Transcription of Love Maine Radio #333: Jill Hinckley and Dr. Robert Snyder
Speaker 1: You are listening to Love Maine Radio, hosted by Dr Lisa Belisle and recorded at the studios of Maine Magazine in Portland. Dr Lisa Belisle is a writer and physician who practices family medicine and acupuncture in Topsham. Show summaries are available at lovemaineradio.com
Lisa Belisle: This is Dr Lisa Belisle and you’re listening to Love Main Radio show number 333, airing for the first time on Sunday, February 4th, 2018. Today’s guest are Jill Hinckley, owner of Hinckley Introductions, and Dr Robert Snyder, president of the Island Institute. Thank you for joining us.
Speaker 1: Portland Art Gallery is proud to sponsor Love Maine Radio. Portland Art Gallery is the city’s largest and is located in the heart of the old port at 154 Middle Street. The gallery focuses on exhibiting the work of contemporary Maine artists and hosts a series of monthly solo shows in its newly expanded space, including Ingunn Joergensen, Brenda Cirioni, Daniel Corey, Jill Hoy and Dave Allen. For complete show details please visit our website at artcollectormain.com.
Lisa Belisle: Jill Hinckley is the owner of Hinckley Introductions, a matchmaking and coaching agency based in Portland. Thanks for coming in today.
Jill Hinckley: Thank you so much for having me.
Lisa Belisle: So you have an interesting business in this day and age. We used to think of matchmakers way back when, then we came into the age of Tinder and Bumble and other apps. But you’re actually, you’re kind of old school. You’re doing stuff the way that it’s been done for a long time.
Jill Hinckley: I’m definitely trying to take it back to a more personal connection with people. I like to connect people on a personal and meaningful way, and this is how I do it. It’s real matchmaking. It’s one-on-one, as if you’re meeting a friend of a friend. That’s how I keep working on it being a personal experience for everybody.
Lisa Belisle: So you grew up in, you were born in Ellsworth and you grew up in Southwest Harbor. Your grandfather started Hinckley Yachts in 1928, so this is kind of a big departure from the family business.
Jill Hinckley: Very big, but not really because our family, we knew everybody that built a Hinckley boat. They came, we knew the whole family. It took at least a year to build a Hinckley boat. They would come up, they would visit. We would have dinner parties with the people that were building their boats. So we really knew everybody, every customer very personally. My grandfather, when he owned the Hinckley company, we only built 12 boats a year. So each family was very important. We knew every boat, name, every customer. That was a long time ago.
Fast forward, picnic boat, a whole different world at the Hinckley company. But that’s how I grew up. I grew up with very personal relationships with people and I loved networking and getting know people. So that brought me into this, yes.
Lisa Belisle: I’m guessing that there must have been a few other things that you’ve done in your life prior to now, because this is a relatively new business for you.
Jill Hinckley: I’ve been doing it for four years. Yes. After my family … I did work at the Hinckley company, I started when I was in high school giving tours of the Hinckley company. Went to high school, college, would come back and work in the summers on the dock. I worked in retail a lot. I am a mom with five kids, so I did a lot of staying at home with my kids while they were growing up.
Then, started working at the Hinckley company, again in their retail business. Then my father sold the Hinckley company in 1998 and I decided … I had remarried and I decided to move on and do other things. Well what I started doing was doing recruiting in the boat business. So there were other boat companies that were looking for people to work for their company, and I knew a lot of people through the Hinckley company that have worked with the Hinckley company for many years.
So that brought me into recruiting in the boat business. Which I loved, and it’s similar to matchmaking because you’re connecting businesses with employees and people, and getting to know people and interviewing people and understanding what they want, where they’re going, where they want to live. So recruiting in the boat business actually brought me to matchmaking. Kind of a round about way but I ended up here, and I love it.
Lisa Belisle: Was there one experience that, some sort of ah-ah moment, where you said, “Matchmaking, I’d be good with this. I think I should do this?”
Jill Hinckley: Well, Maine has been, was the tipping point for me, because Maine has incredible people that live here. They’re all different and diverse and have different careers. They live in different places.
I’m a lucky person, I get to live in all different parts of Maine, or go visit all different parts of Maine. So I was meeting people, sometimes from recruiting and sometimes personally, that were incredible people. I kept thinking, “You need to know this person. You need to know this person.” And then I would lose them, I would not be able to connect them.
So I started thinking, because I have all these single people I know, “How do I connect them? Do I use my recruiting skills?” You know, have them fill out my questionnaire, get to know them. So that if I do want to contact them I can reach out and have all their information. So it was really just inspired by all the great in Maine that I was trying to connect on different levels.
Lisa Belisle: How do you differentiate yourself as a matchmaker and your business, from the apps that we’ve mentioned? How are the people that come to see you different than the people who might say sign up for, I don’t know, match.com.
Jill Hinckley: I work with all, everybody. Anybody that comes into my group, there’s different levels. You can simply be in my database. It’s free, you just fill out my questionnaire and you can be free in my database. That’s just one way of putting yourself out there if you’re a single person.
I also coach people. A lot of people I work with are divorced or widowed and they haven’t been out there, and they don’t even know, there are so many incredible options. Yes, there’s Bumble and Tinder and Hinge and match.com and eHarmony, and there’s all these different ways you can step into this dating world. So I do coaching for people, and then I do personal matchmaking.
