While she didn’t actually have a premonition that she would one day be the top executive at the Produce Marketing Association, Cathy Burns can look back at her life and note that she was in preparation for this position even at a very young age.

As an only child in a neighborhood with many, many kids, she started a kids club and served as the first president of this association of peers. In high school, she was chosen to give a graduation speech and her topic was “Passing the Torch,” discussing the seamless transition from one class of leaders to the next.

And, many years later as a senior executive in the supermarket industry, she eagerly took a volunteer leadership role on a PMA committee, having no inkling that she was basically showcasing the skills and deportment that would later lead to this position.

Now, just a few short months away from taking the torch from longtime PMA leader Bryan Silbermann, it is clear to Burns that she is where she was meant to be.

Cathy Burns, a former top executive at Food Lion, who joined the Produce Marketing Association three years ago, is set to assume the role as the association’s new chief executive office upon the departure of Bryan Silbermann, who will leave PMA in early 2017 after 33 years with the organization. Photo courtesy of PMA.Burns grew up in Bangor, ME, the daughter of a letter carrier dad and a mother who was chief financial officer for a local company. Her dad was a gifted musician, and she knows clearly that while her business drive came from her mom, her sense of fun and an ability to play emanated from the patriarch in her small family.

Burns had a fairly typical childhood before graduating from Bangor High School and moving on to the University of Maine at Orono, where she achieved a double major in marketing and management. Considering how she spent the first 30 years of her professional career, she launched that ship while in high school, taking a grocery clerk position with a Shop n’ Save supermarket.

In fact, as she worked her way through college in the supermarket industry, the future Food Lion president had no plans to stay in the business.

“I actually thought working for Disney would be a great place for me,” she recalled.

Though she never pursued a career with that organization, the company’s culture and slogan -- “making dreams come true” -- appealed to Burns at that tender age. She has kept the motto in both the back and front of her mind, and believes helping employees, colleagues and now PMA members reach their potential and achieve their own goals and dreams has always has been a driver in her work life, even without wearing the Mickey Mouse ears.

Upon graduation from college, Burns was recruited by Hannaford, Shop n’ Save’s parent company, to participate in a prestigious yearlong training program along with 12 other recent college graduates.

The program identifies future leaders for the company and schools them in a variety of ways for that potential experience. The training jump started her career and put her on a path to upper management, which is where she landed in a little more than a decade.

Along the way, she served as a store manager and a training specialist in New England, and then headed south and became district manager in North Carolina. She then rose into the corporate ranks in Maine, serving as director of strategy and execution, and then as vice president of fresh merchandising, which included fresh produce and the other perishable departments.

Soon after Delhaize America purchased Hannaford, Burns was promoted to senior vice president of fresh merchandising and distribution, moving back to North Carolina to run that sector through the seven distribution centers supporting Food Lion and other Delhaize banners in the Southeast. That led to a senior vice president position for several years before Burns was named chief operating officer of Food Lion and several other banners in 2006.

From 2010 through 2012, Burns was president of Food Lion, reporting to the CEO of Delhaize America. Her task was to turnaround declining sales and improve the profit margin and traffic at Food Lion locations. She successfully accomplished the task and stepped down from her position in December of 2012.

At that point, as an experienced top female executive of a multi-billion dollar company with tens of thousands of employees and more than 1,300 retail locations, Burns had offers to move elsewhere.

Before jumping at other opportunities, she sat down with her husband, Ty, and established four guiding principles that would lead their decision-making process as they evaluated potential offers.

“I wanted to join a growth organization, with growth not only in revenues, but also in employees and other measures. I wanted to work with a board that supported both short-term and long-term growth,” she said, noting that when she was at Food Lion for nine years, short-term, quarterly performance was the driver.

Her other two guiding principles dealt with the type of organization she wanted to join. She wanted an organization that was not just about the bottom line but was focused on providing value to consumers. She wanted the organization to have a greater purpose than just creating profits. And she wanted a value proposition that matched her own core values.

With regard to PMA, when one substitutes the word “member” for “consumer,” she said those goals are met. PMA is not about a profit motive but serving its consumers, which are its members. And it is also about being involved in the social issues of the day that revolve around production and consumption of food.

Burns sees that as the organization transitions from the long tenure of Silbermann to her run. She expects an easy transition, noting that was the advantage of coming aboard three years earlier in 2013.

“It is a great legacy and we are having a seamless transition,” Burns said.

But she also noted with satisfaction that PMA is continuing to take a more active role in such issues as child obesity and sustainability. Clearly, those are bigger-than-bottom-line concerns that she wants to play a role in addressing.

When evaluating the original offer from PMA, Burns said she followed these guiding principles closely and PMA was her only suitor that met all four. When that was determined, she said the decision to join the organization was fairly easy.

Three years into the job, it has met her expectations, but Burns has dealt with a major surprise. The fact is, she came from a multi-billion dollar company with 1,300 stores, expansive headquarters and 75,000 employees. PMA has a budget in the millions, with 80 employees and a relatively modest headquarters.

“But the world got bigger for me,” she said with a bit of irony. “We are operating on the global stage and bringing leaders together from all over the world. We can have a magnificent impact on not only one company (as she did at Food Lion) but on an entire industry.”

In discussing this, she again mentioned the role PMA can play in helping to stem child obesity, improve the sustainability of food production and feed the billions of people in the world. She said the organization is on the cusp of hiring a chief marketing officer, whose role will be to market the fresh produce industry, not PMA per se.

In recent years, PMA has increased the role it has played in promoting the products of its members through efforts such as the licensing of the Sesame Street characters for member use.

“The demand equation will be one of the areas of concern for our chief marketing officer,” she said.

While Burns has had a heavy load for many years as a senior executive, she also has found a good work-life balance. She and her husband have a blended family that includes his two older sons who live in Arizona as well as their two younger daughters who live at home.

Tragically, Ty’s oldest daughter, Brittany Burns, died earlier this year of a rare strain of ovarian cancer, which took her life in February shortly after it was diagnosed. She and her fiancée, NFL player Tony Steward, did establish the Britt and Tony‘s Fight Like a Girl Campaign to raise money for ovarian cancer awareness and research. Cathy Burns said the produce industry has been amazingly generous in helping to fund this campaign.

At home, daughter Alexis is a senior in high school while daughter Zi is a seventh grader. Cycling is both a family passion and Ty’s business, as the Burns family owns three cycling shops in North Carolina under the moniker, the Spirited Cyclist. Ty, in fact, has participated in the last two PMA Tour de Fresh cycling events in California. The entire family enjoys the sport and a family vacation cycling in Eastern Europe is in their sights.

Burns has succeeded well in this world with little hindrance of the infamous glass ceiling. While she appreciates the very real struggles along that line that have confronted many of her gender, Burns has not overtly felt that bias.

“Hannaford was very forward-thinking and it was never a problem,” she said. “We had a trailblazer at Hannaford before us who became the first female store manager and set the path for us to follow.”

Somewhat in jest but also telling, she noted that as her career progressed through the retail ranks and beyond, one manifestation of gender disparity she noticed was the non-existent line at the women’s rest rooms at industry conferences.

When first becoming involved at PMA and now through her intimate involvement, she said the diversity of that organization is definitely a plus and one she notes with pride now that she is a very visible representative of the association.