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Good morning,
Because I'm firing off this email from home without getting fancy with audience segmentation, a brief introduction for the people unfamiliar: I am Connie Matisse. I founded East Fork with my husband, Alex, in 2009, and have been serving as the CEO for the past two years. If you're newer to East Fork and we don't know each other, the overly familiar tone of this email might feel a little jarring, but the announcement is a big one for us and intimate is the only way I know how to do it. And so:
It is with so much hope, love, fear, pride, relief, excitement, confusion, clarity—all of it—that I announce I’m passing the role back to the hands of my capable husband and continuing a slow but steady process of stepping out of East Fork's daily operations and into the next chapter of my life.
Thirteen years ago during the 2008 economic crisis, I lost a job in sustainable agricultural education in New York City and took for the Blue Ridge Mountains where I—existentially tormented by the unanswered questions of who I was and what I should be doing—met and fell in love with a man crystal clear in his purpose and steady in his focus.
On our second date we made out in a tub at Hot Springs and he cooked boeuf bourguignon, and after, he pulled out his composition book and made little sketches of his would-be wood kiln and workshop and showed me pictures of pots he loved. (If you'd like to see what EF used to look like, this is a pretty fun little video). Less than six months into dating Alex, I’d committed to solving my own identity crisis by proving I would be indispensable to building out the dream he’d been carrying around like a seed in his shirt pocket since boyhood.
And so for twelve years, I've given East Fork everything I've got—often at the expense of tending to other gardens. It’s been a wild and beautiful adventure to birth East Fork to life and nurture it through infancy with Alex and our business partner and friend, John Vigeland. In so many I’ve been brought up by it—a wide-open and dynamic platform for self-witnessing and growth, every day a new opportunity to take big risks, fuck up hard, take accountability, make changes, and try again.
Since the beginning, John, Alex, and I have made it very clear to each other that the worst outcome for East Fork would be any of the three of us holding on to power long past the point that it supported our company’s mission, vision, values, and goals. But we talked less about holding onto it past the point where it aligned with who we were and wanted to become. In the summer of 2021, I started making space to sit very still outside and listen deeply to whispers asking me to pay attention to new parts of the map. This spring those whispers turned into voices loud and clear.
We haven't figured out exactly what it's going to look like, but I’ll still contribute to East Fork from a greater distance, and I’ve got no shortage of ideas about what I’ll do with myself. First, though, I’m looking forward to taking a real break to spend more time with my babies, fix the broken things around my house, get some thoughts I’ve been carrying around onto paper, and sit quietly some more to see what other voices might come forward if I give them space to do so.
I’m excited to give Alex and the marketing team the space and agency they need to find their own stride and lead the company and in a way that’s true for them. I’m relieved to see that as I’ve grown up a bit I’ve loosened my conviction in the my-way-or-the-highway type thinking I was prone to default to, and I can’t wait to cheer everyone on as they do things in their own beautiful way.
My motto for the marketing team this year has been to democratize and decentralize—to slowly shift the narrative away from myself and my family, toward a brand voice that was shared across many. I think we've made some major progress here. I want to take this moment to acknowledge and uplift the contributions of our Head of Design, Nicole Lissenden, and our Photographer & Stylist, Whitney Ott, who've given so much to crafting this brand and have seen it through many years of change and growth. Without them, East Fork would be nothing but fluff in my head.
As for Alex—he’s ready to step into this role fully energized and ready to carry the company through the next leg of its journey. I’m scared as hell for him and I’m working through big shame-y type feelings of deserting him, but I’m also full of pride and admiration for the leader he’s become. He’s so brilliant and brave and hard-working and kind and committed and curious, and we’re both so excited for our new reality where our home can be more of a safe haven from the pressures of work, where I can hold him tight and make space in our partnership for things other than East Fork. We’re ready for that.
This transition is the most seismic feeling of my whole life; I've been cycling through grief/relief since I made the decision in April, so having the New York Times have an exclusive on breaking the news without knowing how it was all going to be framed was a real emotional doozy! I'm so grateful to the writer, Regan Stephens, for telling our story honestly. Honestly honored she used some bathtub pics. You can give it a read below if you haven't already.
Thank you to everyone here who's been receptive to my midnight rants on social media, encouraged me, cheered me on, and called me out on my bullshit over the years. I appreciate you so much.
With love and gratitude,
Connie Rose Matisse
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