Chair
Matthew E. Melmed
Zero To Three
George L. Blackburn, M.D., Ph.D.
Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center
Carolyn C. Cavicchio
Western Union Foundation
Dagmar Farr
Food Marketing Institute
Dan Glickman
Bipartisan Policy Center
Alison Goldberg
Wealth for the Common Good
Louise Hilsen
Nestlé USA
Clinton Lyons
The National Legal Aid & Defender Association Service Corporation
Marshall L. Matz
Olsson, Frank & Weeda
Ronald F. Pollack
Families U.S.A. Foundation
Norman Rosenberg
Organizational Consultant
Marion Standish
The California Endowment
Alan J. Stone
Attorney/Writer/Consultant
Judith H. Whittlesey
Susan Davis International
Michael J. Wilson
Americans for Democratic Action
James D. Weill
FRAC President
Matthew Melmed is Executive Director of ZERO TO THREE, a nonprofit organization that promotes the health and development of infants and toddlers by translating research and knowledge about the kinds of early experiences that help children thrive into a range of practical tools and resources for use by the adults who influence the lives of young children.
Mr. Melmed currently serves as the first elected Chair of the Children’s Leadership Council, a coalition of 55 leading national policy and advocacy organizations working to improve the health, education and well-being of America’s children and youth.
Mr. Melmed served for 13 years as Executive Director of the Connecticut Association for Human Services and prior to that was a Managing Attorney for Connecticut Legal Services.
Dr. Blackburn is the S. Daniel Abraham Associate Professor of Nutrition and the Associate Director of Nutrition, Division of Nutrition at Harvard Medical School. He is the Chief of the Nutritional/Metabolism Laboratory, and Director of the Center for the Study of Nutrition Medicine (CSNM), Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center in Boston, Massachusetts.
At CSNM, Dr. Blackburn has launched a novel scientific approach to food and exercise medicine in an ongoing effort to understand the science of healthy living. He is also working with neuroscientists to pioneer research into the neurocognitive correlates of diet and physical activity patterns in lean and obese subjects.
Carolyn Cavicchio is an expert in corporate community involvement and philanthropic programs, as well as a strategic planner, facilitator, analyst and program developer. She is currently Director of Stakeholder Engagement for the Western Union Foundation, where she plays a critical role in creating deeper relationships between the Western Union Foundation and its supporters. Before joining Western Union, she served as Senior Research Associate for Global Corporate Citizenship at The Conference Board, and previously founded and led the Philanthropy Division at Changing Our World, where she consulted to Fortune 500 companies and private foundations. Prior to working at Changing Our World, she spent 13 years as a consultant at the TCC Group.
Ms. Cavicchio was Deputy Director of the Twin Towers Fund—the charity established by Mayor Giuliani to serve the families of the rescue workers killed in the attacks of 9/11. She is an adjunct professor at the Heyman Center for Philanthropy and Fundraising at NYU, and is also a member of the Board of Directors of America’s Camp, a week-long summer camp for children who lost a parent on September 11, 2001.
Dagmar Farr serves as Senior Vice President, Member Services of the Food Marketing Institute (FMI). In her position, Ms. Farr is responsible for membership and member services designed to achieve FMI’s mission: to represent the interests of the retailer and wholesaler members.
Ms. Farr was formerly Group Vice President, Legislative, Consumer Affairs and Sponsor Development, where she coordinated federal and state affairs. She continues to oversee FMI’s consumer affairs department. She serves as FMI’s primary liaison with national consumer organizations. She joined FMI in 1981 as a legislative assistant and fundraising coordinator of FoodPAC, FMI’s political action committee.
Prior to FMI, she was associate director of State Government Affairs for the National Association of Chain Drug Stores. She is a graduate of Goucher College.
Ms. Farr and her husband Carl reside in Washington, D.C. and have one son, Victor Farr.
Dan Glickman is a senior fellow with the Bipartisan Policy Center President of Refugees International (RI). Since 2004, Mr. Glickman has served as Chairman and CEO of the Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA). Prior to joining MPAA, Mr. Glickman served as the Director of the Institute of Politics at Harvard University’s John F. Kennedy School of Government from 2002 to 2004.
From 1995 to 2001, Mr. Glickman served as Secretary of Agriculture in the Clinton Administration. From 1976 to 1994, he served in the U.S. House of Representatives representing Kansas’ 4th Congressional District.
