IC News

Dignity. Community. Choice.

With those three simple words driving his mission and vision, Greg Silverman ’94 is transforming the way New York City approaches feeding New Yorkers in need.

As the CEO and Executive Director of West Side Campaign Against Hunger (WSCAH), Silverman, a former chef who once owned iconic Ithaca restaurants Stella’s and Olivia, oversees an organization that in 2024 distributed 5.4 million pounds of food to more than 110,000 customers across New York City.

The sheer scale of WSCAH’s work would be impressive enough. But it’s their “choice model” approach to feeding others that is truly revolutionary.

“Food pantries have traditionally fed people whatever others donated. We’re different. We don’t take the food people pull out of the back of their pantry, like a soon-to-be-expired can of mushroom soup. We believe everyone should have access to good, fresh, healthy food."

A longtime nutrition advocate, Silverman had previously spearheaded the nationwide nutrition education platform Cooking Matters while serving as the Director of National Program Partnerships for Share Our Strength, a national hunger relief organization. He’d also spent time in London as a nutrition education specialist for the city government.

But when he arrived at WSCAH, he didn’t rush into making changes. Instead, he took a page from his time in the Peace Corps.

“The belief there was that you needed to spend time getting to know your new environment,” he said. “I spent three months just observing how things operated, and I think some people were thinking to themselves ‘What’s he actually doing?’”

What he was doing was looking for things that needed to be changed. And one of the biggest challenges was the quality of the food. At the time, only about 15% of the food the organization gave out was fresh produce, and that was considered best practice.

“As a former chef and restaurant owner, I was privy to getting the highest-quality products from farmers and other purveyors, and that’s the mentality I wanted to have here,” he said. “Because in truth, my job hadn’t changed; it is still about giving customers the best food and service possible. And that means giving them the best quality food. After all, I want the customers I serve to be happy. Who’s going to come back for crappy food?”

Silverman is intentional with that word choice. People who access food from WSCAH are referred to as customers in the company’s annual report.

To ensure that customers received the high-quality food Silverman believed they deserved, the organization started refusing highly processed food from food banks and began focusing on fresh produce.

“That meant the amount of food we were giving out was decreasing, so we worked to raise money in order to buy better food to make up that slack,” he said. “In 2024, 53% of the food we gave out was fresh produce.”

Silverman understands that some may bristle at the idea of turning down donated food. But he stands by the organization’s methods.

“People have a right to get what they want, even if they live in poverty. On the larger scale, how our society feeds people in need and treats people in need is broken. We’re trying to transform things, and we’re not going to take our foot off the gas. Doing the same thing in the same way is not going to solve big societal problems.”

Each year, WSCAH instead buys millions of dollars of fresh food, with staff and board members working tirelessly to raise funds.

“The vast majority of our funding comes from community members, family foundations, corporations and a small amount from the public sector," he said. “We also do a lot of community outreach.”

And sometimes, that community has Ithaca roots.

“We had just built a new warehouse at a former post office distribution center,” Silverman said. “I was giving a tour to one of our donors, whose family business, Menasha Packaging, made corrugated carboard boxes, which we use tens of thousands of each year. So, the donor says, ‘maybe we could work on a packaging project together, let me connect you with my national sales director to talk about options.’

“It turns out that the sales director, Matthew Killen, was my roommate at Ithaca!” Silverman laughs. “I hadn’t talked to him in 25 years, and I had no idea of his work and expertise in this area. He comes in to see the new warehouse space and then Menasha offered to help us better formulate our boxes and to cover the costs for the boxes for the year.” It’s a huge expense that Matt and Menasha took care of. “When I think about that story, I tell myself, ‘Ithaca College made that possible.’”