THURSDAY, JUNE 23, 2022

11 AM

Susan Goodell has a real passion for working with vulnerable populations with a solutions-based approach to the issue of hunger in America. Susan is currently the CEO of El Pasoans Fighting Hunger, the youngest Food Bank in the Feeding America network.   

 

In her first three years with El Pasoans Fighting Hunger Food Bank, Susan has focused on developing new sources of food, developing new programs and building organizational capacity to meet the needs of food insecure people throughout El Paso, Culberson and Hudspeth Counties with a particular emphasis on vulnerable children, seniors and individuals suffering from food related illness.  To date, she has secured several new, large government programs including the Commodity Supplemental Food Program to serve over 3,000 low-income seniors and the National School Lunch Program serving 185,000 low-income children in our region – as well as brought numerous efficiencies to the organization.  Of particular note is the food bank’s new Home Delivery which provides up to 2,600 weekly deliveries of food to vulnerable people who are homebound do to extreme age, disability or COVID positive status. Since becoming CEO, the food bank has proactively increased food distribution from 10.5 million pounds in 2017 to over 139.7 million pounds of nutritious food in 2020 – an unprecedented 1,230% growth.  Under her leadership, the food bank is now ranked 26th out of 200 food banks in the nation in terms of service to the community. 

 

Prior to joining the team at El Pasoans Fighting Hunger, Susan was most noted for her work to pioneer grocery rescue in the U.S., which today contributes over 30% of the food supply provided by food banks for low-income people in America.   

 

Susan is a graduate of The Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, Maryland.  She is a native of Maine and now resides in El Paso, Texas with her husband and teenage son.   

 

Susan was recently honored to receive El Paso’s 2020 Community Spirit Award for the food bank’s disaster response work providing emergency food for 138,000 people in need during the COVID-19 pandemic.