The perfect recipe

Nicola Williams believes in the sustainable food movement and supporting the growth of local business with a food vision for New England. That vision, aimed at the middle of this century, means that at least 50 percent of all food consumed is clean, fair, just and accessible food to all. As founder of the Williams Agency, a marketing and event planning agency focused on sustainable food, culture and arts, her role is to spread the good word about the movement — something she has been doing so for many years.

Author: Marceline V PhotographyFood is prepared at Boston Jerk Fest.

“I am part of the movement so I am invested in this work in terms of pushing forward with our goals to source more locally, to get more people eating local food, to get a diverse community in the pipeline embracing local food,” Williams said. “It is great for the environment. It is healthier. It provides living wages on a local basis. There are so many benefits around supporting local sustainable food.”

When Williams started her Cambridge-based Williams Agency in 1995, the sustainable food movement was not what it is today. But she quickly found her way into work that helped promote health and healthy living, including anti-smoking campaigns, breast and cervical cancer awareness and teen pregnancy prevention.

This early work helped her create her business around a vision of marketing with a mission and for movements.

“I wanted a way to continue to help the community that I was passionate about and at the same time make a living. This was actually a great way to do that by starting a company whose mission is to do just that,” Williams said.

Early on, the Williams Agency became involved organizing the largely successful, decades-running, Cambridge Carnival International event, which celebrates many African-rooted cultures. There’s music, a parade and a diverse array of food offered during a day-long event every fall that has drawn as many as 100,000 people.

Such events have become the norm for the Williams Agency, which also organizes other food and cultural festivals, including the Boston Local Food Festival, Hyper-Local Brewfest and Local Craft Brewfest.

For Williams, it’s a perfect recipe that mixes her professional background in marketing, brand development, advertising, public relations and event promotions with her love of food, cultural events and the diversity that such celebrations promote.

It’s also made good business sense. There’s a strong niche market for the Williams Agency, which has been able to grow along with the explosion of the foodie culture around Boston and the clamor to support locally-produced agriculture products.

Williams also has done work for the London Carnival, with the Sustainable Business Network and runs marketing campaigns for the more than 20 Boston farmers markets.

She says that 90 percent of her customers are nonprofit or social-driven organizations.

In addition, her company donates a lot of time to these kinds of organizations, which include the American Lung Association, Children’s Museum Boston, Jobs for Youth, Teens Against Gang Violence and the national office of the NAACP Legal Defense Fund.

Author: Kenny HydePeople dance at Boston Jerk Fest.

Of all her work, though, Williams’ likely favorite is the Boston Jerkfest, which she launched two summers ago and was this summer on June 26 and June 27 in the South End. Last year, the Boston Jerkfest attracted 4,000 people.

The popular Caribbean foodie festival connects with her roots. Born in Jamaica, as a child Williams arrived in New York with her parents but returned to Jamaica for some of her teen years. She remains very connected to Jamaican culture.

The Jamaican hot and spicy seasoning jerk lies at the heart of the JerkFest. Jerk is used as a rub applied to marinate and cook all sorts of meat, from chicken to goat to shellfish. But the festival also is a cultural celebration of all things Caribbean, along with its focus on locally-produced food, the importance of sustainable agriculture and the strong connection between people and the land they live on.

Williams views these environmentally aware attitudes as occupying the heart of Jamaican culture as well as the sustainable food movement. These are big parts of the draw to the Boston JerkFest. The event attracts both foodies and those who love sampling different kinds of food, as well as those who support the food movement through locally sourced and produced food.

The event also attracts folks from Boston’s sizable Caribbean population, as well as visitors from large Caribbean communities in Hartford and New York, as well as Canadian cities such as Montreal and Toronto.

“We really created an event to connect these communities in one place, and it brought a lot of excitement,” Williams said.

Expansion north

Author: Robert TerryPatrons at the SBN Brewfest

In fact, the success of the Boston JerkFest has prompted her to launch a similar event in Vermont this summer — the Vermont JerkFest & Reggae Festival, from July 31 to August 1 at the Killington Resort in Killington, Vt. The hope is the Vermont event can match the attendance of its Boston brethren.

Her hope is that the Vermont’s prevailing attitude regarding environmental protection along with the value attached to local farming will contribute to the festival’s attractiveness.

The Williams Agency also has partnered with Jamaica Awareness, a Florida-based Caribbean cultural promotion group that organizes food and ethnic festivals throughout the country, in addition to the Miami Reggae Festival.

Though Williams said she was always organizing something when she was young, including an “American Festival” while spending time with her family back in Jamaica, her professional career did not begin in marketing.

After graduating from high school in Brooklyn, Williams went on to earn a bachelor’s degree in economics from Wells College in upstate New York. When she graduated in 1985, she moved to Boston and got a job as an analyst with New England Financial.

Other options

Following her first three years at the company, she switched into a role as a marketing consulting. She served in this capacity for four more years and then, with no more room to grow at the company, began to think about other options.

She got part-time work as a consultant working with the Cambridge Business Development Center on an anti-smoking campaign, which served as a precursor to the work that would become her passion. So, she decided to follow that dream and develop into her own marketing agency.

Author: Veronica ThompsonA dish from the Boston Local Food Festival.

After successfully bidding on some other marketing projects, she started the Williams Agency in 1995 to handle the work. Like most startup entrepreneurs, she began her work at home, but after two years opened up an office in Cambridge.

Twenty years later, the Williams Agency continues to operate on a relatively small scale, which Williams said is a choice that allows her to focus on the kind of work she wants and not have to worry about bringing on clients just to make ends meet. At times over the years the agency has had as many as six staff employees, but now the numbers hovers at four fulltime staff. However, the seasonal nature of the work means she’ll bring on board another dozen or so other employees to help out as needed, particularly with production of marketing materials. As for events, the agency expands and contracts as needed, working with a varying number of event-day staff, sometimes as many as several hundred.

Williams displays an authentic sense of pride and satisfaction about her company’s several-decade run, from the passion projects on which she focuses to the small, family environment atmosphere of her office.

Laury Hammel, executive director of the Sustainable Business Network, which works with the Williams Agency on the Boston Local Food Festival, among other events, says that Williams’ real strength is taking a concept or idea and transforming it into a successful and highly organized event.

“She is really a visionary. She can look at a situation, see what is possible and go about making it work,” Hammel said.

He also credits her ability to bridge all the relevant parties required to make an event a success.

“She brings various communities together. She is so collaborative and inclusive,” she said. “She is a multitalented, extraordinary human being and Boston is lucky to have her.”