Balancing Act

By Jana F. Brown

AMY SHAFMASTER ’90, P’30 COMBINES A SUCCESSFUL AMATEUR RIDING CAREER WITH MANAGING HER FAMILY LOBSTER BUSINESS.

It’s hard to believe, and Amy Shafmaster ’90 can hardly believe it herself, when she admits that she has never tried lobster. Not even a succulent claw or a flavorful tail.

What makes the current parent and former Berwick student’s confession most extraordinary is that Shafmaster has spent the better part of the last three decades working for her family business, Little Bay Lobster Company.

“My father would kill me for sharing that,” Shafmaster laughs, referring to her dad, Jonathan, who founded Little Bay in the 1980s.

Shafmaster’s lack of taste for lobster makes her an anomaly in her crustacean-focused family. But she is a self-described “character,” who laughs easily about her tastebuds’ aversion to seafood. Shafmaster splits her time between managing Newington, New Hampshire-based Little Bay in her role as president, and competing on the amateur riding circuit from her second home base in Ocala, Florida. Shafmaster competes for 25 weeks of the year, mostly up and down the East Coast, but she also has traveled to Europe for shows. In 2020 and 2021, her horse, a 14-year-old Dutch Warmblood named Carlos, ranked No. 1 in the country on the amateur circuit (a broken leg for his rider sidelined Carlos for part of 2022). Last year, horse and rider won the Amateur Classic and the Hampton Classic Horse Show, among other honors. The pair started 2023 with a January victory at the High Amateur Classic at the World Equestrian Center in Ocala.

To remain competitive, Shafmaster, who fell in love with riding at age three, frequently jets between Florida and New Hampshire, where she turns her focus to the lobster business. With 14 offshore boats in its fleet, Little Bay Lobster Company is the largest harvester of North Atlantic lobster in the world. Its lobstermen catch millions of pounds of shellfish each year.

“We fish year-round, so we constantly have a fresh supply of lobster, which is rare,” Shafmaster explains. “Even in Canada, they have seasons where they only let the boats fish at certain times of year. We have four-man crews that go out for 10 days at a time, 300 miles offshore.”

After attending Berwick from fourth through eighth grade and graduating high school from Governor’s Academy in 1990, Shafmaster studied economics at Tufts University. She recalls with great fondness the community she found at Berwick as a student, and that positive memory is one of the reasons her son, Eli, is now enrolled as a fifth grader.

Once out of college, Shafmaster decided she wanted to return to the Seacoast and join Little Bay. She started in accounts before slowly moving up the chain to sales and operations. An astute and respected manager, she thrives within a male-dominated field, which she attributes to her toughness and knowledge of the industry. Shafmaster oversees every aspect of the business, including sales directly to customers (a distinct model that cuts out the middlemen central to most fishing businesses) and making sure domestic and international shipment of live lobsters goes smoothly, especially since Little Bay’s largest export is to China. Her job also involves paying attention to weather patterns (or global pandemics) that change fishing habits and subsequently impact supply and demand.

“Our biggest issue is getting space on the airlines and the fact that lobster is perishable,” she explains, noting that her economics degree has come in handy. “So, if you have delays, that is a problem. It’s the logistics of it all that I manage. I’m mostly busy trying to make sure I get everything done at our company and then also trying to train and ride and compete with my horse and care for my son. It’s a lot, but I’m balancing it so far.”

Aside from the logistics, Shafmaster shares that she’s often fascinated by the rainbow of crustaceans that come in on the haul. Little Bay boats have caught rare lobsters that range from yellow to bright blue to albino. A few now live at the New England Aquarium in Boston, while one — a 25-pounder that is half red and half yellow — is on display in the lobby of Little Bay headquarters in Newington. Shafmaster still doesn’t plan on eating any of them.

“At this point, I can’t,” she laughs, “because I’ve gone so long.”

Alumni Spotlight

Jonathan Nass ’90

By Jana F. Brown

Not long after 9/11, attorney Jonathan Nass ’90 was working as a litigator in Washington, D.C., when a colleague called him with a job offer. The government was working on the largest overhaul of the national intelligence community since the end of World War II, and Nass was asked to be a part of the effort.

