Meet Randle Hooks, our new Director of Warehouse Operations

As a young man, Randle Hooks was working at Kroger. 

When the warehouse manager came to his store one day, Randle started asking questions and told him he’d like to make the jump from the store to the warehouse. The manager chuckled. But Randle was adamant. He called the man every month for a year until he gave Randle the chance to work for him.

For Randle, lifting boxes of canned vegetables led to a 27-year career in the logistics industry, spanning operations and sales. He managed warehouses with hundreds of employees and built a $15 million book of business.

In February, we were thrilled to hire Randle as our Director of Warehouse Operations. 

“I’ve always been intrigued by the opportunity to help somebody,” Randle said. “You’re kind of limited in the corporate world to what you can do. …But here, you can pray with people every morning. You can pray with people throughout the day. You can invite them to church.”

He’s certainly hit the ground running. Working with our Warehouse Manager, Wilson Barton, Randle has helped us execute on a large recycling contract that allowed us to employ 10+ graduates daily for most of the first quarter. 

And he’s putting his sales experience to use. In just a few weeks of work, he’s lined up four exciting opportunities that we’re pursuing. 

We’ll see what the Lord brings to fruition, but we expect this to be a year of significant growth for our social enterprise 3PL. This should allow us to provide transitional employment for far more of our Work Life graduates, better preparing them for permanent employment elsewhere.