Greg Hazle was named Head Boy at Excelsior High School in his native Kingston, Jamaica, a revered honor that ordains one senior male student as the school representative—and role model. It may be decades later, but Hazle, who came with his family to the United States in 1985, is still serving out that early designation as a role model through his position today as executive director at Boca Helping Hands.
After a distinguished high-powered career with companies like Florida Power & Light, FPL Energy, Rinker Group, CEMEX and others, Hazle was considering retiring when he traded his board seat at Boca Helping Hands for an interim executive director role at the request of its board, in 2017. The organization is a Boca mainstay, providing food, job training, access to health care and financial assistance for people who need a leg up. After a few months, Hazle realized this was the work he was meant to do, and he was asked to stay on permanently. His leadership has helped extend the reach and the profile of this organization ever since; it now touches 35,000 people a year.
ON THE TRANSITION FROM THE CORPORATE WORLD TO THE NONPROFIT SECTOR
It wasn’t as if I woke up one day and decided to be all idealistic about life. I know people who have done that, but that wasn’t me. … It was after a few months of getting the opportunity to do that kind of work [that] it dawned on me that I had spent so much time enriching shareholders in the corporate world that could have been spent in a more purposeful and rewarding way in the nonprofit world. … You are touching peoples’ lives in a much more fundamental way and making a much bigger difference in their lives in the kind of work we do than I could ever imagine. This is a way more fulfilling job; I think of it as the most important work I have done in my life.
WHY BOCA HELPING HANDS IS SO CRITICAL NOW
It’s critical because of the way our economy works. The people that Boca Helping Hands serves are what would euphemistically be called the working poor—people who are trying their best. They have jobs, often more than one job, but they are not making enough to make ends meet. It’s not the profile people think of when they think of clients of an organization like ours. I saw some statistics recently that 32 percent of the households in Palm Beach county are [classified] by economists as ALICE: Asset Limited Income Constrained Employed. They are making more than the poverty limit but not enough to pay for basic needs. On top of that, you have another 12 percent of households in Palm Beach County who are at or below the federal poverty limit, so that adds up somewhere to about 43 or 44 percent of households in Palm Beach County who need help in making ends meet. That’s what we do … and inflation has only made that worse.
WISH LIST
Last year we were significantly affected by the higher demand for our feeding program—so we ended up having to divert money to purchasing food from some of our other programs, including our job training program. So my wish for this year is that we can return to our emphasis on job training and improving [our clients’] income-generating potential as opposed to just providing an income supplement to them.
HOW TO HELP
You always know if you have a mandate from the community based on how they support the work that you do. Fortunately for us, in the 25 years of our existence, we have seen that we do have a mandate from the community here in Boca Raton and southern Palm Beach County. People can continue to be a part of the work we do by contributing anything they can afford. We are always in need of volunteers. … There are varied opportunities for people to dedicate their skills and their time to do the work that we do.
ON THE IDEA OF SERVING
Regardless of what your faith is—it’s kind of a law of nature: Once you get onto giving, you realize it’s a much more satisfying way to live than always being on the receiving end.
This article is from the January 2024 issue of Boca magazine. For more like this, click here to subscribe to the magazine.
