Todd Cunningham

Food & Wellness Organizer | LA Community Action Network

“Our housing system has a deeply embedded negative bias against people of color, in particular, Black people. People living with extreme oppression are not motivated to speak up or feel hope to be housed. Criminalizing those who don’t have a home seals the deal for most Black and Brown residents living in extreme poverty in LA. We need a restart with different inputs and voices these problems have longed to hear from.”

Todd Cunningham leads LA CAN’s  Food & Wellness Collaborative, a diverse team of food justice advocates based in the Skid Row neighborhood of Downtown Los Angeles.  Building from past successes in crafting organizing strategies informed and executed by community, LA CAN is a nationally-recognized leader in providing groundbreaking power-building responses to extreme hunger and food insecurity. 

Todd is a current Co-chair of LA Food Policy Council’s Good Food Economy Working Group and a recent Food Leaders Lab graduate. As an active member of the California Hunger Action Coalition, he has served as Co-chair for CHAC’s Hunger Action Week, galvanizing food justice advocates across California to engage legislators in productive conversations advancing food policy decisions focused on reducing food insecurity and minimizing the ravaging effects of poverty.

Todd was named ‘Marketer of the Year’ by Brandweek Magazine and before LA CAN he was the Founding Director of The Media Impact Project at USC’s Annenberg School of Communications and Journalism and served as the domestic and international SVP of Strategic Insights & Research for MTV and Viacom.