Personal matchmaking is usually working with somebody who has a very busy life, who prefers not to go online. Probably often times because of their career or something, or just plain busy, busy. Because being online and doing these apps does take a lot of time. People sometimes don’t have that time and they say, “Okay Jill, help me out here.” What I do is I setup the dates. I get to know everybody. I background checks if that’s necessary, and really make sure that these two people are compatible before they even meet.
Lisa Belisle: How do you do that?
Jill Hinckley: Lots of questions, lots of talking and getting to know them. I try not to have people bring a big list. Like, sometimes people are like, “Okay, these are all the things I want in my next relationship. I want him to ski and do all these things.”
It’s okay to have a few things on the list but I say it’s, how does that person make you feel? How does that person … Can you sit on that porch and talk for our with that person? Is that somebody you really want to spend time with? That’s where I try to get people to focus on, not so much the list but more about the experience of being with that person.
So it’s just me, like a friend. I really get to know them and say … And you know, first dates can be tough but they can also be so much fun. You get to know somebody as a friend. That’s the worst case scenario.
Lisa Belisle: I was thinking about our interview with DJ Jon. He was talking to us about people who came in with big lists of do-not-play music, and how challenging that really was for him. And that as a professional, what he preferred was, “Give me a few things that you like, and then just leave it up to me. I know how to do this.” And what you’re saying is a little bit of that. You know, “I’m going to get to know you, and I’m going to make sure that we put you together with somebody who at least foundationally you some things in common.” Does that sound right?
Jill Hinckley: Absolutely. Absolutely. And you know, obviously there’s going to be some deal breakers for people that are really important. That can be, in this crazy world we live in today, politics can be a big one. So we have to talk a little bit about politics, religion. These are things that are really important to people. So I can see by getting to know them that this is going to be a deal breaker, one way or the other. Or, wow, these two people are very compatible and can talk for hours about this subject. So worst case scenario is their first date, they just really enjoy talking to each other. You found somebody that you agree with on a lot of different levels.
Lisa Belisle: so how does that come up in a conversation? Do you immediately put it out there, like, “Who did you vote for?” Or do you let things go a little bit and then kind of see where they might be inclined and then ask?
Jill Hinckley: When I interview people and have them fill out my questionnaire, it is a question that I do ask about the politics. Some people feel very strongly about it, some people are very easy going about it, they don’t mind. These are things that I learn just because I’m doing one-on-one, and also having them fill out my questionnaire. So I know them pretty well usually.
Lisa Belisle: What are some of the questions that you have on your questionnaire?
Jill Hinckley: I ask them about their lifestyle, about politics, their religion, if they’ve been married before, what sports and activities they like to do. I sometimes ask them, “What’s a typical Sunday? What do you do on a typical Sunday?” Because a lot of times that’s the day you have a chance to spend with somebody else, and I like to see that they would do the same things, or enjoy the same things.
What other questions do I have that are on the … You know, obviously age and whether or not they have kids, and whether or not they’re willing to travel to meet a match. A lot of people love to travel to meet somebody, and some people are like, “No, no. I’d rather meet somebody just 30 minutes away from me.” So that’s another big challenge I have, is geography.
Lisa Belisle: Are you dealing people who are just within the state of Maine? Or do your matches go all over?
Jill Hinckley: I started just in Maine, but I notice a lot of the people I work with either go to Florida in the winter time, or they travel in different parts of Maine, or some people even live in Maine and travel to Boston for work. So there’s a lot of cross-state-lines activity going on. Which really the fun part for me with that is I got involved with other matchmakers.
We have a whole network of matchmakers that I work with. Sometimes I’ll work with Florida matchmakers or I’ll work with a matchmaker in Boston. I actually just opened an office in Boston myself, so I do travel a bit to meet people. That’s so fun. I get to meet the most incredible people. So I cannot complain about that. But yes, a lot people are outside of Maine.
Lisa Belisle: That’s so fun, the idea that there’s all these other matchmakers out there in the world. I hadn’t really ever thought about that. I guess my daughter has watched a reality show about some sort of matchmaker somewhere, so….
Jill Hinckley: I’m sure she has, those are fun.
Lisa Belisle: Yeah. I mean, I knew that that existed but I think it shows that there’s still this need for a personal connectivity, even that you have at your fingertips the computer that you could use or your phone. That some people really just prefer to have somebody that they can talk to who can help them out.
Jill Hinckley: Absolutely. I love that, because people have so many questions about this, and no two people are going to have the same experience. Everybody comes at this from a different direction, different point of view, a different experience. And that’s the fun for me, is I get to know them individually, work with them, and I love working with other matchmakers.
If another matchmaker in Boston, for example, has a client they’re working with, they might contact me and see if anybody in my database or anybody I’m working with might match up with their client. She knows, that other matchmaker knows her client. I know my client. So we get together, we talk about our clients that we’re working with. Often times that’s really fun because they go out and have a great date, and you meet somebody you never would have met if you hadn’t signed up with a matchmaker.
Lisa Belisle: Do the people that you work with tend to be older? People who, as you just mentioned, maybe are widowed or divorced, or maybe just have never gotten married?
