The nonprofit charged by City Hall with cleaning and improving the stretch of Ocean Avenue shared by Ingleside and Lakeside Village has a new boss.
The Ocean Avenue Association has hired Megan Catmull, 28, as its new executive director.
The Inner Sunset resident, who’s passionate about community service, has worked for multiple organizations over the last five years. Most recently, she was assistant general manager of the Highland Recreation District. Catmull has skills in financial management, fundraising, parks, facilities, events, safety and marketing. She officially started on Monday, taking over from Christian Martin.
“This is going to be one of the smaller organizations that I've worked for, but I'm really excited about it,” Catmull said.
The Salt Lake City native, who moved to San Francisco roughly three years ago, already has some familiarity with the neighborhood. Outside of the organization, she frequents the avenue, going to places like Yoga Flow SF, Charm Coffee, Ocean Ale House and Beep’s Burger, among other spots.
Catmull said she is looking forward to working with city and neighborhood partners like City College of San Francisco and potentially the Office of Economic and Workforce Development’s Vacant to Vibrant program, and on special projects like lighting improvements and landscaping initiatives like tree planting.
“I'm super passionate about this,” Catmull said. “I spend my free time doing a lot of the same work, and I'm really engaged in my neighborhood, and I'm really excited to have an impact closer to home, and I think Ocean Avenue is really the perfect place for that.”
The Ingleside Light caught up with Catmull to hear her plans for the association.
This interview has been edited for length and clarity.
How does it feel to be the association’s new executive director?
I'm so excited. I think it's such an opportunity. I think Christian Martin's done a lot of really incredible work. He's really made amazing connections with the community, and he's cleaned up the organization, just admin kind of things. I'm really excited to take that momentum and focus on a lot of exciting projects and new initiatives and just be able to support the community and support the merchants and get to know everyone. I'm just really excited.
What are your thoughts on the association in its current form?
There are some ongoing projects that I'm excited to jump straight into that's gonna make a really quick and immediate effect on the neighborhood and how things feel here. I think OAA is in a really amazing place and I think the board of directors is kind of tightening up some of their policies and setting pretty clear direction right now, and operating the way a board should, which is great and super exciting. I think it's in a really good spot and just like ready to keep this momentum, and I think some things were maybe stalled a little bit over Covid, and then I think everything's kind of bouncing back, and there's so many programs that we have an opportunity to kind of partner with and just get some amazing things done.
Is there anything you want to tackle first?
I think just getting to know everyone, getting to know the merchants, getting to know the community members, the partners, and city agencies, and different things like that that we'll be working with really closely. I really want to focus on just having some like listening sessions and getting to know everyone and making my face known among the group and among everyone here and just being approachable and consistent with everyone, so they know who to go to and that we're taking their concerns seriously and that we're acting and that we're taking our kind of fiscal and community responsibility seriously to make this a really vibrant and exciting place for everyone to be, whether it's city college students or merchants or small business owners or whatever it is.
What do you envision for Ocean Avenue long-term?
I'll have a clearer picture of what OAA is going to look like long-term once I get in and get to know where it's at right now a little bit more. Overall, like I mentioned, there are some very easy kind of long term things we can do just to be consistent with the merchants, create some new programs, partner, create a consistent calendar of events so that people know, “OK, these are the OAA events, I'm looking forward to it, I know when to be there and what's going on in my neighborhood.” And just being really visible, so taking the marketing side of things really seriously and making sure that people know that this incredible gem is here in the city and so kind of increasing some of the awareness and some of the foot traffic and keeping it really safe and clean and doing some streetscaping improvements and place making, more art more gardens, things like that.
How do you plan to promote the corridor?
I really want to lean on staff for that and see what has worked well in the past. I love a banner. I love, like I said, public art, community art. I love social media and using it as a marketing tool. We're a very tech-heavy and tech-friendly city, so making sure that we're modern and updating and that our website is accessible and that we are also providing information to this kind of diverse and multi-generational community in a way that they are going to receive it. In my experience, at my last role, we had some seniors who only read our newsletter. They only read the physical mailers that we sent that's all they're seeing and that's totally valuable and I think there's a place for that and a reason to use those and then there's also reasons to do the email newsletters and the website and social media and just really having a broad kind of holistic approach so that people can get reliable information and exciting information consistently through a variety of different forms.
