Kimberly Barnes is one of USA TODAY’s Women of the Year, a recognition of women across the country who have made a significant impact. The annual program is a continuation of Women of the Century, a 2020 project that commemorated the 100th anniversary of women gaining the right to vote. Meet this year’s honorees at womenoftheyear.usatoday.com.
Kimberly Barnes wanted to be a doctor when she was young. She even attended a Science, Math and Technology academy in Greensboro, North Carolina, where she grew up. But when she got to college, she found the science courses boring.
“I switched into marketing because I started to appreciate the importance and value of storytelling,” she said.
She has worked in various kinds of marketing across several states. In 2015, Barnes landed in Atlanta, where she eventually formed Might Be Vegan as a way to do creative, long-term collaborations with brands to help people access plant-based food.
“Might Be Vegan transformed into a place that allowed me to connect with people as it relates to food,” she said. “I wasn’t so much interested in always pushing out ads, like it just didn’t feel authentic. So I said, what’s a way I can show up, partner with brands and do it in a way that’s creative, and also helpful?”
In 2018, when the Super Bowl was in Atlanta, Barnes partnered with brands to feed 1,500 people vegan food at no cost. Then when the COVID-19 pandemic hit and food banks saw long lines, she melded her marketing experience and her passion for feeding people to create the Food Love program to supply food directly to people’s homes – across the country.
“Food Love since the first day was always a national program, which was very scary to start, because when I had the idea I was like, I have no idea how I’m going to execute this,” she said. “Because essentially the idea was, how do we get food to anybody, anywhere?”
Before closing in June of 2021, Food Love had a dozen partners providing food and 350 people referring families. The program fed people in about three quarters of the contiguous states, with the most being in California and New York. Barnes hopes the model will be taken up by other nonprofits in future.
Barnes sat down to talk with USA TODAY about what inspired her and how she turned that idea into a reality.
This interview has been edited for length and clarity.
Georgia resident Kimberly Barnes seeks to help put end to hunger one meal at a time
Kimberly Barnes, selected as one of USA TODAY’s Women of the Year, talks about Food Love, her national, direct-to-door hunger relief program.
Katie Goodale, Augusta Chronicle
On this journey the low point was getting started, having this big vision and having no idea how it was going to execute because there was no money.
I started the program and I was using my own money. So I started with just feeding a couple of people to test the system itself. I was like, ‘OK, the system works, now we need money and we need to put in food, who has the food?’ So I went out and started asking brands, and I pitched a lot of them, and all of them said no when we started – they all said no.
We’re telling the truth in the pitch, we’re talking about how Black and brown people are being affected by COVID in a different kind of way. They’re dying at two times the rate and because of pre-existing conditions, and they’re going to the food bank and they’re coming away with things that aren’t healthy for them.
So what if we change our pitch? (Following the murder of George Floyd) I know a lot of brands are trying to figure out how to show up as it relates to anti-racism. What if we shifted and start talking about that, and we say, ‘Hey, look, I will sit down and talk to you,’ because I’m not new at talking about anti-racism, so what if we say ‘I will have a free consultation with you if you will listen to what I am saying about how we can feed and impact the country.’
And that changed everything.
Whatever I do, whatever I choose to do or not do, I want to make sure that I don’t regret whatever decision I make. I have a sense of loyalty to what I feel like is good and purposeful for me. I think I would have regretted not executing on this program.
The way I convinced myself to keep going was I said, ‘OK, even if it doesn’t work and you only feed 10 people, you still fed 10 people, you know? Even if it doesn’t work.’
Kayla Renie, Athens Banner-Herald USA TODAY NETWORK
It kind of depends on what kind of adversity it is, sometimes there’s things that are much bigger than you that you can’t control. Where we’re talking about a program like Food Love it was one of those big, existential questions like, ‘How do we solve hunger?’ I was like, I don’t know if I can solve all of it but I can at least try to solve a bit of it.
I keep in the forefront of my mind that my purpose is to support not just my community, but the community at large. So when I’m dealing with resistance I try to remember the why.
I would give the piece of advice that one of my mentors gave me, which is basically, ‘You can’t build Rome in a day.’ Trusting the process is so important and realizing that where you are right now is a part of your journey, it’s not the whole of your journey.
I really want Food Love to be an inspiration. Existing food programs have lots and lots of funding, and the way that funding is executed could be done better. And also I would love to see more fresh foods, more whole foods, because I think we could help more people than we are but we’re so stuck in a certain system that we’re not considering it.
One of the things I learned during the pandemic is that when you essentially hold up a sign that says ‘I’m giving away free food” anybody can come and get free food, there’s not a requirement and there shouldn’t be. We don’t want to be standing at the gate, like, ‘Are you in need? Can you prove it?’
Because of that approach, so many people fall through the cracks. And being able to find those people is why our approach is different, because they didn’t have to have a car, they didn’t have to have a bus pass or anything, we just need to be able to say, ‘Who in our community would know those who are struggling?’ Once we know that then we can pair the food with the people that need it.
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