Regina Harmon - Who is Running America's Largest Food Recovery Movement?

Regina Harmon is the CEO of Food Recovery Network, the largest student-led movement fighting food waste and hunger in the US. Before she was leading a national nonprofit, she was a kid in Maine with a cloth lunch bag, a working poor family, and a growing sense that the world was not set up fairly. Dominique and Christy sit down with Regina to hear how a life shaped by nature, identity, and literature quietly built the leader she is today.Regina Harmon grew up in Maine at a time when it was the whitest state in the union, in a mixed-race family, without a single Black teacher in her entire schooling. The discomfort of being asked to check one box on a census form when no single box fit her family stayed with her. So did the shame of using SNAP benefits as an AmeriCorps volunteer, watching people's eyes land on her in the checkout line. Those experiences did not harden her. They gave her a very clear sense of who she wanted to fight for.What makes Regina's path so interesting is how much of it runs through books. She studied English literature in college and will tell you, without hesitation, that the humanities gave her everything she needs to run a nonprofit. Critical thinking. The ability to stay focused in hard, slow work. And most importantly, empathy, the capacity to be in someone else's story long enough to actually understand it. By the time she found Food Recovery Network, she had a framework for the work that went well beyond logistics. Food, she says, is a bridge to a valley of abundance. If people can agree that everyone deserves food, that conversation can open doors to everything else people deserve simply because they are human.Episode in a glance00:10 Meet Regina Harmon, CEO of the Food Recovery Network00:59 How growing up in Maine shaped her environmental values03:36 Finding her voice through mixed-race identity and history11:16 Discovering her life's purpose through AmeriCorps and anti-poverty work15:26 How studying English literature shaped her as a leader21:21 Inside the student-led movement fighting food waste and hungerAbout Regina HarmonRegina Harmon is the CEO of Food Recovery Network, a national nonprofit and the largest student-led movement fighting food waste and hunger in the United States. With a background in English literature and literary and cultural studies, Regina brings a deeply human-centered lens to anti-poverty work and food access advocacy. Under her leadership, FRN has grown to over 215 chapters across 46 states, doubled its student network to 8,000 members, and expanded its reach to over 400 locations where surplus food is actively recovered and redistributed.Connect with Regina Harmon and her workRegina Harmon on LinkedIn → https://www.linkedin.com/in/reginadmanderson/Food Recovery Network → foodrecoverynetwork.orgInstagram → https://www.instagram.com/foodrecovery/Send us a message!