Special Guest

Joel Berg currently serves as the Executive Director of the New York City Coalition Against Hunger and a Senior Fellow at the Center for American Progress. Since 2001, Berg has led the New York City Coalition Against Hunger which represents the more than 1,100 nonprofit soup kitchens and food pantries in New York City and the nearly 1.5 million low-income New Yorkers who live in households that cannot afford enough food. The Coalition works not only to meet these residents’ immediate food needs, but also to enact innovative solutions to help society move “beyond the soup kitchen” to self-sufficiency. The Coalition recently launched pilot national service projects in 17 states from coast to coast, making the work of the organization national in scope.

Prior to his work with the Coalition, Berg served for eight years in the Clinton Administration in senior executive service positions at the USDA. For two years, he acted as USDA Coordinator of Community Food Security, a new position in which he created and implemented the first-ever federal initiative to better enable faith-based and other nonprofit groups to fight hunger, bolster food security and help low-income Americans move out of poverty.

Hunger and SNAP Facts