Our Collaborators

John Erwin is Vice Chancellor for government relations at UMass Chan Medical School. In this role, he leads comprehensive advocacy efforts and oversees the Office of Community and Government Relations, which serves as a liaison between the medical school and its neighbors and representation at all levels of government.

John joined UMass Chan Medical School in 2019 after serving for 13 years as the executive director of the Conference of Boston Teaching Hospitals (COBTH), a coalition of 12 Boston-area teaching hospitals that collaborate on issues fundamental to their missions of patient care, teaching, biomedical research and community service. He is an active member and former chair of the Association of American Medical Colleges Government Affairs Committee; and has served on a number of policy and community steering and advisory committees including the Massachusetts Health Policy Commission’s Advisory Council, Attorney General Martha Coakley’s Community Benefit Advisory Committee and the Boston Alliance for Community Health Steering Committee.

Prior to joining COBTH, John was the director of government affairs for Tufts Health Plan and also held positions at the Boston City Council and the Massachusetts State Council on Vocational Education.

A graduate of the University of Massachusetts Boston, John also earned a Master of Business Administration from Boston University.

Kim Fortunato formerly served as President of Campbell Soup Foundation and Vice President of Community Affairs for Campbell Soup Company (CSC). As the first female President in the foundation’s history, Kim transformed a traditional corporate foundation into a strategic, engaged funder aligning funding priorities with business strategy and developing robust employee engagement opportunities and programs. She joined CSC in 2010 as Director of Campbell’s Healthy Communities, the first position of its kind for a food company. Under Kim’s leadership, the Healthy Communities model, based on collective impact methodology, has been called best-in-class for the industry and has become the company’s signature philanthropic program.

Kim has more than 20 years of experience in philanthropy, social change, and non-profit leadership. Previously, she served as President of Operation Warm, Inc., growing the regional non-profit to one of national stature. She also co-founded Social Venture Partners Delaware, a venture philanthropy organization focused on investments in early childhood education for at-risk children.

Kim speaks nationally on the role of the private sector in public/private partnerships employing a collective impact approach. In December 2015, the National Academy of Medicine published her report on “The Private-Sector Role in Building Healthy Communities: A Collective Impact Approach.”

Awards include the first “Culture of Health Champion,” business category, from the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation; the March of Dimes Roosevelt Award for Service to Humanity, and the HopeBuilder award from HopeWorks in Camden, NJ. She has been named one of the “Best Fifty Women in Business” by NJBIZ.

Kim earned her J.D. degree from Widener University School of Law and her B.A. degree in French and comparative literature from Duke University.

Sheila Hanley (MPH) is a Senior Advisor at the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) Innovation Center supporting the development and execution of strategic initiatives in priority areas including the alignment of private and public payers in health transformation and the development of initiatives addressing social needs, including food and nutritional interventions for the underserved.  She has supported the design of multiple Innovation Center models including in the areas of primary care and value-based insurance design and oversaw the Health Care Innovation Awards (HCIA), a set of $1.4 B cooperative agreements testing promising private sector innovations. Prior to the Innovation Center she held senior positions within commercial, Medicare Advantage and Medicaid managed care organizations, implementing innovative payment, care management, quality, and data and reporting systems. In addition to her experience in health care financing and policy, she has deep delivery system experience having held senior positions in acute care hospitals, responsible for strategic financial planning, clinical service development and payer contracting. Throughout her career she has served in a voluntary capacity to community-based organization and as a founding member of several non-profit organizations, including the Hanley Center for Health Leadership.  

Thea James, MD, is Executive Director of the Health Equity Accelerator and Vice President of Mission & Associate Chief Medical Officer at Boston Medical Center (BMC). Dr. James works to coordinate and maximize BMC’s relationships and strategic alliances with a wide range of local, state, and national organizations including community agencies, housing advocates, and others to foster innovative and effective new models of care that are critical to operationalizing equity. This includes focus on the intersections of health and wealth, economic mobility, and other upstream drivers of predictable poor health outcomes.

