Joel Berg

Joel Berg is a nationally recognized leader in the fields of hunger and food security, national and community service, and technical assistance provision to faith-based and community organizations. He is currently executive director of the New York City Coalition Against Hunger, which represents the more than 1,200 nonprofit soup kitchens and food pantries in New York City and the more than 1.3 million low-income New Yorkers who are forced to use them. The Coalition works to meet the immediate food needs of low-income New Yorkers and enact innovative solutions to help them move "beyond the soup kitchen" to self-sufficiency.

He is also author of the book All You Can Eat: How Hungry is America?, published in November 2008 by Seven Stories Press.

Before becoming executive director of the New York City Coalition Against Hunger in 2001, Berg served two years 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 from poverty to self-sufficiency.

He was USDA coordinator of food recovery and gleaning the previous two years, working with community groups to increase the amount of food recovered, gleaned, and distributed to hungry Americans. Also while at the USDA, he served as director of national service, director of public liaison, and as acting director of public affairs and press secretary. From 1989 to 1993, he served as a policy analyst for the Progressive Policy Institute and a domestic policy staff member for the President-elect Bill Clinton's transition team. Berg has published widely on the topics of hunger, national and community service, welfare reform, and grassroots community partnerships.

A native of Rockland County, NY, and a 1986 graduate of Columbia University, Berg now resides in Brooklyn, NY. He is the past winner of the US Secretary of Agriculture's Honor Award for Superior Service, the Congressional Hunger Center's Mickey Leland National Hunger Fighter Award, and Vice-President Gore's Hammer Award for Reinventing Government.