Among many other projects in which Nass was involved through the newly formed Department of Homeland Security was port security. Following Hurricane Katrina in 2005, which devastated the Gulf Coast of America, Nass worked on a 10-month-long investigation of what went wrong — and right — in preparation for and in the aftermath of the storm.

“It was interesting that, between 9/11 and Katrina, we had spent an enormous amount of money on preparation to prevent or respond to a future terrorist attack,” Nass says. “One of our findings was that there are other major threats out there, like massive hurricanes, that were not getting appropriate attention.”

The result was a change in systemic thinking on the coordination between local, state, and federal officials in response to natural disasters. The knowledge Nass gained through that work, in addition to vast policy experience earlier in his career, has prepared him for his current role as CEO at Mississippi State Port Authority (MSPA) at Gulfport. Nass previously occupied the same role at the Maine Port Authority (MPA) from 2018-2021.

After years away from his home state, Nass returned to Maine in 2006, where he worked in private practice before taking an assignment as a field officer and then as a senior policy advisor to the U.S. Department of State. That job included being embedded with a combat infantry battalion in Iraq from 2008-2009. Two years later, Nass was working for Maine Governor Paul LePage as an advisor on matters ranging from emergency management to transportation. That led to his next stint as deputy commissioner of the Maine Department of Transportation in 2014 and his eventual role at the MPA.

“I focused on making the port authority truly independent and effective,” Nass says. “We were successful in revitalizing the container terminal in Portland. We had 20% growth virtually every year we were there. The lesson is that niche ports can be very profitable if you utilize them correctly.”

A native of Acton, Maine, Nass followed his older brother, Christopher ’86, to Berwick, where he learned it was “cool to be yourself and cool to take risks.” He continued on to St. Lawrence University, before earning his JD at Catholic University in 2002. Despite all his years of experience gleaned not only from his time at the MPA, but as a policy advisor to high-ranking officials in the U.S. government and beyond, when the MSPA came calling, Nass initially had no intention of leaving his home state again.

“I pulled the terminal up on Google Earth and realized this was really an uncut gem that they reconstructed from Hurricane Katrina and spent $600 million on a beautiful new terminal,” Nass says. “The problem was that it was underutilized — and that’s a great problem to have.”

Since becoming CEO of the MSPA at Gulfport, Nass has overseen tremendous growth. The port serves as the second-largest importer of green fruit in the U.S., including bananas, pineapples, and mangos.

“We’re feeding the entire middle of the United States with good fruit,” Nass says.

With his oversight, the port has become more efficient in moving its perishable freight as well as new types of cargo. Nass is proud of the diversification of the port’s role in the region. He points out that Gulfport is one of only 17 strategic seaports in the U.S., meaning it maintains a considerable military presence along the coast and requires movement of military cargo. In addition, Gulfport is home to a casino, making it the only port authority in the U.S. to have gaming as part of its core business; supports a research vessel owned by the University of Southern Mississippi; will soon serve as the headquarters for the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) and its uncrewed vessels; and is building a facility to house a drone company whose products have military, research, and industrial uses.

“With all the excitement about the blue economy and the potential economics of focusing on ocean ports,” Nass says, “we are uniquely situated as a deep-water asset on the coast.”

In terms of economic impact, Nass shares that the port provides about 18,500 (direct and indirect) jobs, creating a regional impact of $3.8 billion. That impact is not lost on Nass, especially in light of supplychain issues generated by the COVID-19 pandemic and the temporary blockage of the Suez Canal by a large container ship in March 2021. Additionally, Nass notes, larger-capacity container ships are causing backups of supply trucks on the ground, delaying transport to the final destination.

“It’s all a system; it’s not just going from point A to point B,” Nass says. “What we’ve been pushing is a focus on developing more capacity throughout the country, and we think this has a host of benefits beyond just the movement of freight. It spreads out congestion, gets product to market quicker, and is usually less costly [for the consumer]. By diversifying ports geographically around the country, the end result is a more efficient supply chain.”