In 2020-2021, Dr. James served on both the Mayor’s Health Inequities Task Force for the City of Boston and on the Massachusetts Department of Public Health COVID-19 Health Equity Advisory Group. Dr. James served as the chair of the Licensing Committee on Massachusetts Board of Registration in Medicine 2009-2012. She is Director of the Violence Intervention Advocacy Program at BMC and a founding member of the Health Alliance for Violence Intervention. In 2011, she was appointed to Attorney General Eric Holder’s National Task Force on Children Exposed to Violence.

Dr. James has worked in public health both domestically and globally, including with local partners in Haiti and Africa to implement sustainable healthcare models, as a visiting professor for Emergency Medicine residents in Haiti. She served as Supervising Medical Officer on the Boston Disaster Medical Assistance Team, has been deployed to post 9/11 in NYC, Hurricane Katrina in New Orleans, Iran after the 2003 earthquake, and Haiti after the 2010 earthquake.

She has been honored with several awards from the Boston Public Health Commission, the Suffolk County District Attorney, Boston Business Journal, The Boston Chamber of Commerce, the Massachusetts Public Health Association, the American College of Emergency Medicine, and others throughout her career. A graduate of Georgetown University School of Medicine, Dr. James trained in Emergency Medicine at Boston City Hospital, where she was a chief resident.

Richard MacMillan has more than 40 years of experience in nonprofit management, grantmaking, and public policy. Early in his career he was interested in learning about organizations and being part of new ideas and solutions. This led to the creation of an organization (The Arts & Business Council); later he led philanthropic advising and fundraising teams in higher education. At Massachusetts College of Art & Design he worked to create a culture of philanthropy in the nation’s only public college of art and design and organized and launched its first comprehensive campaign for private support, part of a strategy to alter its reputation from a state school to an international leader in art and design education.

At MIT, working with leaders in energy science, environment, biotech, and the arts, Richard led the domestic US fundraising team that underpinned the $6 billion+ ‘Campaign for a Better World’. His current practice focuses on advising mission-based leaders on strategic, philanthropic, and organizational development challenges.

Julie Meyer, RDN, is the Founder of Connection 151, helping B2B business owners connect with (and land!) their most valuable customers through sales strategy and coaching. Julie has more than 20 years of experience in strategic communication, global insights, and stakeholder engagement, including founding and running businesses in both the United States and abroad. She is also the co-founder of AugMentors, a leadership platform that elevates mentoring to help leaders connect more authentically and grow to their full potential, and the founder of Eat Well Global, a highly specialized communications and consulting firm that unlocks business potential and positive impact in food and health. As a B-Corp & Certified Woman-Owned Business (WBENC) and working with growing to globally recognized brands, Eat Well Global is realizing their vision of ‘A world where good nutrition is good business’. Julie is an active member of Chief, a private network of women leaders who support each other in accelerating their careers. 

Julie holds a bachelor of international relations from Tufts University, and a dietetics degree from New York University. 

Anita M. McGahan is University Professor and George E. Connell Chair in Organizations and Society at the University of Toronto. Her primary appointment is at the Rotman School of Management. She is cross appointed to the Medical School and the Dalla Lana School of Public Health, and is affiliated at the Munk School’s Innovation Policy Lab, the School of Cities, the School of Pharmacy’s W.H.O. Centre, Massey College, and the Schwartz Reisman Institute for Technology and Society.   Professor Anita is also a Faculty Member and Senior Fellow at the Burnes Center for Social Change at Northeastern University; Senior Associate at the Institute for Strategy and Competitiveness at Harvard University; and a past President of the Academy of Management. From 2014 to 2019, she was a faculty member of the MacArthur Foundation Research Network on Opening Governance.  During her 2010-2015 appointment as the Director of Toronto’s PhD Program and as the Associate Dean of Research, the School’s PhD and research rankings internationally increased from #11 to #4 and #17 to #3, respectively.

Anita spent several years at both McKinsey & Company and Morgan Stanley & Company and was previously on the faculties of both Harvard Business School and Boston University. She earned both her PhD and AM at Harvard University, holds an MBA from the Harvard Business School, and a BA from Northwestern University.

