Christina Wingate-Spence Loves 21613: A Spy Q & A with Cambridge Main Street’s Executive Director

The Cambridge Main Street board of directors announced in early July that they had selected Christina Wingate-Spence as the new executive director. She now leads the nonprofit organization that seeks to foster Cambridge’s economic vitality and preserve and promote its historic downtown.

The Spy sat down with this award-winning marketer in her office at the Dorchester Chamber of Commerce to discuss her background and her ambitions for Cambridge’s downtown area. (Note: Her answers have been edited for length.)

What town or city in Dorchester County did you grow up in?

Madison. So, very rural Dorchester County. My parents have lived on the same street their entire lives. … Their moms were very best friends. They grew up together, ended up getting married, and built a house on the same street. Ironically, my husband, son, and I moved from Talbot County. We lived there for a few years. We moved back about five years ago and live right across from my parents. It’s a very family-oriented environment, and even though, growing up in rural Dorchester County, Cambridge was really the hub for everything that we had to do. So, grocery shopping. I’m a Cambridge-South Dorchester graduate, so really, living in a rural area, this was still our town, just because this is where we came to shop and eat and everything.

What college did you go to?

Washington College in Chestertown.

So, you’re definitely a local kind of girl.

Ironically, I have never lived anywhere other than the Eastern Shore.

What’s your professional background?

So, I was a political science major in college. I did an internship with the Maryland General Assembly. After graduation, I took a job with a nonprofit, Upper Shore Aging, Incorporated, which is the area agency on aging for Talbot, Kent, and Caroline Counties. And I was a programs manager for them. … And, from there, I kind of took a turn into healthcare sales and marketing. … I worked for a skilled nursing facility. I’ve worked for assisted living, home care agency, inpatient acute rehab, and the hospital system. I was with them for about five years. So, really, the past 20 years, I spent marketing and using PR skills, but in a completely different area, and just decided to kind of make a change and do something different where I could utilize those skills, but not in a healthcare environment.

Why did you choose marketing and sales as a career?

To be quite honest with you, I think it found me. And it just became something, I think being a political science major and having to, again, do the internship with the General Assembly, you learn very quickly to think on your feet and be able to speak to people appropriately and sort of be a presence. I mean, that’s sort of what my initial plan was, to go to law school, and I decided not to do that. But, once I started getting into more public-facing jobs, and I’ve always been a people person, I just sort of developed a niche for it and realized that it’s sort of fun to create a brand, to entice someone to use your product or service or just create a situation where you are able to better engage with people. … It was just something that I became good at. And, being in healthcare for as long as I was, I think, one job just kind of lended itself to another job. You almost kind of find that niche. … I think whatever it is that you’re “selling,” if it’s something that you believe in, I just think it comes naturally because you want to tell people about it.

What are your plans and ambitions for Cambridge Main Street?

Visibility of our organization to the businesses and the merchants, really providing them with the support that they need to be more successful, to get more people to want to visit Cambridge, whether that’s local, obviously we want locals to support our small businesses, but making this almost sort of a destination for people as well. That’s why we’re having some of our larger events. … There’s the water, there’s so much history. Again, we have amazing eateries and shops, we have museums, art galleries. … My vision, I think the organization’s vision, is to just create a robust environment where we are engaging with the businesses, the community, the visitors, and really just being present, giving people a reason to want to support the downtown businesses and creating opportunities for them to come down here and do so.

How do you feel about the current state of Cambridge Main Street?

I feel like we’re in a really great place. We have a 12-person volunteer board of directors, and a very engaged board of directors. I think that one of the reasons why I was the choice for this role is because I am a Dorchester County girl through and through. … So, having someone that’s very familiar with the people and the background of the city, the town, and also with my skill set of marketing and communications, we have gotten a lot of positive feedback in the two months that I’ve been in this role. … They’re seeing more engagement of Cambridge Main Street out in the community and with the planning of events that we’re doing: Taste of Cambridge, Trick or Treat, Mistletoe on Main. … You know, we want more opportunities for people to come see what we have to offer. So, it’s my job to create that.

Where does your passion for the county and your work come from?

Oh, I really think that my background in rural Dorchester County, I mean, having parents that have been from here, that have worked in this county for their entire lives, really instilled in me a sense of work ethic and volunteerism. So, when I was very young, even at five and six years old, I was volunteering in nursing homes and helping with bingos. And, I mean, they instilled in me at a very young age the importance of belonging to something and helping something greater than you, really. So, that’s part of the passion that I have for, in general, just seeing something that is great, that you want to continue to help grow, and you believe in it. … And I like to tell this story. Back when I was growing up, Downtown Cambridge, it was sort of at that period where there was really not much down here. A lot of the businesses that were of my parents’ generation, that were here when I was a small child, they closed. … And over time, I went away to college, came back. … And I think that, coming back here and seeing the difference in what it was when I was growing up and the opportunities that we have now, and just seeing that growth, it excites me, because now I get to be a part of it.

Cambridge Main Street has had some trouble holding on to executive directors. How long do you plan to stay?

After more than 20 years of working for large corporations, a lot of people, I think even people that I know, questioned why I would want to leave, you know, sort of an executive-level position in healthcare, to be an executive director of a nonprofit. And, for me, I was so excited for the opportunity to, again, utilize my skills in a town that I love, to help watch that grow. I am enjoying this completely, and I can’t really, at this point, envision a time when I’m not going to enjoy it. … I am really enjoying doing something that I feel good about, and I’m enjoying every day, and I feel like I’m already making an impact and a difference. And, if that excitement in two months has already started to kind of flow out into the streets, I’m excited to see where that is in a year, two years, three years. I’m a huge believer in, you have to find the right fit for you. And, for me right now, there could not be a better fit for me at this stage in my career.

Some say that Cambridge Harbor would take business away from the downtown. How do you feel about the project?

So, our organization’s mission and vision is, again, to build a robust downtown area for us. Whatever creates that traffic, that momentum, we want to support that. … As far as the in’s and outs of that project, we don’t really have a stance on it, to be quite honest with you. We are the Cambridge Main Street district, so we pretty much stay within the confines of what’s happening in our district. And that’s another thing that I kind of want to address as well. A lot of people think that Cambridge Main Street is like Race Street, right? … And, if you look at our map, we’re Pine Street, we’re Washington Street, we’re part of Cedar Street, we’re Academy Street. We are a district. And one of the things that I am really trying to do is to support all of those businesses and to really just demonstrate that we are not just a couple of blocks. … So, my focus is what’s happening in those borders. My focus is not, to be quite honest with you, it’s not what’s happening across that bridge, because that’s not where we are. Our focus is really this district and having it thrive to the best of our ability.