When Phil Wenger stepped down nearly two years ago as head of Isaac\u2019s Famous Grilled Sandwiches, the restaurant chain he built, he made it clear he wasn\u2019t retiring.<\/p>\n
He had just tired of the rat race of the for-profit world and was, as he put it, looking for the next mountain to climb.<\/p>\n
“The nature imagery is apt given that he\u2019ll become Lancaster County Conservancy\u2019s chief executive officer Jan. 1.<\/p>\n
I\u2019ve always had a love of nature, and being outside is where my soul gets restored and where I find my mental health comes back into balance,\u201d Wenger, 58, a Lancaster city resident, said.<\/p>\n
He will succeed Michael Burcin, who announced in April he would step down for health and personal reasons. Burcin took over for longtime leader Ralph Goodno, who died last year of leukemia.<\/p>\n
The conservancy was on a short list of organizations Wenger said he\u2019d have considered leading, but he didn\u2019t apply when the position was first posted.<\/p>\n
Then about a month ago, he talked to conservancy leaders about the organization\u2019s challenges and opportunities and what type of candidate they were looking for.<\/p>\n
A couple of days later, he applied.<\/p>\n
\u201cAs soon as I lit on this idea of running the conservancy the way Ralph Goodno did, it was like two sides of a magnet coming together in my soul, and I said, \u2018This is really what I\u2019d love to do,\u2019 \u201d he said.<\/p>\n
Under Goodno\u2019s leadership, the conservancy\u2019s preserved acreage grew from 1,445 when he arrived in 2002 to more than 5,000 acres around the time of his death in June 2014.<\/p>\n
Several people who know Wenger describe him as creative, a strategic thinker and a successful businessman with plenty of connections. He\u2019s vice chairman of Lancaster General Health and past chairman of The Lancaster Chamber of Commerce & Industry and the Pennsylvania College of Art & Design. He\u2019s also served Planned Parenthood, YWCA Lancaster, United Way, Fulton Opera House and many other groups.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s impressive that the organization was able to reach out and tap someone of that talent,\u201d Sam Bressi, Lancaster County Community Foundation president and CEO, said.<\/p>\n
Wenger was foundation chair when Bressi was hired to lead it in 2008.<\/p>\n
Wenger cares passionately about Lancaster city and county, Bressi said. And, \u201che built a business that was predicated on giving back to the community,\u201d Bressi said.<\/p>\n
Isaac\u2019s offers health insurance to employees who work at least 25 hours a week and supports many charitable causes.<\/p>\n
Carol Simpson, chair of the conservancy\u2019s board, said Wenger\u2019s success as an entrepreneur and his \u201cpassion and proven track record for helping organizations grow was a key factor in choosing him.\u201d<\/p>\n
Dick Minnich, a member of the search committee and past board chair, said there were many qualified applicants, but Wenger rose to the top.<\/p>\n
\u201cHe walks into the room and has a presence about him. He always commands attention, not by saying a word,\u201d Minnich said.<\/p>\n
John McGrann is the conservancy board\u2019s vice chair, was on the search committee and is Wenger\u2019s next-door neighbor.<\/p>\n
It was natural for him to reach out to Wenger, he said, and he\u2019s pleased Wenger is coming aboard.<\/p>\n
\u201cI think it allows him to discover one more career that ignites passion and energy,\u201d McGrann said.<\/p>\n
Wenger, in an interview Thursday, said he had several conditions for wherever he ended up. The organization would have to have growth potential, and it had to be complex \u2014 a challenge.<\/p>\n
Check. Check. The conservancy has in-house counsel to handle easements and land acquisition. And \u201cpreserving our environment and using nature to hold back the forces that have been unleashed, whether it\u2019s global warming at a global scale or whether it\u2019s storm water runoff at a local scale\u201d is complex work, he said.<\/p>\n
The organization would also have to have good governance. \u201cThey have a very committed and very community-represented board,\u201d Wenger said. Finally, \u201cI had to have something that\u2019s in alignment with what feeds me. Life for me is about energy,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
Nature does that for him, he said, noting he spent part of his childhood in Ethiopia, the son of missionary parents.<\/p>\n
His father was an amateur ornithologist and his mother knew the different types of trees and shrubs around them, he said.<\/p>\n
And since he stepped down from Isaac\u2019s, Wenger has been rehabbing an old angler\u2019s cottage along the Susquehanna River on the York County side.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019ve got bird feeders all around it,\u2019\u2019 Wenger said. \u201cI have the river that\u2019s in front of me. I see the migrating birds come and go. I sat on the porch the other day and watched a snake eat a little rabbit \u2014 very sad, but this is nature. And we have a wonderful area there, a habitat, that I want to try to protect. … It anchors me. I go there and my soul is restored.\u201d<\/p>\n
As Wenger\u2019s neighbor, McGrann said, \u201cI got to see how passionate he is and how much energy he gets from being at the river.\u201d<\/p>\n
Wenger said the conservancy has gone about its mission quietly.<\/p>\n
\u201cI believe they hired me to energize this growth path and actually accelerate it,\u201d he said. \u201cAnd we do that by going out into the community and making connections by bringing in additional partnerships and raising additional money.\u201d<\/p>\n
His highest priority, and that of the search committee, is to preserve more land, he said.<\/p>\n
\u201cLancaster County is one of those special and unique places where we still have farmland and we still have wild places, and if we want it not to be like (suburban Philadelphia) we need to act now,\u201d he said. \u201cAnd I think there\u2019s a high level of interest in this community to do that.\u201d<\/p>\n
He\u2019s committed to involving city residents in environmentalism, noting the city\u2019s efforts to combat stormwater runoff that ultimately pollutes the Chesapeake Bay.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe think it\u2019s really important that if you live in the city, you are also an environmentalist and you\u2019re not given a pass,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
And he\u2019s interested in education, citing the conservancy\u2019s new education center at its Climbers Run Nature Preserve in southern Lancaster County.<\/p>\n
\u201cAnybody we have interact with our preserves, we think become missionaries to help preserve more,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n