Food Depository CEO Kate Maehr to Receive Knox Honor

Kate Maehr, chief executive officer of the Greater Chicago Food Depository, will receive an honorary degree from Knox College at the 2011 Commencement ceremony on Saturday, June 4 on the Knox campus.

Maehr has served since July 2006 as CEO of the Greater Chicago Food Depository, Chicago's food bank. The Food Depository is a nonprofit food distribution and training center that feeds the hungry while working to end hunger in the Chicago area.

Since her appointment, the Food Depository has increased the annual distribution of food by 65 percent and has launched several initiatives designed to help end hunger in Cook County. One of them, a meal production program that delivers more than 13,500 meals a week to children and older adults, was named by Feeding America as the Community Kitchen Program of the Year in 2008.

Before becoming chief executive officer of the Food Depository, Maehr was its director of individual giving for three years and its director of development for seven years.

While director of individual giving, Maehr expanded the organization's outreach efforts, and revenues increased by more than 50 percent. While director of development, she spearheaded a four-year, $30 million capital campaign for the Food Depository's new food bank and training center. The 268,000-square-foot facility doubled the food bank's capacity to serve the hungry.

The organization has been featured in various media outlets, including the New York Times, Business Week, and the NBC Nightly News. It is considered one of the best-run and most efficient charities in the country, in terms of the percentage of donations that go directly toward services.

The Food Depository distributes donated and purchased food through a network of 650 soup kitchens, shelters, and pantries in Cook County. Last year, it distributed 66 million pounds of food, including more than 12.8 million pounds of produce. The Food Depository's network serves almost 142,000 people each week and almost 678,000 people each year.

Maehr also is president of Feeding Illinois, the state's coalition of food banks, and co-chair of the Illinois Commission to End Hunger. Maehr served on the Social Services and Healthcare Committee as part of new Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel's transition. She is a member of the Economic Club of Chicago and The Chicago Network. In 2009, she was appointed to the Illinois Reform Commission, an independent advisory group that examined and evaluated ethics in state government.

Maehr was selected for inclusion in the 2004 Crain's Chicago Business "40 Under 40" list, and she appeared on the cover of that publication for her efforts to aid Gulf Coast communities after Hurricane Katrina struck in 2005. She also has been named a Leadership Greater Chicago fellow.

Before joining the Food Depository, Maehr spent five years as the managing editor of a small, nonprofit literary publishing house in Minneapolis, Minnesota. She earned a bachelor's degree from Macalester College and a master's degree in Public Policy and Administration from the University of Wisconsin.