Congressman Jim McGovern represents the Second District of Massachusetts in the U.S. House of Representatives. He is a tireless champion for his home state and a global leader working to end hunger, protect human rights, and promote peace.

Jim was appointed top Democrat on the Powerful House Rules Committee 2018, serving as Chairman throughout the 116th and 117th Congress. During his tenure, Jim has worked hard to make Congress more accessible, transparent, and open. He led the charge to give all Members of Congress more time to read bills, require bills to go through the committee process instead of being behind closed doors, and created an office of diversity and inclusion to recruit and retain congressional staff that reflect the diversity of America.

As a senior member of the House Committee on Agriculture’s Subcommittee on Nutrition and Oversight, Jim has been a tireless advocate for ending hunger in America and around the world. He fought for and secured the first ever White House Conference on Hunger, Nutrition, and Health in 2022. Thanks to his advocacy and determination, military families are being screened for hunger for the first time ever, families with children are seeing enhanced food benefits, schools are able to provide more nutritious meals, and America has a plan to end hunger within the decade.

For his relentless work on behalf of uplifting human rights and strengthening America’s global leadership, Jim has been appointed Co-Chair of the Congressional-Executive Commission on China and the bipartisan Tom Lantos Human Rights Commission. Both bodies monitor, investigate and advocate on behalf of international human rights, the rule of law, and good governance.

Jim earned his BA from American University in Washington, D.C. before starting his career in the office of Congressman Joe Moakley. While working for Moakley, Jim went back to American University to earn a Master’s Degree in Public Administration. Jim successfully ran for Congress in 1996 and has won reelection in each subsequent term.

From principled stands on tough issues to working with Members of Congress from across the country and on both sides of the aisle, Jim has fought to ensure that every single person in this country and around the world is treated with dignity and respect.

Ellen Prenelus has broad experience leading business transformation, communications, strategic planning and product marketing in Fortune 50 companies. Ellen currently leads Engagement & Operations for Comcast’s Global Product organization. In this role she works across Comcast and Sky territories to elevate the team’s leadership performance and decision making, orchestrate collaboration around complex global initiatives, develop transformation blueprints into operating processes and drive cross-functional alignment to execute leadership priorities.

Ellen has held various strategy and internal communication roles at Comcast including serving as Chief of Staff and Senior Vice President of Internal Communications supporting the Executive Vice President/Chief Human Resources Officer (CHRO), and internal communications for the Chief Financial Officer, General Legal Counsel and Chief Strategic Development Officer and their functions. Prior to Comcast, Ellen worked at the General Electric Company, where she held various roles in ventures/incubation, product marketing, business development and managing program integrations.

Ellen earned a B.A. in Asian Studies with a Minor in Philosophy from Tufts University and holds several Executive Business Program Certificates. Ellen’s work has won Webby and Marcom Awards and she has co-authored a patent.

Nancy Roman formerly served as President and CEO of the Partnership for a Healthier America (PHA), a nationwide nonprofit dedicated to creating lasting, sustainable change that transforms the culture of food and activity so that all children grow up healthy. During her tenure, Nancy has PHA to more fully recognize the impact of food on chronic disease and to embrace objectives advancing global sustainable nutrition.

Prior to joining PHA, Nancy was the President and CEO of the Capital Area Food Bank in Washington, D.C., working to solve hunger, chronic undernutrition, and diet-related disease. Under her leadership, the food bank became a national voice for embedding health and wellness in hunger relief work.

Nancy sat on the leadership team of the United Nations World Food Programme (WFP), overseeing public policy, private partnerships, and communications for the world’s largest humanitarian agency. She chaired WFP’s Investment Committee with more than $1 billion under management and served on the Nutrition Advisory Committee of the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland.

Prior to joining WFP, Nancy served as Vice President of the Council on Foreign Relations, President of the G7 Group, a strategic consulting firm, and as a journalist, covering politics, the US Congress, foreign policy and economics.

