Author » 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.
Berg currently serves as Executive Director of the New York City Coalition Against Hunger, a non-partisan 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization that serves as an umbrella group for the more than 1,200 charitable soup kitchens and food pantries in New York City, and the more than 1.2 low-income New Yorkers forced to use them. The Coalition provides technical assistance, develops new leaders, conducts research, and engages in public policy advocacy work to not only ensure that low-income New Yorkers have enough food, but to enable hungry families to move "beyond the soup kitchen" toward economic self-sufficiency. More information about the Coalition can be found at: www.nyccah.org.
Before joining the Coalition in 2001, Berg served in the the Clinton Administration in Senior Executive Service positions at the U.S. Department of Agriculture. He 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. He previously served as the USDA Director of National Service, helping start the USDA AmeriCorps Program, which enaged more than 2,000 people in full-time national service service for a year on environmental, anti-hunger, and rural development projects. Also while at USDA, he served as Director of Public Liaison and as Acting Director of Public Affairs and Press Secretary.
From 1989 to 1993, he worked as a policy analyst for the Progressive Policy Institute and as a domestic policy staff member for then President-elect Bill Clinton's transition team.
Berg has published widely on the topics of hunger, national and community service, 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 U.S. Secretary of Agriculture's Honor Award for Superior Service and the Congressional Hunger Center's Mickey Leland National Hunger Fighter Award.