CONGRESSIONAL HUNGER CENTER - Key Persons
Adin Burwell is from Atlanta, Georgia, and recently graduated from Cornell University with a B.S. in Agricultural Science, with minors in Global Health and Crop Management. Adin's involvement in agriculture and food justice began in High School through involvement in her community, and a program with the USDA. After years of growing and donating food to both her local and college community, Adin became interested in policy. She interned at the United States House of Representatives, and is excited to further understand and grow her knowledge about the policies around food and nutrition.
Alexandrea is from Chicago, Illinois, and recently graduated with her masters in social service administration from the University of Chicago. Prior to graduate school Alexandrea served in the Peace Corps and AmeriCorps where she worked on health related projects where she began to understand the importance of food access in improving community health outcomes. Last summer Alexandrea worked with the Chicago Food Policy Action Council where she helped to build out an internship program aimed toward creating opportunities for underrepresented identities in environmental work. Alexandrea also created a podcast - Healing the Land where she aims to create dialogue that highlights BIPOC voices on the topic of racial and environmental justice.
Alexandrea Wilson is working with the Hope Center for College, Community and Justice to analyze reports from colleges and universities outlining their use of federal Higher Education Emergency Relief Funds (HEERF). Within her research Alexandrea hopes to highlight impactful ways institutions of higher education have prioritized addressing student experiences of basic needs insecurity.
Originally from Buffalo, New York, Alfred is a graduate of the University at Buffalo, earning his MPH with a concentration in Health Equity. Shaped by his life experiences as a Black male born and raised in Buffalo's predominantly Black neighborhood, structural realities like food insecurity, lack of mobility, and mass incarceration, have fueled his aspirations to advance health and food equity in communities like his own. Following his graduate training, Alfred executed community-based research to promote food equity as a fellow in the UB Food Lab and has continued to fight food injustice by providing fresh produce, food, and meals to the underserved by working with Buffalo Go Green, a not-for-profit organization. As an Emerson fellow, Alfred looks forward to learning about successful policy strategies that can prevent food and health equity, especially in Black communities and urban areas while amplifying voices directly impacted by hunger and poverty.
Amira is a native of Roxbury, Massachusetts, where her lived experience shaped her passion in public health and social justice. She attended Northeastern University where she received her BS in health sciences with a minor in global health and Masters of Public Health. Amira first became interested in food justice during her undergraduate years when she volunteered at a local community center and taught nutrition lessons to low-income residents in Roxbury and provided food vouchers for families. Following this, she was a fellow in the Getting to Zero Health Initiative, AIDS Action where she worked in promoting community engagement in legislation that targets improving the access to comprehensive health education in marginalized populations. She plans to employ her experience in health policy, advocacy, and program planning to work on anti-poverty and anti-hunger initiatives that ameliorates health outcomes in minority and low-income communities.
Amira Iwuala is working with Center for Law and Social Policy on the Income and Work Supports team to further their work in promoting economic opportunity from the perspective of those with lived experiences of poverty. She will be supporting their evolving Community-Driven Policy and Practice project that engages anti-poverty youth and adult activists to co-create a policy agenda that explores policies that must be advanced to achieve economic justice. She will also be assisting with documenting the process and lessons learned in order to develop training and technical assistance modules for peer community-based organizations.
Anne Marie Noll is originally from the Hill Country outside of San Antonio, Texas, and studied cross-cultural studies history, peace studies, and Spanish with a minor in Latin American studies at Whitworth University in Spokane, Washington. During her time at Whitworth, she helped lead Kipos, an environmental and food justice group that advocated for environmental issues, and ran a university community garden. She further developed her interest in food justice by working with nonprofits, farmers markets, and food councils in Eastern Washington that are fighting food insecurity. After graduating, she spent a year in Bogotá, Colombia as a Fulbright Scholar teaching English at Fundación Universitaria Los Libertadores and giving lectures on climate change and food security issues in the United States. She then moved to Boston to serve at the Mayor's Office of Food Access as a FoodCorps service member, working to improve the quality of school meals throughout Boston Public Schools and teaching cooking and gardening at a bilingual public school in East Boston.
Artis is from Ellenwood, Georgia, and graduated from Kennesaw State University with a degree in geography, minors in Spanish and environmental studies, and a certificate in GIS. Guided by his passions for exploring connections between food, culture, and sustainable agriculture, Artis conducted research on community garden planning, which he presented to lawmakers in the Georgia General Assembly in Atlanta. He also participated in the Doris Duke Conservation Scholars Program at the University of Washington, where he worked in tandem to develop a food justice-based curriculum for youth at the Danny Woo Community Garden in the Chinatown-International District. As an Emerson Fellow, he hopes to continue learning about community food systems and their mitigating effects on hunger.