Nancy is a vice chair of the board of trustees of Global Communities, an international NGO that works on hunger, health, micro-finance and lending to support lives and livelihoods, and of the Millennial Action Project (MAP), which organizes nonpartisan communities to find common ground on the issues facing millennials and future generations. She was recently named one of “The Most Powerful Women in Washington” by Washingtonian magazine. She speaks internationally on women in leadership and on the power of food to shape health.

Nancy holds a Master of Arts degree in International Economics and American Foreign Policy from the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies and a Bachelor of Arts degree in Journalism and French from Baylor University.

Betsy Rosenfeld has previously served as the Regional Health Administrator (RHA) for the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) Office of the Assistant Secretary for Health (OASH), which serves the six New England states in HHS Region 1 (Connecticut, Maine, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, Rhode Island and Vermont).

As the chief regional public health official for HHS/OASH, Ms. Rosenfeld led a team responsible for a broad portfolio of public health work.

Ms. Rosenfeld served as the primary liaison for state and local public health officials as they interacted with HHS/OASH, and her team regularly partnered with other federal agencies, as well as community- and faith-based organizations, academic public health and medical centers, health delivery systems, and philanthropies to improve health outcomes across the New England states.

Prior to serving as the RHA in Region 1, Ms. Rosenfeld served as the Deputy Regional Health Administrator (DRHA). Prior to her federal service, Ms. Rosenfeld worked as a health care lawyer at Ropes & Gray in Boston on matters ranging from patient care issues to health system mergers.

Ms. Rosenfeld graduated from Harvard College and Harvard Law School, and has served on numerous boards and committees in the New England region.

Pamela Schwartz, MPH, is executive director of community health for Kaiser Permanente. She leads the organization’s national food-security strategy and other social health priorities, including ensuring that social health interventions are integrated seamlessly into care and services provided to Medicaid members and across all lines of business. Pam and her team created the organization’s earliest outreach campaigns to help eligible members enroll in public-benefit programs. With deep experience designing, testing and scaling social health interventions and collaborating across sectors to inform and shape public policy, Pam oversees Kaiser Permanente’s $50 million Food is Medicine commitment, made alongside its role in the White House Conference on Hunger, Nutrition, and Health.  As an early advocate in the Food is Medicine movement, Pam has helped establish the evidence base and business case for addressing food- and nutrition-insecurity at Kaiser Permanente and in health care systems across America.

Pam has over 25 years’ experience in community health strategy and evaluation. She serves on many advisory committees and expert panels and has authored several journal articles. She is currently on faculty at the Kaiser Permanente Bernard J. Tyson School of Medicine.

Pam has a master’s degree in public health and completed Kaiser Permanente’s Executive Leadership Program at Harvard Business School.

Nicolene joined the Hunger to Health Collaboratory (H2HC) as its first executive director in July 2021. Her career has been focused on strategic, programmatic, and communications work in both domestic and international public health and academia. She has worked with Beth Israel Lahey Health, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Johns Hopkins University, Pathfinder International (Horn of Africa region), and others.

Nicolene is an alumna of LeadBoston, a local network of inclusive leaders, and founded an award-winning nonprofit, Roslindale Green & Clean, to renew neglected public green spaces in her Boston neighborhood. As a Friend of the Roslindale Library, she worked with the City of Boston and the Boston Public Library to help guide a comprehensive branch library renovation process. She holds a BA in Government from Smith College and an MSPH from the Tulane University School of Public Health and Tropical Medicine.

Lizzie joined the Hunger to Health Collaboratory (H2HC) in 2025, bringing nearly 20 years of experience in nonprofit communications, programming, and event strategy. Her career has focused on elevating equity-centered initiatives across sectors, with a deep commitment to advancing women’s leadership and addressing the social drivers of health. Prior to H2HC, she held leadership roles at The Women’s Edge (formerly The Commonwealth Institute) and managed special projects at the Educational Policy Improvement Center

Lizzie has served on multiple nonprofit boards and advocacy committees, lending her expertise to organizations focused on social justice, economic opportunity, and community health. She holds a BA from the University of California, Santa Cruz.