Page 52 - The Paduan: Winter 2020
P. 52

Alumni Spotlight: Kimmy LoVano ’08
Director of Advocacy at the Greater Cleveland Food Bank
Although it has been 12 years since I last walked the halls of Padua as a student,
it feels like just yesterday that I was there. My years at Padua have a special place
in my heart - quite literally. In my ninth grade Honors Biology class,
I was fortunate enough to be assigned lab partners with my future husband, Mike Miller. (Thanks for the seat assignment, Mr. Jennrich!) Besides learning about genotypes with my husband-to-be, one of my fondest memories at Padua was joining a few of my best friends in a stellar musical production of Cinderella. My fellow cast-mates have remained some of my closest friends throughout the years and now go by “aunt” and “uncle” to our precious daughter, Kaley.
As most parents can attest, having a child changed the way I see the world. It provided me with even more urgency to create positive change within the Northeast Ohio community. Not long after becoming a mom in 2018, I had the true honor of becoming the Director of Advocacy at the Greater Cleveland Food Bank, an organization I have called home since 2012. Our advocacy work centers around engaging our elected officials, supporters, and general community in issues surrounding food insecurity, so that we can work together to ensure everyone in our community has the nutritious food they need every day.
This has certainly changed since the onset of the pandemic, as we have been working around the clock to creatively serve anyone in need of help, including nearly 25,000 new families who have never sought help from an emergency food program before now. Working with my colleagues amidst this pandemic has been the true highlight of my career. Thanks to the generosity of our community and support of our elected officials and the Ohio National Guard, we have been able to provide 55,000 emergency food boxes and 98,000 backpacks with kids’ meals from March to July alone, on top of our normal operations.
With schools closing and kids missing meals, we also began delivering grab and go lunches to a number of sites throughout Cuyahoga County. Providing grab and go kids meals was a longtime dream of our Program Director, Diana. We had to develop it in a hurry
when we learned that only about half of our usual 100 child nutrition partners could safely open to feed kids over the summer. With child food insecurity skyrocketing during the pandemic, we knew we had to take action. Advocacy was a critical step to making
this possible, as policy flexibilities were needed from our lawmakers to allow us to provide these grab and go meals. Thanks to the incredible dedication of the team and partnership with our federal and state officials, our new grab and go lunch program has allowed us to serve nearly as many meals to kids as in past summers, despite the sharp drop in partners. Getting to this point has taken a lot of sweat and tears, but if you ask any food banker if it was worth it, every one of us would say yes, in a heartbeat.
As a lifelong Bruin, it is always inspiring to see the work being done by Padua’s current students and alumni in promotion of social justice. There is still so much for me to learn and do in order to become a better advocate for our community, but I draw from others in my Padua family to inspire me to do more – especially those who have been willing to give up their safety and well-being during this pandemic to serve others. My sincere gratitude goes out to all of the Bruins working on the frontlines in hospitals and nonprofits during this pandemic, including my sister-in-law Alaina Miller ’13 and brother-in-law Andrew Miller ’04 as well as my dear friends Tom Galletta ’08, Regina Smyth ’08, Nicole Krivos ’08, and Jenna Moran ’08.
      






















































































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