Jill Hinckley: Definitely. I work with 40 and up, but I do have other matchmakers that I do work with that work with a younger crowd. It’s just a matter of staying focused on my … I’m 54 years old. I tend to work with that crowd a little bit better than the younger crowd. It’s just a different … but that’s why I think, when you sign up with a matchmaker, it’s really important that you connect with that matchmaker, that you feel like that matchmaker gets you. I just feel like I’m really good with the 40 and up crowd, and maybe not so focused on the younger crowd.
Lisa Belisle: Do you notice that people who have gone through some of these fairly traumatic things in their lives, loss of a spouse or divorce even. Do you notice that they’re still working through things? Is this ever something that comes up for you in conversation with them?
Jill Hinckley: Definitely. Definitely. I mean, you have to be ready. Timing is really important for matchmaking, because we jump right on it. We get excited about meeting you. You know, who are we going to set you up with? So you have to be ready or your schedule has to be. You have to fit this into your life.
And sometimes, emotionally I find that people are just not really ready for this. They’re not really sure how this is all going to play out for them. So another thing I love to do is network with people, life coaches, therapists, make-up artists and photographers. I mean any resource that that person I feel like needs.
Sometimes people haven’t had their picture taken in … I mean, they take pictures of everybody else but they haven’t had a picture taken of themselves in like five years. So I’ll send them to a photographer, and then they’ll be so excited because they finally have a great picture of themselves. It just makes them feel good and that’s a great way to put yourself out. I tell them, “Put it on your Facebook page. Get excited. Go out there and attend more events.”
So yeah, everybody comes at it, and I sort of think of tweaking them a little bit. “Okay, I’m going to send you down this road for a little while,” and then they’re really ready for this. But not everybody comes ready to go.
Lisa Belisle: So if they needed to process their grief for example, you could say refer them to a counselor. Or if they just needed some, I don’t know, hair advice, you could send them towards somebody who could help them with maybe something that’s not quite as deep seated. And people generally are okay with this sort of advice coming from you.
Jill Hinckley: Generally, yeah. I think they’re generally excited about it. Because this is a big step for a lot of people that haven’t been out in the dating world for a long time, so we try to take baby steps. We don’t want to throw them into this without all the tools they need to get through this experience. So it is baby steps, but hopefully they’re happy with that. Yeah, it works well.
Lisa Belisle: I think that some of the patients that I see, that they want to jump right back into. Say maybe they lost their spouse suddenly, and they’ve never been alone and they want to jump right back into a relationship. I have seen this happen more than once, where … Or even a divorce, where somebody, it’s just immediately into the dating pool. And it doesn’t always work out that well because they needed to put some closure on the relationship they had, to grieve that relationship before they could move on. When that happens, do you say, “Hey, come back and see these other people? The counselor, the somebody else that you might meet, you know, your pastor, and then come back in a few months?”
Jill Hinckley: Absolutely. What I would suggest in that situation is for those people to be in my database. My database is quite large, because it’s a free database and people come into my database. I only work with 10 to 15 people personally a year. So those people I know, and I don’t sign anybody up for that unless I know they’re ready.
So be in my database is kind of fun for people, because that’s the baby step. And then if I have somebody I’m working with, I’ll contact them and I’ll say, “Okay, how are you doing? Are you ready for this? This is an opportunity I have for you.” And then can pass. They can say, “You know, I’m not really ready right now.” Or, “Yeah, you know, it’s been a few months since I’ve joined your database and now I’m ready.”
I check in with everybody to make sure they are ready for this, and usually they are. I have great, fun people that are using me as one of their resources if they’re in my database, because I want them to be out on Bumble and try new things, be on Facebook.
Non-profits is a really big thing for me. I tell all my single people that I get a chance to, and now I’m on the radio so I can tell them. Go to non-profit events. Join something in your community. Get involved people that are giving to their community. That’s where you want to be. You want to be out and about. You don’t want to be sitting in my database waiting for something to happen. Which is great, I want you to be there too, but also I want my people to be out and about and meeting new people. That’s the best.
Lisa Belisle: When you are out and about in various capacities, are you constantly thinking, “Is this person single? She or he could match up with somebody else.”
Jill Hinckley: Maybe. Possibly, yes.
Lisa Belisle: I can just see the computer kind of going on in your head.
Jill Hinckley: My antennas are up. I’m looking all around. Yeah. I try to put myself out there too, because I want to on behalf on my clients be out there, meeting people, networking. And yeah, sometimes it’s hard, sometimes it’s hard to put myself out there because I’m generally not as outgoing as my husband is for example. He’s the one that’s much more outgoing. But we play off each other. He says, “Okay, there’s this event. Let’s go.” And I love that about my relationship with my husband, because it creates this opportunity for me to meet new people and to put myself out there.
Lisa Belisle: That’s an important point, that you wouldn’t always want to have your list of what you want in someone, because maybe you actually want somebody who complements you, and it’s possible you don’t even know what that looks like.
Jill Hinckley: 100% agree with you. Absolutely. If I had had a list, I would not be married to my husband right now. Although we complement each other so well, and we laugh, we have fun, and we have difference that we celebrate about each other. But we also have some core values and things that bring us together. We’re very family-oriented with our kids, and we love to do certain activities together.