Alison Goldberg coordinates Wealth for the Common Good, a network of business leaders and wealthy individuals that support progressive tax policies (www.wealthforcommongood.org). She has worked on food policy and economic justice in several organizations, including the Food Research and Action Center. Prior to her current position, Alison was Marketing & Outreach Director at SLO Chai, a start-up fair trade and organic tea company. She served as the first Donor Education Coordinator at Resource Generation, a non-profit that mobilizes young philanthropists to support social change. Alison is the co-author of Creating Change Through Family Philanthropy: The Next Generation.
Louise Hilsen serves as Vice President of Government Relations for Nestlé USA. Nestlé USA is a subsidiary of Nestlé, SA, the world’s largest food company, based in Switzerland, with global sales in 2009 of about $100 million.
Prior to joining Nestlé in 1993, Ms. Hilsen worked for several Members of Congress in a variety of capacities – from Legislative Director and Press Secretary to Chief of Staff. President Clinton appointed her Deputy Executive Director of the Bipartisan Commission on Entitlement and Tax Reform.
Clinton Lyons currently serves as Chairman, President and CEO of the National Legal Aid & Defender Association (NLADA) Insurance Program, a wholly owned corporate subsidiary of NLADA, a position he assumed full-time in July of 2005 after serving 23 years as President and CEO of NLADA. In 1994, Clint Lyons led the formation of the current NLADA Insurance Program.
After directing New Jersey and Georgia programs that provide civil legal help to poor persons, he was tapped by the Legal Services Corporation (LSC) to become deputy director of its first regional office in the South, in Atlanta.
In 1978, Lyons came to Washington as director of LSC’s Office of Field Services, which disbursed federal funds to local legal services programs across the country and monitored their expenditure. As Acting Executive Vice President of LSC in July September 1982 and then Acting President and President of the Corporation in September December 1982, he was responsible for management of $241 million in funding and oversight of 320 programs with 1,450 neighborhood offices throughout the country.
Mr. Matz is a principal at Olsson Frank Weeda Terman Bode Matz P.C. Before entering private practice in 1980, Mr. Matz spent seven years on Capitol Hill — five as General Counsel to the U.S. Senate, Select Committee on Nutrition and Human Needs, and two years as Special Counsel to the Senate Committee on Agriculture, Nutrition, and Forestry. While on Capitol Hill, his primary responsibility was in the area of food, nutrition, and agriculture.
Mr. Matz is currently on the Steering Committee of the Child Nutrition Forum, and he serves on the Board of Directors of the Friends of the World Food Programme; he also serves as board chair for the Congressional Hunger Center. Additionally, Mr. Matz served as Chairman of the Obama for America Agriculture Committee during the 2008 Presidential election.
Ronald F. Pollack is the Founding Executive Director of Families USA, the national organization for health care consumers. In this capacity, Mr. Pollack led campaign efforts to secure historic health care reform legislation designed to provide high-quality, affordable health coverage and care for everyone. Mr. Pollack was appointed by President Clinton as the sole consumer representative on the Presidential Advisory Commission on Consumer Protection and Quality in the Health Care Industry, a panel that prepared the Patients’ Bill of Rights.
Prior to his current position at Families USA, Mr. Pollack was the Dean of the Antioch School of Law. Mr. Pollack also worked in the Mississippi civil rights movement in the mid-1960s
Mr. Pollack was the Founding Executive Director of FRAC. Two of his notable accomplishments at FRAC include: (1) arguing and winning two cases on the same day in the U.S. Supreme Court to secure food stamp aid for low-income Americans; and (2) the successful litigation that resulted in the start of the WIC program for malnourished mothers and infants.
Norman Rosenberg has a private consulting practice that assists non-profit organizations in strengthening their senior leadership teams, development and communications programs.
Prior to launching his practice in 2006, Mr. Rosenberg was the CEO of three national public interest organizations. In the 1980’s, he directed the Bazelon Center for Mental Health Law, the nation’s leading legal advocacy organization for people with mental disabilities. From 1990 to 2003, he directed the New Israel Fund, an American-Israeli philanthropy that promotes civil and human rights, tolerance and democracy in Israel. From 2003-2006, he was the President of Parents’ Action for Children, a national non-profit dedicated to raising awareness about early childhood development and school readiness.
Before beginning his career as a public interest lawyer, Mr. Rosenberg was on the faculty of the State University of New York at Buffalo School of Law where he taught education and family law and directed the school’s clinical program.
As Director for The California Endowment’s Community Health program, Marion Standish leads the foundation’s efforts to develop program and policy initiatives to improve community health and reduce health disparities. In that capacity she has served as lead officer on many of The Endowment’s major funding initiatives, some of which have supported community coalitions to develop and implement policies and programs to reduce obesity.
