Toward A More Equitable Future

310 East 38th Street,Minneapolis MN 55409

27 October, 2022

Description

Join us on October 27 for Toward A More Equitable FutureSecond Harvest Heartland hosts a panel of leaders representing health care, food shelves and community organizations to help deepen our collective understanding of today’s hunger, specifically the racial hunger divide. We’ll focus on innovative, thoughtful, local efforts underway to confront the divide and offer a call for meaningful action we can take together. This 80-minute conversation will showcase the following voices:Deisy DeLeon Esqueda, Manager at ECHO Food Shelf in MankatoStacy Hammer, RDN, LD, Director of Community Health at the Lower Sioux Health Care Center in MortonDelinia Parris, Co-Founder and Executive Director at Feeding the Dream in St. PaulDiane Tran, System Executive Director of Community Health Equity and Engagement at M Health Fairview Allison O'Toole, CEO at Second Harvest HeartlandModerated by Sook Jin Ong, Director of Diversity, Equity and Inclusion at Second Harvest Heartland More about the panelists:Deisy DeLeon EsquedaDeisy has served the Mankato community through ECHO Food Shelf since 2003, when she was hired to work with the migrant community over that summer. She quickly fell in love with the mission and the work of the food shelf. In her frontline role, Deisy believes we need to advocate for people facing food insecurity. She feels called to reduce and eliminate barriers that impede people from accessing free groceries, including the need to modify our programs to accommodate the community as it changes and offering more groceries that clients are familiar with and enjoy consuming. Deisy is inspired by the way collaboration can shift perceptions and compel collective action in addressing oof insecurity. Deisy’s family immigrated from Mexico when she was a child, and she has called central Minnesota home for 33 years. For 22 years, Mankato has been home, where she lives with her husband, Adam, and four children, Hazel (17), Eyden (16), Micah (10) and Liam (7), plus a dog, three cats, and thousands of bees. Stacy HammerStacy is Bdewakantunwan (Spirit Lake Dwellers) Dakota and comes from Cansayapi (Where They Paint the Trees Red), otherwise known as Lower Sioux.; one of four Dakota communities in MN. Stacy is currently working as the Director of Community Health and Registered Dietitian for the Lower Sioux Indian Community (LSIC). She earned a Bachelor of Science Degree in Nutrition and Dietetics and completed her Graduate Dietetic Internship program before passing the Commission on Dietetics RD Board exam. Stacy is currently enrolled as a graduate student in the University of Minnesota’s School of Public Health, studying under the Executive Public Health Administration and Policy, Master of Public Health program. Stacy's responsibilities as the Director of Community Health for the LSIC, has been developing and implementing several new public health programs and initiatives in the prevention and maintenance of chronic health conditions. Further, Stacy leads, manages, and coordinates all functions, operations, staffing and programs for the LSIC Community Health Department. Delinia Parris Delinia’s volunteer-driven, community-based nonprofit, Feeding the Dream, is serving the community with loving kindness. Specifically, they support healthy lifestyles of Frogtown and Rondo neighbors through food distributions, free framer’s market events, and basic needs giveaways, without requiring identification or income verification or limiting the number of visits or quantities of resources received. For Delinia, the work of food justice, of food care, is deeply personal. When she relocated from Chicago as a single mom, she knew the shame and humility in asking for help. She believes that healthy, life-sustaining food must be available to everyone, with dignity and respect. Delinia has been parenting for 38 years, currently as a second-generation mom raising her two grandbabies. She lives in St. Paul’s Rondo neighborhood where she has created a village of community love and support. Diane TranDiane Tran is System Executive Director of Community Health Equity and Engagement at M Health Fairview, a partnership between University of Minnesota, University of Minnesota Physicians and Fairview Health Services combining the University’s deep history of clinical innovation and training with Fairview’s extensive roots in community medicine. She is Director of the newly-launched M Health Fairview Center for Community Health Equity and a founding member of the HOPE Commission, leading enterprise-wide efforts to become an increasingly anti-racist and inclusive health system. Diane serves on the boards of the Saint Paul & Minnesota Foundation and Propel Nonprofits, and is a Past Chair of the board of directors for the Citizens League. Twin Cities Business Magazine named her one of "100 Minnesotans to Know in 2015." She was selected as a 2013 German Marshall Memorial Fellow, named one of Ten Outstanding Young Minnesotans in 2008 by the Minnesota Junior Chamber, and served as a 2006-2007 Humphrey School Policy Fellow. Diane earned a self-designed bachelor’s degree in International Social Policy with a double major in Humanities at The College of Saint Scholastica in Duluth, MN. She was invited as an inaugural member of the Young American Leaders Program (YALP) at Harvard Business School in 2015 and obtained her Certified Professional Project Manager (CPPM) from the Opus College of Business Executive Education at the University of Saint Thomas. Diane is the founder of Minnesota Rising, a statewide network of emerging leaders, and a co-founder of LOCUS, a local resource network created for and by Twin Cities BIPOC community members. The daughter of refugees, Diane is acutely aware of the influence of place in shaping an individual’s life, and is committed to building the capacity and resilience of her local communities. Allison O'TooleAllison O’Toole is likely to introduce herself as “the very proud CEO of Second Harvest Heartland.” She’s proud of her team at the food bank and the way they’ve stepped up to address the largest uptick in hunger seen in decades, delivering more food in innovative ways during the Covid hunger surge. Taking a firm stand on ending Minnesota’s hunger divide—the inequities that leave Minnesota’s Black, Hispanic, Asian, and Indigenous families facing twice the hunger of White families—O’Toole believes that we all benefit from building a more just community. Her current role is the culmination of three decades working at the intersection of health and social good to help organizations, programs and people thrive. Allison is credited with overhauling our state’s insurance exchange program, MNsure, where she oversaw a rebuild of the organization’s operations, customer service and outreach programs, resulting in three years of record-breaking enrollment. Allison served as Senior Director of State Affairs at The United States of Care, as a leader at a Minneapolis-based public affairs firm and as state director for U.S. Senator Amy Klobuchar. Early in her career, Allison dedicated a decade to criminal justice as a prosecutor in the Twin Cities. Allison received her Bachelor of Arts in Political Science and Art History from Franklin and Marshall College in Lancaster, Pennsylvania, and her Juris Doctor from Mitchell Hamline School of Law in St. Paul, and an honorary Doctor of Humane Letters from Franklin and Marshall College. She serves on the board of directors at UCare, Feeding Wisconsin and the board of trustees at Breck School. The Moderator | Sook Jin OngSook Jin Ong (first name: Sook Jin, last name: Ong) brings her passion and practice in blending human-centered design and systems thinking to be in service of building stronger, more just, and equitable food systems. She is the Director of Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) at Second Harvest Heartland. In her role, she supports the organization’s efforts internally and externally to live into its commitment to uphold DEI in its work to end hunger together. Her career spans years of consulting with state agencies, local governments, and nonprofit organizations through rethinking and redesigning their human services programs, processes, and policies to be more equitable and centers the perspectives of families, frontline staff, and communities. Sook Jin comes from the multicultural city of Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, and now having called Minnesota home for a decade, has learned to cook with the best of what's abundant seasonally and culturally in this beautiful state.