Nancy Laporte, Director of Operations at Inroads to Opportunities Announces Retirement After 40 Years
Inroads to Opportunities, a Union County, NJ, based non-profit human services agency, that provides programs and services to individuals with disabilities, recently announced the retirement of Nancy Laporte. August 2022 marks forty years of service for Laporte.
Laporte was with the agency for four decades and retired from Inroads as their Director of Operations, Contract Packaging Services. Laporte is also a Star conference Lifetime achievement award nominee.
According to Michele Ford, Inroads’ President & CEO, “Nancy is someone I consider a colleague and a friend. One of the traits I admire most in Nancy is that she meets every challenge with a positive, can do, attitude. Everyone at Inroads wishes Nancy much happiness and success in her next chapter. We will all miss her quick wit, caring nature and how she shared her love for cooking by providing homemade treats for every holiday.”
Nancy dedicated the last 40 years of her working life to ensure that individuals with disabilities have a training facility that prepares them for the competitive assembly and packaging industry. This training provides experience with general competitive job expectations.
Nancy began her career at Inroads as the Coordinator of Operations, a position essential to keeping all the moving parts in assembly packaging in harmony. She has been responsible for overseeing the agency’s time study process which ensured everyone is paid fairly using Department of Labor Wage and Hour regulations. Her dedication, genuine love for the field, and the people, made her the natural choice to step up into the Director position in 2017.
Directing a million-dollar assembly and packaging social enterprise that is involved in training some 400 individuals annually is no easy feat. The pandemic posed some very significant challenges for Inroads. Nancy immediately recognized that the agency must be able to meet their assembly and packaging commitments as well as balance participants schedules to work in person. Nancy and her team continued to work and put out product during the worst of COVID. This was accomplished without any trainees.
Her dedication and commitment were instrumental in Inroads retaining its assembly and packaging customers. Eventually the agency began seeing participants in person. Nancy has also been a strong safety and skill development advocate, pushing for upgrades to assist participants and the agency in moving forward.
Nancy is a resident of Roselle Park. She is the wife of Jack and mother of Megan.