One of the things we love is the ocean. We do love to go boating, and that was really important to me because I love the ocean so much, to be able to share with somebody. But we’re very different human beings, very different. Now I laugh about it but at the time I was like, “I don’t know, he’s so different from me.” Yeah, I look for opposites. I think opposites attract.
Lisa Belisle: You said you have five kids. What do they all think of what their mamma’s doing these days?
Jill Hinckley: Some think it’s really fun and funny, and some are like, “I can’t believe, I’m telling anybody you’re doing this.” No, they’re just, my 15 year old I embarrass her completely. My older kids are 25, 27, 28 and 30, so they’re pretty proud of me because I’m having fun with this. I ask them about all the apps, “Okay, tell me how do you use Bumble?” Because I’m not on these apps, I need them to teach me how to use these apps, and then I pass that information on to my clients. So they’re big help to me. They’re great.
Lisa Belisle: Well, and to be fair, pretty much any 15 year old, probably 15 year old girl is probably going to have some embarrassment about a parent. So I doubt very much it’s specific to your child and your profession.
Jill Hinckley: [crosstalk 00:21:52] not, but yes. Yeah.
Lisa Belisle: You’ve gone through this four other times, so I’m guessing that you have a sense, it will probably shift at some point.
Jill Hinckley: Exactly, I hope so. Yeah.
Lisa Belisle: Yes. What is it that you hope to see your business do? You’ve been doing this for four years. You’ve opened an office in Boston. Where do you hope to go from here?
Jill Hinckley: Well, I want us to stay very personal. No, I don’t want to be a big company, but I love being able to meet new people. It brings so much energy to my life and so much fun. I work with my assistant, [Caroline Clement 00:22:32], who I work with. She and I, we talk about different clients together, and who we should introduce to other people. We setup dates. I mean, to keep it going the same way it’s going right now would be the way I’d want to do it. Just as personal as possible.
Lisa Belisle: Is it something that’s easily scalable? When you think of business, and you’re doing that’s very personal, and Caroline is doing something that’s very personal, how many more offices in different cities could you actually support?
Jill Hinckley: I don’t think I’d want to, but yes, matchmakers do go big. There are some big matchmakers out there that are in New York, California. You can join a matchmaker and they can have multiple offices. So the sky is the limit really in this world. But I prefer to be a smaller matchmaker, more regional in who I’m working with, than to have corporate offices all over the country. But yeah, you can, and I have clients that come to me that live that lifestyle. That say, “I have a home in New York, and I have a home in Maine, and I actually have a place in Santa Fe, New Mexico.” So they might want to work with one of those big matchmakers, because they actually do have offices in all those locations.
So actually, I do refer people to other matchmakers that are doing that. That’s why I say it’s a very personal experience. Each matchmaker has a specialty. I do focus a lot on people that love to sail and the ocean, so I get a lot of that. I market kind of towards that client. Whereas other matchmakers will work with people that maybe travel a lot or are all over. I work with matchmakers in Europe. I’ll have a client that lives in Portland, Maine, that travels a lot and wants to meet somebody outside of this country, so I’ll setup him up, or her up, with another matchmaking outside of this country.
It’s a very vast network that you get to be part of when you join this. I’m part of the Matchmaker Institute. We actually take this very seriously and it’s confidential information that we’re sharing between matchmakers. Yeah, it’s been a very serious career. It’s very fun. It’s great.
Lisa Belisle: I had no idea that there was such a thing as a matchmaker institute.
Jill Hinckley: And a matchmaker conference, we meet every year and we collaborate and we have guest speakers that talk about social media and all the different things that go with matchmaking.
Lisa Belisle: That must be a very social kind of experience going to a matchmaker conference.
Jill Hinckley: It’s great. It’s great. They’re great people. They’re really fun.
Lisa Belisle: I was going to say, I go to doctor conferences, we’re all a little bit withdrawn. So mostly we just kind of sit by ourselves and occasionally smile to each other. But I’m thinking, if you go to a matchmaker conference you’re probably very outgoing with one another.
Jill Hinckley: Right. Sometimes we bump into problems. There will be things, that we’ll have a difficult situation that we’re trying to navigate, and the matchmakers will help each other. We actually have a closed Facebook page that we talk to each other, if there’s something that comes up that we need to figure out, or get someone else’s advice. That’s another reason, it’s I’m not alone when I’m doing this. So I don’t know why I would need to expand too much, because I have this resource right here that I can talk to matchmakers all over the world.
Lisa Belisle: Jill tell me about your one favorite success story.
Jill Hinckley: My one favorite success story.
Lisa Belisle: I’m sure you have many.
Jill Hinckley: Right. Okay. I have … I can’t tell you anything about the person because her life is very private. She was living outside of Augusta. She contacted me. She found me on the internet, and she has a fascinating career, but I couldn’t tell anybody what her career was. I had to screen everybody extensively before they met her. So I had to make sure that they didn’t have a criminal record, but they also couldn’t have worked for certain state agencies, and they couldn’t have … The screening process was really extensive, that I was putting people through to meet her.
I was worried that, boy, I was going to scare people off, because I couldn’t tell them anything about her. But she was so interesting, so intelligent. I would be talking to her for hours on the phone, getting to know her, but then I couldn’t tell the person that she was going to meet on the first date her last name. I mixed up her first name so that they would never be able to Google her and find her. It was like a very extensive process. I think I set her up on three dates. By the third date she met this guy that I had known. I had been meeting … You talk about not being ready, he wasn’t really ready. He had come and I’d met him, but there was timing.
