Meet Jon Janowski: School Breakfast Champion and Former Advocacy Director at Hunger Task Force
Courtesy of Quadracci Family
50 Faces. 50 Stories. 50 Years of Fighting Hunger.
Hunger Task Force is proud to be Milwaukee’s only Free & Local food bank and Wisconsin’s anti-hunger leader. In celebration of our 50th Anniversary, Hunger Task Force is highlighting “50 Faces of Ending Hunger,” honoring the anti-hunger heroes who champion Free & Local and support our mission to end hunger.
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Upon graduating with a master’s degree in public administration from the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, Jon Janowski was looking for a dynamic career in which he could serve his community. Eager to make an impact, he applied to join the staff at Hunger Task Force in 1996 because he wholeheartedly believes that every person has a right to healthy food obtained with dignity.
Jon was promoted to the Director of Advocacy role in 1997, and over the next 14 years he applied his academic training and passion for community service to several advocacy campaigns and projects.
Under the leadership of CEO Sherrie Tussler, Jon worked with a variety of local, state and federal partners to expand school breakfast participation in Milwaukee and throughout the state of Wisconsin. Jon collaborated with partners to successfully lobby the state to provide supplemental funding for school breakfast programs. In Milwaukee, he worked with the Milwaukee Public School system (MPS) to initiate a pilot universal free breakfast in the classroom (UFBiC) program. This program was comprehensively evaluated by Fellows from the Congressional Hunger Center (CHC) – a partnership that Jon successfully initiated and developed over the course of his career. Following the evaluation of the UFBiC pilot, MPS expanded the program to over 80 more schools, which resulted in tens of thousands of schoolchildren being fed before the school day began.
Jon’s partnership with the Congressional Hunger Fellows program resulted in 16 Hunger Fellows being hired and trained with Hunger Task Force during his career. One of the Congressional Hunger Fellows was Matt King, who is the incoming CEO at Hunger Task Force. In recognition of Jon’s work with the Congressional Hunger Fellows program, the CHC awarded him the Mickey Leland Award for Leadership Excellence in 2007.
“It is an honor to be a part of the evolution at Hunger Task Force and witness firsthand its amazing transformation,” said Janowski. “Working with so many dedicated staff, donors, Board members, public officials and government administrators to raise awareness about issues and come up with creative solutions to address them shaped my career and still has a profound impact on my work today. I will always be grateful for the opportunity I received and the experiences that I was involved with at Hunger Task Force.”
Jon currently serves as the Executive Director of The Neighborhood House, which is a part of the Hunger Task Force network.
Meet the 50 Faces of Ending Hunger!
Click below to discover real people making a difference in the fight against hunger – new faces added each month! As we journey through our 50th year, keep checking back to meet more incredible individuals making a difference.