After 10 years at the helm of Vashon’s food bank, Yvonne Pitrof will step down as the organization’s executive director.

Pitrof announced her resignation to the staff and board of the Vashon-Maury Community Food Bank last week. In an interview with The Beachcomber, she said that while she’s immensely proud of what the food bank has accomplished under her direction, she’s ready for something new. With a son who recently started college, she added, it’s a good time for a career change.

“Personally it’s time for me to move on, a good time to move on and grow into other things,” she said.

Pitrof became director of the food bank in 2004, after commuting for two years to a job at Northwest Harvest, a nonprofit food distributor based in Seattle. As a single mother, she was a client of Vashon’s food bank before being hired there.

“For me, there was a certain amount of empowerment, getting over the ‘Oh, it’s my fault,’” Pitrof recalled. “We have a system where it’s really hard to get by as a single parent covering all the bills. I went through hard times, and that definitely fuels my passion for this work.”

Over the past decade, Pitrof has seen the food bank through the recession and what she calls continually increasing need from island families. She also helped the nonprofit advance how it does business, from improving how it trains and works with volunteers to implementing systems to track the food that comes in and out.

“We’ve grown and professionalized the organization tremendously so we can better speak to what we do, can better understand what we’re doing and strategize accordingly,” she said.

Today, the organization hands out food to about 200 families a week, with help from about 200 volunteers each year.

“She’s been an integral part of the food bank’s success over the years,” said Susan Flores, president of the food bank’s board. “She’s put her heart and soul into it.”

Both Flores and Pitrof called the food bank’s farm program, which provides locally grown produce to food bank clients, a highlight of Pitrof’s decade at the organization. The food bank started the farm program with a United Way grant in 2010. Since then, it has grown enough produce at  food bank-run farms to help supply some off-island food banks as well, and it’s now working to open a new farm just outside town.

“There’s so much potential with that,” Pitrof said. “It’s so centrally located and easy for volunteers to get to.”

Pitrof said she is also proud to have started the food bank’s first summer lunch program last year. For some time, the food bank thought such a program was out of reach, as Vashon doesn’t have enough low-income families to garner federal funding for summertime lunches for schoolchildren. However, it found local donors to fund the lunches and volunteers to serve them.

“I thought we could raise the money to do it. That was a huge shift,” Pitrof said.

The food bank decided to open the lunches to all children so that it wouldn’t be known as a program for low-income families. Educational activities are also provided, and parents are asked to donate if they can. Pitrof said the lunches have drawn families from across the socioeconomic spectrum.

“We wanted it to just be a fun thing for kids to all come together. … We did erase that stigma, which was completely our goal,” she said.

Pitrof has also worked to address regional hunger issues as a board member of the South King County Food Coalition and the Washington Food Coalition. She is currently helping lobby lawmakers for state funding for food bank programs.

“It’s been a part my role that I’ve really loved,” she said. “I’ve been quite passionate about doing that on a larger scale as far as working to make larger systemic differences.”

Locally, Pitrof said she’s worked to increase awareness of the amount of need on the island and the wide variety of people the food bank serves. And as need has grown, she said, Vashon’s support of the food bank has kept up.

“The community has really responded and has been really dedicated to making sure we’re taking care of our own, and that’s something you don’t always see quite as cohesively as happens here,” she said.

Pitrof is now considering her next steps and said that while she’s passionate about nonprofit work, she’s also keeping her options open. She plans to continue living on Vashon and will leave her post within a month.

“I definitely want to see the food bank move on to its own new chapter in a healthy way,” she said.

Flores said Pitrof will be missed, but the board is already planning its search for a new director and will post the position soon.

“We’ll watch her soar in h