Ms. Standish also serves as the convenor for the National Convergence Partnership, which brings funders together to pursue multi-sectoral policy and program efforts that support healthy people in healthy places.
Previously, Ms. Standish served as Senior Program Officer for The California Endowment. Prior to joining The Endowment, she was founder and director of California Food Policy Advocates (CFPA), a statewide nutrition and health research and advocacy organization focusing on access to nutritious food for low-income families. Before launching CFPA, Ms. Standish served as director of the California Rural Legal Assistance Foundation, a statewide advocacy organization focusing on health, education and labor issues facing farmworkers and the rural poor.
Alan J. Stone was Vice President for Government, Community and Public Affairs at Harvard from 2001 until the winter of 2008. He is currently a consultant to the President of Harvard. From 2001-2008, Mr. Stone oversaw Harvard’s relations with all levels of government – federal, state, and local, coordinated a wide range of activities involving the University’s neighboring communities, and managed all facets of communications and media relations. He was one of five vice presidents at Harvard.
Prior to coming to Harvard in November 2001, Mr. Stone served as vice president for public affairs at Columbia University, where he managed a similar portfolio.
Mr. Stone has extensive legislative and political experience, having served as the legislative director to a U.S. senator, staff director to two congressional committees, and counsel to a third. He also directed the Senate Select Committee on Nutrition and Human Needs during a time in which the national commitment to anti-hunger efforts increased substantially.
He has served as a senior adviser and speechwriter for political and civic organizations, including his work as a speechwriter for President Clinton during his campaign and in the White House.
Judith H. Whittlesey is Executive Vice President of Susan Davis International (SDI), a communications, government relations and public affairs firm located in Washington, DC with more than 68 agency partners worldwide. At SDI she provides expertise in strategic planning, media relations, institutional positioning, public education and major event design to the firm’s corporate, government agency and non-profit clients.
Ms. Whittlesey served on the staff of Vice President Walter Mondale, and subsequently on the campaign and transition staffs of several Democratic, Presidential and Vice Presidential candidates. She is an enrolled tribal member of the Choctaw Nation of Oklahoma, has been inducted into the National Capital Public Relations Society of America Hall of Fame, served on numerous non-profit boards, and selected to Leadership Greater Washington.
Michael J. Wilson is the national director of Americans for Democratic Action (ADA), an organization committed to activist politics, liberal policies and a progressive future. He is the first African-American to head ADA.
Mr. Wilson came to ADA from the 1.3 million member United Food and Commercial Workers International Union (UFCW) where he held several positions, including International Vice President, Director of Legislative and Political Action and Chief Lobbyist. At UFCW, Mr. Wilson helped to expand the federal food and nutrition programs and raise the federal minimum wage. Mr. Wilson also served as director of the Active Ballot Club, one of the largest labor political action committees in the nation.
Mr. Wilson previously held positions at the U.S. Department of Labor in the Office of Congressional and Intergovernmental Affairs and in the Employment Standards Administration where he was Chief of Staff. Early in his career, Mr. Wilson served as Legislative Representative for the late Representative Charles Hayes (D-IL) and as a canvasser and organizer for the Illinois Public Action Council.
Jim Weill has been President of the Food Research and Action Center – FRAC – since February 1998. Jim has devoted his entire professional career to reducing hunger and poverty, protecting the legal rights of children and poor people, and expanding economic security, income and nutrition support programs and health insurance coverage.
Prior to joining FRAC, he was at the Children’s Defense Fund (CDF) as Program Director and General Counsel. He led CDF’s efforts in 1985 that produced the first major expansion of the Earned Income Tax Credit, oversaw CDF’s Medicaid expansion, child care, and child support enforcement reform efforts, and was a key leader of the campaign to pass the Children’s Health Insurance Program in 1997.
Before CDF, Mr. Weill was Deputy Director and Director of Federal Litigation at the Legal Assistance Foundation of Chicago. He litigated major law reform and class action cases in the federal court of appeals and Supreme Court on Social Security, Medicaid, AFDC, food stamps and other public benefits issues, and the rights of children born out of wedlock.
Mr. Weill is chair of the board of directors of the Alliance for Justice Action Council and is a member of the boards of OMB Watch and the National Center for Youth Law. He serves on the advisory council to the National League of Cities Institute for Youth, Education and Families. He has served as a member of the U.S. delegation to the UNICEF Executive Board.
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