The new president and CEO of Foodshare, James Arena-DeRosa, exudes energy, passion and perspective about food security and hunger issues built on a lifetime of helping others.
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The new president and CEO of Foodshare, James Arena-DeRosa, exudes energy, passion and perspective about food security and hunger issues built on a lifetime of helping others.
“My whole life has been about making a difference in the lives of other people — it's all I ever wanted to do since I was little,” Arena-DeRosa said from Foodshare's Bloomfield office, where he started work Sept. 1.
He oversees a food bank serving Hartford and Tolland counties that provided enough food for 12 million meals to 300 partner programs last year. It has 55 staff, about 6,500 volunteers, and took in $31.6 million in revenues in 2014, which included donated food valued at $25 million.
He's fresh off a successful Turkey and Thirty campaign that collected 16,188 turkeys for Thanksgiving and roughly $854,000 in donations. Arena-DeRosa experienced advocacy growing up in Walpole, Mass. His mother, a nurse, was active in the civil rights movement, helping shape her son and his three sisters.
“I grew up in the lap of the civil rights movement,” said Arena-DeRosa, 59, who's married and has two sons in college. “Freedom Riders came to our house on fundraising tours in the early '60s … anti-war rallies, environmental meetings, hunger walks — all at my house,” he said, remembering congressional candidates visiting, too.
“It had tremendous influence on who I am,” he said, also noting the spiritual influence from his Xaverian Brothers High School.
He took his passion for helping others to organizations that included Oxfam America as director of public advocacy, the Peace Corps as New England regional director, then the U.S. Department of Agriculture as Northeast regional administrator for Food and Nutrition Service, where he oversaw $12 billion for 15 federal food and nutrition programs.
After leaving USDA in 2013, he unsuccessfully sought to be the Democratic candidate for Massachusetts lieutenant governor in 2014, continuing a lifelong interest in politics. After college, he learned political and community organizing from Arturo Rodríguez, now president of the United Farm Workers, and worked on state and national campaigns for progressive Democratic candidates, according to his LinkedIn profile.
He may run for office again some day, but is focused on effecting positive change through Foodshare.
“When I was at USDA, it was great, except I was almost too far removed from the community work,” Arena-DeRosa said. “One of the attractions to me for this job was that I was able to reconnect with the community, the people who are directly serving the public. We just learn so much from them from their work, and then using those experiences to influence policy, and that's another part that I couldn't do when I was in government.”
Foodshare does great work feeding people, he said, but he also sees its interest in advocating for ways to solve the problem of hunger and better nutrition, which affects health and the economy. He envisions taking successful local models to state and national levels — to fuel larger change.
“We're still a traditional food bank in the way we do a lot of things, but I think the way we think about things is forward-looking and so I think if I could help Foodshare move in that direction, it would be a good thing,” Arena-DeRosa said of “a little more emphasis on solving the problem of hunger, the kind of policy solutions … to really make a difference in people's lives.”
Mark La Fontaine, chairman of Foodshare's board, said Arena-DeRosa has the high-level energy and vision directors sought.
“What James very clearly set forth was his desire to be part of an organization that had a very strong core mission, but also one that was interested in addressing the needs of the community that it served in a way to reduce that need,” La Fontaine said.
Arena-DeRosa's other passions include playing piano, reading about history and politics, and enjoying art and culture.
Then there's baseball. Arena-DeRosa is a big Boston Red Sox fan and holds season tickets. A small model of Fenway Park sits on his desk. He learned from a reporter Dec. 2 that the team had just signed top free agent pitcher David Price.
“Are you serious?” he said, his voice rising. “The Red Sox did? Oh my God. You made my day.”