Then I just had this moment where I thought, “This guy is perfect for her.” So I reached back out to him, set them up on a date. And gosh, they were, immediately, they were both a little quirky but oh my gosh, they had so much fun. They connected on so many levels. So for her to be so happy, and I actually think that they’ve been going, they’ve been spending, they’ve been together for several months now. She’ll check in with me and tell me how happy they are. I’m just so happy, because she really was one of those people that could not put herself out there at all, and had to be really careful about who she met. That does make it a little challenging for a matchmaker, because I can’t tell anybody much about her, so a lot of people are very apprehensive, but she’s really happy. I love that.
The other people I have in matchmaking is I cannot give you much information about who I work with. So testimonials are hard, because my clients want to have a pretty private experience with this, and I get that. So I’m pretty careful about not giving too much information out.
Lisa Belisle: Well, it sounds to me like you have people that are coming to work with you who’d kind of understand that, that testimonials are just not going to be a thing. Which is probably not the worst thing, right?
Jill Hinckley: Right, right. Although it’s frustrating because I want to just tell everybody how much fun this is and who I setup, but I can’t. Sometimes I can. Sometimes I can tell people. I ask them if it’s okay, if I can say that I introduced you or something. But yeah, I’ve been doing it for four years now, so I have a lot of couples that have met each other. And sometimes I lose track of them too because I might introduce them, and sometimes people will meet and then they decide it’s not a match, but then they connect later and then they are going out. I’m like, “Wait a minute. I thought … ” So yes, people are moving around, a little bit hard for me to track them down.
Lisa Belisle: Well, I appreciate you’re coming in and talking with me today. I’ve been speaking with Jill Hinckley who is the owner of Hinckley Introductions, a matchmaking and coaching agency based in Portland. Thanks for the work you’re doing.
Jill Hinckley: Thank you so much. That was really fun.
Lisa Belisle: It was really fun, I agree.
Speaker 1: Love Maine Radio is also brought to you by Aristelle, a lingerie boutique on Exchange Street in Portland’s Old Port, where everybody is seen as a work of art and beauty is celebrated from the inside out. Shop with us in person or online at aristelle.com.
Lisa Belisle: Dr Robert Snyder is the president of the Island Institute. He is responsible for working with island and coastal leaders in Maine to identify and invest in innovative approaches to community sustainability. Nice to have you here today.
Rob Snyder: Thank you very much for having me.
Lisa Belisle: It’s okay for me to call you Rob.
Rob Snyder: Please, it’s my preference.
Lisa Belisle: What is your doctorate in?
Rob Snyder: It’s in cultural anthropology. That turns out to be a fairly useful degree despite my parents’ concerns. What they do teach you in anthropology is how to turn people into your teachers, how to learn to listen and how to write. I can’t imagine skills that would be more important than entering the coast of Maine from away and trying to navigate your way.
Lisa Belisle: What was your focus? If you are an anthropologist who has a doctorate, there must have been some area of study.
Rob Snyder: Sure. I began actually in China with a focus on international development and the critique of international development. So it’s a little bit ironic that I now run a community development organization, but that’s my background. I moved from there to focus on Maine fisheries, big shift. Left China, came to Maine, and started to focus on the privatization of the ocean as a process that was underway here. There was a major piece of work that took place around 2010, where New England fisheries moved to a new management system. Where quota became the management device, the idea that you could own pounds of fish in the ocean with a permit. So I was part of studying the creation of that program, that management system, and I did that for my PhD ultimately.
Lisa Belisle: You’re from Cleveland, Ohio.
Rob Snyder: That’s correct.
Lisa Belisle: So, China and fisheries didn’t necessarily enter into your early childhood years I would guess.
Rob Snyder: No. I’ve always made quality of life choices once I had the chance to make those choices. So I lived out west after living in Cleveland for a decade. Then I moved to Toronto where I did my PhD, and then after my wife and decided we wanted to live somewhere where it would be great to raise our family. I either wanted to live in The Rockies or on the ocean, and so because of her family being from New England we chose Maine and the ocean. That was 15 years ago.
Lisa Belisle: What has it been like to go from this, I mean Cleveland is a fairly big urban developed part of the United States, China is obviously, urban, developed. And now you’re working in Maine and you’re working with very small communities. How has that been like from a mindset shift?
Rob Snyder: It was really difficult. It took a long time for me to figure out how to make sense of where I had landed in Maine. Took me literally five or six years, at least, before I started to feel like I could understand what was going on around me, because of the tight-knit nature of the communities and the people’s reliance on each other. These were not skills I was raised with. I tended to live in place that had been the outcome of sprawl. So people building rings further and further out into the countryside from Cleveland. Each generation of my family lives farther and farther from the city center, and that’s just kind of the way I experienced growing up.
There was a element to it which I think you would find in many different areas of the country. There was the idea that I was kind of coming from anywhere in the country. So the idea that you could come from a fairly ambiguous anywhere, and land in a very specific somewhere, where people have an incredible attachment to place and pride of place, and frankly a cautionary kind of acceptance of people, was really interesting and challenging. When I realized the intensity of the identity that people have who are from here, it also made me realize the way I need to position myself relative to that is pretty important, particularly working in a non-profit.