Job Titles:
- Co - Founder of Global School Leaders
Azad Oommen is the co-founder of Global School Leaders (GSL), a non-profit that develops effective school leadership to improve learning of students from marginalized communities around the world. GSL currently works with partners in Brazil, India, Indonesia, Kenya and Malaysia to implement school leader development programs. He was the founding Executive Director of the Central Square Foundation, an India-based venture philanthropy fund that invests in systemic reforms to improve the quality of student learning. He has worked extensively to promote young leaders, having run leadership development programs for the American India Foundation in India, City Year in South Africa, and the Congressional Hunger Center in the US. He serves on the board of the Impact Innovators and Entrepreneurs Foundation (Villgro US), the Alum Council of the Congressional Hunger Center, and is an Advisor to the Central Square Foundation and Saarthi in India. Azad has a Masters degree in Public Affairs from the Princeton University School of Public and International Affairs and a Bachelors degree in International Economics from Georgetown University.
Originally from Montgomery, Alabama, Blake graduated from the University of Tennessee-Knoxville with a major in Sociology with a concentration in Criminology and Criminal Justice, along with minors in Hispanic Studies and Political Science. During his undergraduate career, his interests in social justice and poverty alleviation led him to work on a variety of projects looking at the criminal justice system's relation to poverty and oppression. Blake also spent time working on several local political campaigns and as an intern for the Federal Defender Services of Eastern Tennessee, where he discovered a passion for serving underrepresented and criminalized populations. As an Emerson Hunger Fellow, Blake hopes to work towards breaking cycles of criminalization, hunger, and poverty.
Blake Turpin is working with RESULTS Educational Fund to develop a long-term advocacy strategy on housing policy for grassroots volunteers. Through researching and sharing talking points, engaging new and existing stakeholders, and tracking various members of Congress and their support for housing policies, Blake is preparing documents and resources for RESULTS to use in their advocacy efforts to utilize the tax code to end poverty and homelessness.
Breanna Gomillion holds a Master of Public Policy from Michigan State University. Her master's capstone applied a systems approach to expand and integrate workforce development programs with social service systems to address the variety of causes and consequences of chronic disengagement from school and work like access to safe and stable housing, food and nutrition, and health services. Before attending graduate school, Breanna worked at buildOn, a service-based nonprofit, supporting the Global School Construction Program where she worked in partnership with program staff and local residents in Senegal, Haiti, Guatemala, and Malawi to build schools, enroll out of school children, and educate adult learners. Breanna is passionate about reforming infrastructures and institutions and using public policy as a tool to eliminate systems of structural inequality on a global scale.
Britney Powell is a native of Norman, Oklahoma, and attends the University of Oklahoma in Norman, Oklahoma, studying accounting, finance, and criminal justice. At OU, Britney serves as the treasurer for the Food Recovery Network and is working to bring recovered food to title ix elementary schools. Britney is interested in working towards an environmentally friendly alternative to food waste on campus while providing food to those in need. This summer, she hopes to learn more about how to reduce student meal debt and advocacy skills to reduce the stigma surrounding the food pantry.
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- Member of Congress ( Retired ), Distinguished Professor at National Defense University
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- Internships and Recruitment Associate
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- Founding Principal at North South Government Strategies
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- Member of the Board
- Representative
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- Student, Minnesota State University, Mankato
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- Advisor, from Now on Fund
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- Professor of Practice, Hamline University
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- Master of Public Administration Candidate, Evans School of Public Policy & Governance, University of Washington
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- Principal at KCE Public Affairs Associates, Hunger Center Board Vice Chair
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- Partner, Federal Hall Policy Advisors
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- Chief of Staff, World Food Program USA, Hunger Center Board Secretary
Lauren Drumgold is working with the Food Research and Action Center to support SNAP-related policies through research, analysis and dissemination. Lauren is researching the Thrifty Food Plan, the measurement used by the USDA that represents the true cost of a healthy and nutritious diet and determines SNAP allotment calculations. She will be highlighting the challenges in using this calculation while exploring how the USDA's Low-Cost food plan could address the current challenges with SNAP allotments.
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- President and CEO at Food Marketing Institute
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- Specialist, Partnership & Outreach
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- Senior Fellow at the Food Research & Action Center
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- Power of Nutrition Research Project Coordinator
Matt graduated from Duke University in May of 2001 with a Bachelor of Arts in Philosophy.
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- Food Justice Researcher & Policy Advocate
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- Program Coordinator, Halcyon
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- Senior Officer, Global Green Growth Institute
In 1983, U.S. Representatives Benjamin Gilman (R-N.Y.), Mickey Leland (D-Texas) and Tony Hall (D-Ohio) formed the House Select Committee on Hunger to find sustainable solutions to national and international hunger and poverty. Rep. Leland chaired the committee until his death during a famine relief mission to the Horn of Africa in 1989.
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- Executive Director, Flamboyan Foundation
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- Principal at Athira Solutions, Hunger Center Board Treasurer
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- Policy Director, Berkeley Food Institute
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- Member of the Board
- Representative
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- Director, Emerson National Hunger Fellowship
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- Vice President, WE Communications
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- Policy Associate, GRACE / End Child Poverty in California
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- Senior Manager, Communications and Engagement