Former nonprofit leader looks back fondly on time with Flathead Industries

While Vickie Poynter has many fond memories from her 43 years working at Flathead Industries, a trip to Seattle she took with those from the supported living program springs to mind when thinking about her time with the nonprofit. 

Taking their first ferry ride, and exploring the aquarium, Poynter helped expose them to unseen sights, “things that they didn’t experience,” she said.  

She remembers taking the group to the famed Pike’s Place Market.  

“They got such a kick out of the fish being thrown around,” she said. 

Beginning in 1989, Poynter led and grew the nonprofit as chief executive officer for 35 years, working to manage and make the web of thrift stores seen today in the valley and improve services to individuals with disabilities.  

“This was something new every day, and that didn’t change for the 43 years that I was there. You can always count on something different,” Poynter said of her time at the nonprofit. 

From surviving the pandemic with zero layoffs to penny-pinching after millions of dollars were cut from the Department of Public Health and Human Services in 2017, the now-retired CEO is finally able to reflect on her time leading. 

“They were very good to me, they were a good company, family-oriented, and I think we’ve tried to carry that. I use the word ‘we’ because I haven’t totally separated myself,” she said. “I worked with people I adored. It’s a great team here all the way around.”   

Launched in the 1970s, Flathead Industries runs several thrift stores in Flathead County. Poynter and her team organized the construction of Kalispell’s shop on East Idaho Street that touts various half-off deals for furniture and clothes. Just six blocks away is a clearance store on Fourth Avenue West where items are no more than a dollar and customers sift through large bins of goods.  

The clearance store is getting an upgrade though, with a larger facility, named the “Poynter building,” under construction on the corner of Fifth Avenue West North and East Montana Street. The current clearance store is being renovated into an administration building. Poynter expressed excitement for the expansion, which she said took several years to acquire the land for.  

But behind the thrift stores lie extensive services for disabled individuals within the community.  The nonprofit offers life skills programs, career planning aid, recreational activities, group homes and supported living care. Some of those individuals are employed at the thrift stores. 

"We are a whole. We just have different parts to that whole that have to work circular,” Poynter said. 

When she first began working for Flathead Industries in 1981, Poynter said the agency was serving 33 individuals and employed around 30 people. Today, there are over 200 people receiving services and over 180 employees. 

Before all the buzz and bustle of running and growing a company, Poynter’s work with disabled people began at Flathead High School in the late 1960s where she taught kindergartners how to crawl among other skills. Poynter also helped disabled high schoolers study and read.  

Many of the same kids she helped in high school would end up being the same people she worked with at Flathead Industries years later.   

Poynter studied at Eastern Montana College, looking to become a court reporter. Her father was an attorney, and she recalled watching the 1950s legal TV drama, “Perry Mason,” about a criminal defense lawyer.  

“I always thought that was so cool,” she said.  

Moving out to Tacoma, Washington, she landed a job at a law firm and stayed there for several years. But small-town life was calling her back, and she moved to Kalispell to raise her son. 

She worked for a couple of law firms before jumping on an application at Flathead Industries at 31 years old. 

Starting as an administrative assistant, she was promoted to personnel director within a year. Poynter said her background working for employment attorneys helped her land the role, and human resources became her bread and butter.  

In the early 1980s, she got involved with the Society for Human Resource Management, being one of the first members to launch its Flathead Valley chapter. 

She said that the organization helped communicate information between others in the field and gain insight on how to approach problems in the workplace that others may have already dealt with.   

In 2023 she was awarded the Excellence in HR Award from the Flathead Valley Chapter of the Society for Human Resource Management, which she said was an honor. Poynter holds two separate certifications in human resource management. 

By 1989, Poynter worked her way up to co-CEO with Peter Newman.   

Under her leadership, Flathead Industries underwent a transformation, absorbing three similarly structured agencies in Northwest Montana. 

The first disability service provider that Flathead Industries took under its wing was Little Bitterroot Services in 1998. Located in Plains, the agency also has its own line of thrift stores. Poynter said the company needed an executive director, and having centrally organized leadership worked out.  

Libby’s Achievements Inc. was absorbed by Flathead Industries in 2003 and Ravalli Services in Hamilton in 2016. Poynter said that pairing and communicating with similar agencies helped improve each other’s business strategies. 

All four organizations are made up of over 400 staff. 

“Not all of us do everything exactly alike because things work different in different communities,” Poynter said. “I took what they were doing really good and brought it back here, and that was a two-way street.” 

The torch has since been passed to her former co-CEO Patrick Madison, and Poynter appreciates how life has slowed down. She still plans to conduct management training at Flathead Industries but is also pursuing hobbies.  

She signed up for painting lessons and has gotten her sewing machine out.  

“I certainly like not having to set my alarm if I don’t want to,” she said.  

Reporter Jack Underhill can be reached at junderhill@dailyinterlake.com and 758-4407.