Lisa Belisle: So how did you position yourself? How have you been … I guess, it’s probably a work in progress, I would assume.
Rob Snyder: Yeah. No, I think I’m definitely a work in a progress. The way that I’ve started out and where I’ve kind of been for a number of years, is this idea of the professional outsider, right? Because people seem pretty willing to allow you to be in place here in Maine as somebody who acknowledges their away-ness. Far more so than if you show up and you try to claim any sort of origin from here.
It’s been very I think in a way safe and productive to say even, “I am from away, and there can be value in that. Let me try to articulate that value.” So I spend a lot of time trying to provide value to coastal and island communities based on my very specific position as an outsider.
And then 15 years later, continuing to navigate that, but also now with children in schools and with a attachment to my community, recognizing that there are ways in which people are more willing to hear what I have to say, but there’s still plenty of skepticism. And I think that’s why the coast and islands are so beautiful and different, is because of that caution and concern for continuity in place, right? That people want to … change comes hard here, and because it comes hard it keeps these places really special, and that’s wired into the DNA of those who have been here for generations.
Lisa Belisle: It’s interesting to hear you say this, because obviously we all know that you can’t be from Maine unless, not only you were born in Maine, but you also have several generations back.
Rob Snyder: It’s my understanding.
Lisa Belisle: Yes.
Rob Snyder: So my kid’s kids-
Lisa Belisle: Exactly.
Rob Snyder: … will finally be able to claim status, potentially.
Lisa Belisle: Potentially, yes. [crosstalk 00:37:05]
Rob Snyder: Depends how they behave.
Lisa Belisle: Exactly. And yet, there are so many people who are coming in who are supporting island communities who are not from Maine at all, weren’t born here. Maybe they have a summer connection, maybe they went to summer camp and feel a connection to Maine, but there isn’t the same type of background.
So I would think that that would be one of the challenges of the Island Institute is working with, is that people can contribute in really wonderful ways and be very different people from very different places, but it’s still a small community.
Rob Snyder: Yeah. I think one of the challenges is figuring out how to draw attention to and celebrate the ways in which people who may be globally networked and have significant resources can participates in the future of these communities. It’s a huge part of the struggle that these communities are engaged in on a year to year basis.
And so what I’ve found, my experience has been that there are very important people in each community. There are groups of people who I kind of view as bridging personalities. People who may be from the community but have gone away and returned, or people who have been summering for many generations in these communities but they’ve built the trust of many different communities within any one of Maine’s coastal communities. And those bridged personalities play a hugely important role, primarily a communication role, which is about helping people talk about and think about how they’re interests can be joined together from all the different facets of any small community.
I mean, some of the communities we work in have 35 people or 45 people, and 45 different points of view much of the time. As a result, you know, it takes a very special person to be able to navigate that, to be able to allow people to feel heard on all sides, allow people to make community-wide investments in their future. Whether it’s in their school or some other challenge that they’re trying to address.
Lisa Belisle: So your background in cultural anthropology might actually be a benefit in this situation, where you can observe what is going on and figure out the best way to involved or step back, depending upon the needs.
Rob Snyder: Yeah, I think one of the things that I really enjoy is helping people connect with each other and helping people connect the dots. One of the things that you have when you are not of the place and is a bit of an opportunity, that you don’t have the political weight of your family history, which is significant.
So where and when that can be helpful, to say, “Hey, here’s a resource over here you might consider,” or, “Here’s a person over there you might talk to.” That can be a useful way to help people move community issues forward. I just have to say, I don’t think I answered that question very well, so …
Lisa Belisle: Actually I thought it came up fine. I don’t know.
Rob Snyder: Well, can you say the question again?
Lisa Belisle: Spencer, are you happy with the answer? Does it seem like it made sense? I mean essentially I asked, does your background in cultural … It seems like your background in cultural anthropology might be helpful.
Rob Snyder: Yeah. I think, I mean it’s been very helpful for me to figure out how to navigate all of this. I feel like one of the things that you have to do when you’re working in and partnering with community leaders, is understand that whatever problem you’re trying to solve, whether it’s attracting and retaining families, or whether it is about dealing with the threats of storm surge, or whether it’s dealing with the way the lobster industry is generating wealth or creating different types of social issues. Every one of those challenges, often people are looking for folks with resources to bring to bear on answering that question. So if you can hear the question really well and you can actually understand the nuances of the questions that people are trying to answer in their community, then you are better prepared to bring the right resources to help them answer it.
Lisa Belisle: You know, that’s such an interesting perspective on things, because I know that when I’m with a patient one-on-one, in a situation, or a patient’s family, often the question that’s being asked or the statement that’s being made is not the real question or the real statement. So there’s a teasing back to try to determine what the actual issues are, and that requires a lot of trust. It requires a lot of relationship building. It requires both people, or all the people involved be open to talking things out, to hashing through problems. And that’s not something that everybody, and I’m not saying I’m perfect at it, but it’s not something that everybody feels that comfortable with doing, nor are we trained to do it.
