Angelica Carey promoted to new Director of Food Systems & Community Initiatives Role

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Innovate Memphis is excited to announce that Angelica Carey has been promoted to a new Director of Food Systems & Community Initiatives role. Since joining Innovate Memphis in 2022 as a No Kid Hungry Food Systems Innovation Fellow, Angelica has worked tirelessly to bring her vision of a dedicated role to address food policy to reality.

Before joining Innovate Memphis, Angelica served as a Project Manager in the City of Memphis Office of Comprehensive Planning, where she played a key role in community engagement for the award-winning Memphis 3.0 Comprehensive Plan. She also supported the launch of the Accelerate Memphis initiative, overseeing the early implementation of nearly 40 streetscape and infrastructure projects that continue to transform neighborhoods across the city. It was during this time she began participating in the Food Insecurity and Accessibility Collaborative hosted by Church Health. She worked with members to host the first ever Food Systems Summit and later co-authored a proposal for a dedicated leader in food systems work to establish a Council. 

Angelica’s past work at Innovate Memphis has included:

-Leading extensive research to better understand barriers faced by both food assistance providers and residents experiencing food insecurity. She has conducted interviews and focus groups with stakeholders from nonprofit leaders to church pantry operators to families seeking assistance, ensuring that community voices shape the solutions meant to serve them.  

-Working with Clean Memphis and the Office of Sustainability and Resilience to produce a Food Rescue Landscape Analysis that brought together more than 30 organizations and mapped over 100 food access sites to strengthen collaboration and reduce food waste. Based on the findings of this research, Clean Memphis provided over $15,000 in mini-grants to local food pantries to address the resource needs they identified such as improved storage, refrigeration, and transportation. 

-Surveying South Memphis residents and partnering with Knowledge Quest on a series of resident-led design sessions to develop solutions to food access challenges in their neighborhoods. Over the past two years, this work has resulted in a report on expanding access to home grocery delivery for SNAP-eligible households and a new pilot program for a weekly grocery rideshare service aimed at reducing transportation barriers to healthy food access by mobilizing community-based resources. 

-Designing a prototype for an online “Memphis Food Finder” resource directory to make it easier for residents and caseworkers to find food assistance resources by geographic location, eligibility requirements, and hours of operation. 

In Angelica’s new role as Director of Food Systems & Community Initiatives, she will lead a multi-year effort to build and sustain a local Food Systems Council. The Council launched in Fall 2025 and is currently comprised of over 20 members representing, public, private and nonprofit organizations contributing to all parts of the food system from agriculture to direct assistance to nutrition education. In its first year, the Council will establish 2-3 key priorities to increase community access to healthy foods and seek funding and implementation partners to deliver on these priorities. She is grateful for the relationships she has made and is hopeful that the Council can impact real program and policy change for the City’s residents.  

If you are interested in learning more about the Food Systems Council, please reach out to Angelica@innovatememphis.com