Allison O’Toole, CEO of Second Harvest Heartland, on pivotal career moments and the hunger moonshot

Off the Record

Growing up in South Minneapolis, Allison O’Toole, now the CEO of Second Harvest Heartland, learned the importance of community connection at her family’s store. Her dad and grandpa owned O’Toole Drug Store. It was there she shaped her early entrepreneurial spirit — by selling cigars at the counter at age 7.

“(My dad) would have me run the cigar counter at the front, and he could see me from the pharmacy,” she says in this episode of Off the Record, a podcast about the personal and professional lives of business leaders in the Twin Cities, brought to you by the Minneapolis-St. Paul Business Journal in partnership with Platinum Bank. “It was the ‘70s.”

In this episode, O’Toole, a self-proclaimed “lifelong Minnesotan,” speaks to MSPBJ Market President and Publisher Kathy Robideau and Platinum Bank President Dave Faust about the varied circumstances that fueled her career journey. Listen to learn more about:

• O’Toole’s pivotal moments working with the Minnesota attorney general’s office under Skip Humphrey.
• Leadership lessons learned from O’Toole’s time at MNSure, Minnesota’s health insurance marketplace.
• Why working with Second Harvest Heartland is the best job O’Toole’s ever had.
• Covid-19’s effect on local community needs and hunger issues.
• Elements that build a strong organizational culture — and how O’Toole stays disciplined as a leader.
• Ways people can help with Second Harvest Heartland’s “hunger moonshot” goal.

Leaders like O’Toole understand the value of moving quickly and acting creatively, just like Platinum Bank. Learn more about business banking with a different kind of bank.