Rob Snyder: Right. No, I think that’s a great observation. I mean, I think about how busy people are in their daily lives and how many different hats they would wear on a given day in a community. They might be on the school board and on the select board, and they’re also an EMT, and they’re involved in … they have so many different things going on.
And so when you come and want to talk about how you can be helpful, you’re a burden in asking the question even. So trying to provide the space … So right to your point, this is where trust really does matter, where relationships and real intention to care and to act and not just to sit and think about other people’s challenges is really important. If we don’t actually find a way to be responsive we would lose the trust.
People finally, after 34 years, not finally but just, you know, certainly over time people have become much more willing to give us that time to share their stories and their concerns, with the expectation that something will come of it. Right? That something will happen. And that’s just, I think to me very much fundamental to being successful in our work, is that, are those relationships and that trust that comes with being responsive.
Lisa Belisle: The Island Institute, although it’s 34 years old, has not had that many people who were president. So you’re in a fairly small lineage.
Rob Snyder: Yeah, I’m number two.
Lisa Belisle: So how has that been for you? To have one person who was the head for many, many years, and then for you to be the second person. The first person I believe was one of the founders.
Rob Snyder: Yeah, Philip was the founder. Philip Conkling was the founder of the Island Institute, and then there’s a co-founder, Peter Ralston, who came along shortly after. I worked with them for a long time before I became the president of the organization. They taught me a lot. A lot about the difficulty of navigating community politics, the challenges of building the funding base for an organization, about … I mean, one of the things I really enjoyed about being mentored by both of them was their consummate passion for storytelling.
They were both, they both are incredible storytellers. And so there’s so much heart in the way they cared about telling the stories of the coast of Maine in images and words, and that’s something that I’ve known I really want to hold onto. Because I do think that’s how you amplify people’s voice. It’s how you empower people to try things out and to take risks, by helping them tell their stories.
And so, they were incredible. Being number two was … So far I think I’ve defied the odds. Most people say, “You don’t want to be the one that comes after the founder. You want to be the one that comes after the one who comes after the founder.” But hey, I’m only four years in, so I’ve got ways to go.
Lisa Belisle: The Island Institute does have very beautiful publications, and has had it seem like going back to the beginning.
Rob Snyder: Yeah, it was the first thing they ever did, was the Island Journal.
Lisa Belisle: And I think when you say the importance of story is really significant, I think that can’t be understated. That people, unless they actually have a way of understanding what is going on in these communities, you wouldn’t be able to come, take it from your own life. I eman, you could relate in many ways, but it’s so special and specific.
Rob Snyder: I think so. I think it’s about, because it’s about identity, right? It actually is about how we remind ourselves of who we are. It’s where we talk about the struggles over who we’re becoming? And so the better job we do at capturing that in words and images, the more likely we are to help people navigate the day-to-day challenges that they deal with.
I think the journal, which is primarily something that goes to our members, a number of whom are island and coastal residents, is this incredible celebration of island and coastal … actually it’s really a celebration of island life and culture. But then the newspaper, which has a much, much broader readership, that really does on a monthly basis remind us of who we are, what our values, what we care about and what we’re concerned about. It think that to me is a, as an anthropologist, a major identity project. That’s how we’re going to continue to talk about and struggle over our future and who we’re becoming.
Lisa Belisle: One of the most fascinating things that I’ve learned working as a writer for Maine Magazine, previously as a writer for other publications, is that, the idea that you can’t fact-check something and that there is a truth that we can come to and understand, is really a fallacy. That you can check numbers, you can check dates and spellings, but the more important thing for people is often what they said and how they’ve said it, and the way they’re portrayed. In a small community and as someone who writes about small communities and represents them, that must be an interesting balance for you.
Rob Snyder: Yeah. I mean, I think to me it’s one of the greatest responsibilities the organization has, is to be very careful about that, frankly, the power wrapped up in representation. So to me, we’re at our best when it’s actually other people speaking for themselves, rather than the Island Institute speaking for.
I think that the singular authoritative voice speaking on behalf of anybody is long done, and we’re certainly coming to a close. What we want to figure out how to do now is to kind of facilitate and curate the creation, the representation of people in their own words. That’s kind of how we’re moving.
So rather than the expression of these communities as something you move past or through in visual and words, how do we actually have communities represented on their own terms, for selling their own stories and where we are simply facilitating and curating. So that the best quality version of that can be made available. That is a major emphasis in how we’ve continued to evolve our media work. I think things like virtual reality give you an even more intense opportunity for people to tell their own story from their own perspective in ways that …
And you know, I think shows like this do it as well because it is in the inflection of a voice or you know, in a local statement or colloquialism, that you actually get a real sense for where you are and where people are coming from.
Lisa Belisle: What are the major issues that you are working on right now?
Rob Snyder: Sure. Well, ultimately we’re very concerned about the economic base of the coast of Maine being so heavily reliant on the lobster fishery and tourism, primarily third quarter earnings from tourism. And so we’re really trying to figure out how we can broaden the economic opportunities available to people now and in the future.
There are a few major focus areas that have to do with that. So building out from the lobster fishery, trying to … we’re working with fishermen who are interested in entering into the aquaculture business, shellfish and kelp aquaculture in particular, because of the related skillsets and infrastructure that many fishermen already have. It’s a fairly … I want to say, there are some risks involved but it’s risk that can be understood and mitigated if people are interested in diversifying their marine income. Kind of back to the identity issues, right?
