look at horticulture,” she says. “That’s why my brother and I have degrees in different areas. And dad said, ‘I want you to go out into the world and try something else. And if you want to come back to the greenhouse, then you can. But you have to want to come back. It wasn’t forced.”"

"“I wanted to chase serial killers like they do on the Criminal Minds television show. I was really into that because I competed in speech in high school, and one of my topics was DNA profiling and criminal profiling,”"

"“I was raised with integrity as a core value and I could not imagine myself going into such a corrupt industry,”"

"I was in Portland where I didn’t have a network, but I tried it for a year. Then I called mom and dad and said, ‘Hey, I need to move home. How do you feel about a dog?’”"

"They quickly promoted me to a manager and a trainer, and I worked there for a year to get my feet back under me,”"

"“Candidly, that was the worst job I’ve ever had. However, it taught me a lot,” “Those hard jobs are actually really good for you. They build character and you learn what you can do and what you’re not willing to tolerate. It was at that job where I was put in a couple of situations that I could not stomach. Going back to that core value of integrity, I put in my two-weeks’ notice. That’s when I went to my parents and said, ‘Let’s give it a go at the greenhouse.’”"

"The hardest part about coming from restaurant and hospitality management into the greenhouse is, in a restaurant, dinner's on the table and if the customer's upset, you have to solve it right then. And when I saw an issue at the greenhouse, I’d say, ‘We need to change this.’ Since I came on in January and our fiscal year is September through August, I’d hear, ‘No, we don't need to talk about that for eight or 10 months.’"

"I'm like, excuse me, what? But I didn't understand the seasonality, that kind of process. That the minute hand has to go all the way around the clock. You can't make a decision at 7 that affects 2. And so I just had to learn to slow down. That was probably the hardest transition.""

"“I went through a period where I was just the boss’ daughter for a long time, yet my brother didn’t have that stigma of being just the boss’ son. And it pissed me off. That’s when I became more aware of what and how I was projecting things,”"

"And my competitive athlete background taught me to ask, ‘What is your win?’ So I started finding those small wins, even in the hard days,”"

"Our parents taught us about hard work and consistency. They showed up. They were driven, even in the hard years, the really good years and the completely average years,” she says. “They showed me that you dive in during the spring, you kick ass, then you get to enjoy your summers and winters. And take the time, get offsite, use your vacation days. I’m still not very good at that part.”"

"“My mom showed me how to generate trust with people and to have faith in your decisions. My father taught me how to lead a team and how to hold people accountable. With my mom's softer approach combined with my father's drive for results, I developed a hidden talent I didn't realize I had until the last year, which is building teams and creating loyalty in my employees,”"

"“I tackle hard things. And if it’s really hard, I just dig my feet in a little bit deeper so that I’m completely anchored. I’m not afraid to do hard things at all,”"

"“I have no problem with change. I disarm the emotional fear of it and other hard things, and I just keep moving. I think that's probably a lot of people's hardest moments – when they get stalled with indecision and fear. I read an incredible book earlier this year called The Gap and the Gain. And being an engineer's daughter, everything's a math equation. I just have to figure out the right variables to solve for X. And I approach all of life like that.”"

"“I’ve learned that failing forward is the best way to approach it. Failure doesn’t disarm me, it doesn’t scare me. I tell my employees that if you don’t fail forward, the universe will continue to bring you that lesson and it will get harder and harder every time. So when something bad happens, don’t ask, ‘Why did this happen to me?’ Ask, ‘Why is this happening for me?’”"

"“If something really hard comes in front of me, I ask myself, ‘Will this matter in a year? In five years? In 10 years? And if the answer is no to any of those questions, then I need to make sure I’m not giving it too much energy in that moment,”"

"“That has been a really hard lesson, though,” she says. “I had FOMO — fear of missing out. I wanted to be in all places and all things. But that’s not the case anymore. I know where I stand as a human. I know what I want to show up for, and I know how much currency I have in the tank to be able to accomplish things.”"

"“When I was managing the restaurant, I had to make very big decisions on the fly. And I didn't have a super strong mentor in that space, per se. I didn't have a bad one, they were a little bit more passive. And because of that, I was abrasive in my management, and I would anger easily. And that trickled into the greenhouse for a little while. I started to pay a lot more attention to how I was showing up to conversations. What was my body language, was my tone of voice right or how did I leave people feeling? And I have really worked on that over the last four or five years and fine-tuned it.”"

"“I worked on walking away and taking a couple of hours to come back with a clear head. My brother is very good at this. I really started to practice that. And that huge miss became a huge win. And it's very unusual for me to get angry now. I can still hold people accountable, and we can walk away from a situation after a positive conversation where we all feel that we succeeded in being heard and solved the situation.”"

"They said, ‘You always bring me step five and you make me figure out one through four. If you could please include me so that I can be a part of all five steps.’ They were absolutely right. I was giving them directives without the right tools. I've really listened to those moments because if I'm managing one person like that, am I managing all people like that?”"

"I do not like the status quo. I am a person who holds space for everyone and I don’t make judgments,”"

"Our offerings as a supplier were very traditional. When we lost King’s Discount Store, it was an opportunity in disguise. We started to change our basket combinations and move away from that flat footprint into more container gardening with more perceived value on the baskets,”"

"“I think it was in 2018 at Cultivate where I challenged all of our brokers and suppliers saying, ‘I want to be two years ahead of the market. I want to try everything I can in Idaho before you release it.’ I want to be on point as soon as that new variety hits the market.”"

"“I was named CEO in September of 2022 and we’ve made some big shifts. We have gone from focusing on top-quality plants to becoming an employee-centric company. My best asset is people and I want to treat that asset the best way possible,”"

"Don’t be afraid to put the guy with 30 years of experience on the bench and let him consult a group of younger folks to lead a project and challenge the status quo,” she advises. “If you are going to get people interested in this industry, it can’t continue to look how it’s always looked. It’s okay if everybody’s skin color is different at a table. It’s okay if half of the people in the board room are covered in tattoos. It’s okay if someone came from the cannabis industry and is now growing lettuce in a vertical farm. We’ve got to be able to cross over into the next stage of this industry’s evolution.”"

"I went into a supplier’s booth and stood there, ignored, for about 20 minutes, despite having 12 workers in the booth,” she explains. “It was right when the show floor opened, and they weren’t busy. I now call it the khakis and polo club because that’s what every one of those guys were wearing. It’s the traditional footprint of so many in our industry, but I don’t participate. I’m tattooed. I’m young. I’m female. So was like, ‘Okay, here’s a bias.’ So now I'm very sensitive to the gender gap in our industry.”"