One of the things we know is really important is that people care that they’re living requires some significant connection to the sea. Whether or not it’s fishing for what’s here today or what’s here tomorrow, that is a huge part of the coast of Maine’s identity. And so we know that was look to the future economy, we want to make sure that we retain that important connection.
And then in addition to that, looking to your point about whether people are here and going away and returning, or coming from elsewhere. We know that the state of Maine’s broadband infrastructure on the coast is essential to diversifying economic opportunities for people. There’s tremendous amount of stranded talent in communities. People who have gone away, gotten their education, and can’t put it to work in the ways that they would like. And so we do see broadband as a fundamental issue for the economic future of the coast. Certainly this is something people recognize nationally, but I think we have a unique opportunity to do something about it here.
And then the last thing I’ll point to is the work we’re doing to help people save on energy. We are a very high cost energy state. The coast and islands are even more so. And so these communities have to be places where businesses will want to locate, and the cost of energy is a major disincentive, but also just the cost that we spend on home heating. What we spend in Maine to heat our homes is in particularly the highest in the nation, and so anything we can do there will help people find Maine a more attractive place to stay or to move to.
Those are some of our key issues, and then underneath that, you know, we are working quite a bit on workforce development related to those outcomes, and also leadership development in communities related to those outcomes. So yeah, it’s really about strengthening community economies. It’s about workforce and leadership, and then all that media work we’ve talked about is really about sharing what works from place to place, and helping people speed up the rate at which they solve problems.
Lisa Belisle: You mentioned before we came on the air that despite the fact that I think of Cleveland as being kind of landlocked, I know there’s a big lake there. As I have mentioned to you, I’ve been there. There actually is a significant island culture, [crosstalk 00:54:05] the great lakes.
Rob Snyder: Around the great lakes we have learned over the last six or seven years now we’ve been working with the Office of the Great Lakes, which is based in Michigan. They became very attracted to the Maine islands because there are 16 island communities in the great lakes, year-round island communities that actually share many of similar challenges around affordability, around access to broadband and future economic opportunity.
So yeah, they’ve been working with the Island Institute. We’ve been connecting them to the Maine Island’s Collation and to Island leaders in Maine, you know, learn how the coast of Maine has gone about connecting island communities. Through us we’re helping a couple of different organizations in the Michigan area figure out how to replicate the Island Institute.
Lisa Belisle: That seems like it would be a little bit surprising. Here you are from Ohio, and you’re background actually has some relevant to the work you’re doing in Maine.
Rob Snyder: Yeah. I feel like I’m really more and more aware of the fact that really what we are working on are challenges that remote communities everywhere are dealing with. When I lived in the high mountain west, I saw this. We’ve been invited to the Outer Banks and to the Virgin Islands and to the Gulf of Alaska. In each of these places there are island, many different kinds of island communities, whether they are landlocked or not, there are island all over the place.
And so they’re curious about the Island Institute and what can be learned from the coast of Maine’s island and coastal communities. I think as we move forward as an organization we have to figure out what role we want to play in being the host to that type of learning. I do think the coast of Maine is … I do think there’s a real opportunity and it’s happening, that the coast of Maine is viewed as a place where you can come to learn about community sustainability from people here who’ve solved really challenging problems in really practical ways. I think it appears that the leaders we work with here are happy to tell their story.
Lisa Belisle: I’ve been speaking with Dr Robert Snyder who is president of the Island Institute. He is responsible for working with island and coastal leaders in Maine to identify and invest in innovative approaches to community sustainability. This has been a fascinating conversation. I think what you’re doing is very interesting and I really appreciate the time that you have taken to come here today, and also the work you’re doing with the Island Institute.
Rob Snyder: Thank you so much. I appreciate it.
Speaker 1: Love Maine Radio is also brought to you by Aristelle, a lingerie boutique on Exchange Street in Portland’s Old Port, where everybody is seen as a work of art and beauty is celebrated from the inside out. Shop with us in person or online at aristelle.com.
Lisa Belisle: You’ve been listening to Love Maine Radio show number 333. Our guests have included Jill Hinckley and Dr Robert Snyder. For more information on our guests and extended interviews, visit lovemaineradio.com. Love Maine Radio is downloadable for free on iTunes. For a preview of each week’s show sign up for our e-newsletter and like our Love Maine Radio Facebook page. Follow me on Twitter as Dr Lisa, and see our Love Maine Radio photos on Instagram. Please let us what you think of Love Maine Radio. We welcome your suggestions for future shows. Also, let our sponsors know that you have heard about them here. We are pleased that they enable us to bring Love Maine Radio to you each week. This is Dr Lisa Belisle, thank you for sharing this part of your day with me. May you have a bountiful life.
Speaker 1: Love Maine Radio is brought to you by Maine Magazine, Aristelle, Portland Art Gallery and Art Collector Maine. Audio production and original music are by Spencer Albee. Our editorial producer is Brittany Cost. Our assistant producer is Shelbi Wassick. Our community development manager is Casey Lovejoy. And our executive producers are Andrea King, Kevin Thomas, Rebecca Falzano and Dr Lisa Belisle. For more in on our production team, Maine Magazine, or any of the guests featured here today, please visit us at lovemainradio.com.