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Arkansas Foodbank Staff

Phyllis Haynes, CEO

Phyllis Haynes has been with the Foodbank since 1999. She has led the organization to nearly double the distribution of food to hungry people in Arkansas through approximately 300 food pantries, homeless shelters, soup kitchens, and other organizations that feed the hungry. Prior to joining the Foodbank, Phyllis spent 16 years as executive director of Arkansas ABLE, a nonprofit organization that helped over 8,000 older Arkansans find jobs. More about Phyllis / Read her First Friday Memo . . .

Shelly Lane, Interim Chief Development Officer
Shelly Lane, a financial services executive and relationship manager, has been a board member and volunteer at food banks in Spokane, Wash., and Little Rock, where she served as president and as vice-president of the Arkansas Foodbank board. Lane, who was actively involved in the Foodbank's "From Hunger to Hope" capital campaign as a donor and a campaign committee member, was the Individual Hunger Hero Award recipient for 2010. She worked to engage corporations and individual donors in hunger relief. She and her husband, Doug, were originally from Michigan but they have moved with his job at the U.S. Post Office from Billings, Mont., to Spokane, Wash., and then to Little Rock.

Cassandra Gilbert, Chief Financial Officer
Cassandra Gilbert has been at the Foodbank since July 2006. She is responsible for providing strategic leadership by working with the Executive Management Team to establish long-range goals and strategies. Cassandra develops, organizes, implements, directs and evaluates the organization’s fiscal function and performance and for all human resource activities. Prior to joining the Arkansas Foodbank, Cassandra spent 13 years of dedicated service at the University of Arkansas Criminal Justice Institute, as a Project/Program Specialist (Budget/Purchasing) and then later as the Financial Services Administrator for the agency. Cassandra has over 20 years of financial management experience in nonprofit organizations and has a professional human resource certification (PHR).

Dianne Williams, Chief Program Officer

Dianne Williams, an independent consultant and former Communications Director for the Winthrop Rockefeller Foundation, is our Chief Program Officer. Dianne is responsible for strategic planning and oversight of all program service activities, and she works to ensure that food is distributed equitably to member agencies throughout our 33-county service area. She also works to see that the agencies are provided with proper education, training, and resources. Williams had been president of her own firm, Dianne Williams Consulting, Inc., since 1999. She has worked with community coalitions, small community-based organizations, educational institutions, government agencies, and foundations to improve the quality of life for people in Arkansas and the Mid-South Delta. Prior to that, she was senior program officer, public policy officer, and communications director at the Winthrop Rockefeller Foundation.

T.J. Romine, Chief Operations Officer
T.J. Romine has been at the Foodbank since 2010. He is responsible for the strategic planning and oversight of all operations related to the receipt and distribution of food and other products, from the source to the end user. T.J. brings over 30 years of food retail experience to the Foodbank. The last 20 years in food retail was with Walmart, where he was a Market Manager overseeing Operations of the Food and Consumable Departments throughout Arkansas. He brings extensive food safety knowledge to the Foodbank from being certified in several food safety programs throughout his career. A native of Northeast Arkansas, T.J.’s hobbies include hunting, fishing, and spending time with family.

Ray White, Marketing & Communications Director

Ray White, a journalist and former Public Relations Director at Heifer International, is Marketing and Communications Director. Ray, who grew up in Fayetteville, spent 20 years as a news and features editor at the Philadelphia Inquirer, then returned to Arkansas to become design director of the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette before joining Heifer in 1993. He joined the Foodbank in July of 2010. He is a past president of the Arkansas Chapter of the Society of Professional Journalists. He was cited for contributions to three Pulitzer Prizes won by the Inquirer while he working as an editor there, notably the 1980 prize given to the Inquirer’s staff for their coverage of the Three Mile Island nuclear plant disaster. He has taken television crews from “The Oprah Winfrey Show” and “60 Minutes” to Africa to produce segments about humanitarian work.

Leighanne Alford, Development Coordinator

Leighanne Alford came to the Arkansas Foodbank from Garvan Woodland Gardens in Hot Springs, where she was in membership development. For the past five years she has also been a volunteer in the Foodbank’s Harvesters Young Professionals Group, and held office as secretary, membership recruitment chair, vice-president and president. As president, she represented Harvesters on the Foodbank's Board of Directors and chaired two major annual fundraisers, Empty Bowls dinner and art auction and Golf For Food charity golf tournament. In her free time, Leighanne enjoys running, cycling with her husband, cooking and travelling. She and her husband, Wes, reside in Little Rock with their amazing pug, Artie.

Jill Bayles, Food Drive Coordinator

Jill Bayles has spent her career developing marketing, communications and fundraising campaigns for Heifer International, the University of Arkansas at Little Rock and the Department of Arkansas Heritage; and implementing public programs for the Winthrop Rockefeller Institute, Heifer Village, The Arkansas Arts Center and the Old State House. She’s a writer of fiction and nonfiction, a website editor and an alumnus of the Iowa Writers Workshop who previously edited several specialty publications for the Arkansas Business Publishing Company. She has a degree in history from Hendrix College and lives near Hillcrest’s Allsopp Park with two Russian Blue rescue cats, Olga and Liu-Liu, who act as if they own the neighborhood.

Walter Tucker, Food Donations Coordinator
Walter Tucker began his career in the food industry in 1989 as a sales representative for Sysco, followed by seven years at Quality Foods in Little Rock before leaving to become self-employed. He returned to the food industry as a manager of The Pizza Café in Little Rock and then did a short stint as a manager at Brownings, a Mexican restaurant that is an Arkansas landmark. Walter came to work at the Foodbank in 2009 to oversee the Retail Pickup Program with major donors such as Sam's Club, Kroger, Walmart, Target and others. When not working he enjoys gardening, creative art projects, walking, golf and hanging out with Becker the Cat.

Frank Hilliard, Director of Operations

Frank Hilliard has been Director of Operations at the Foodbank since 2000. He was born in Pine Bluff, son of a southern Arkansas farming family, and graduated from England High School. After farming and working for a custom crop-dusting company, he moved to North Little Rock to join Rand's Inc., a wholesale grocery distributor, as an order selector. He rose to become president of the company, retiring after 25 years with Rand's. He took off for three years before going back to work at the Foodbank.

Connie Bledsoe, Agency Relations Director
Connie Bledsoe has worked at the Arkansas Foodbank Network since July 1996 as the Agencies & Community Programs Director. She is responsible for maintaining relationships with more than 350 member agencies in the Foodbank’s 33-county service area, which includes our branch in Warren, Ark. She responds to agencies’ needs and ensures proper training and capacity building; insuring the screening of agency applicants, and monitoring agency activities to insure compliance with Feeding America’s guidelines. She also manages the USDA commodities program.

SiKia Brown, Child and Adult Services Coordinator

SiKia Brown came to the Arkansas Foodbank from DHS-Division of Volunteers in Little Rock, where she was a Program Coordinator working with nonprofit and community agencies throughout Southeast Arkansas. She was an AmeriCorps VISTA member for 3 years, promoting preventive health education among low-income families. In the past year she was appointed to serve on the Legislative Task Force on Reducing Poverty and Promoting Economic Opportunity and worked to identify Arkansas communities where poverty is prevalent and to find effective means to counter the negative effects of poverty in those communities, with a special focus on children, single mothers and the elderly. SiKia enjoys being active in her community, reading, cooking and most importantly being a Mom to her three wonderful children.

Alex Handfinger, Childhood Hunger Corps

Alex Handfinger is a member of Feeding America’s Child Hunger Corps serving a two-year appointment to the Arkansas Foodbank. A recent Feeding America study ranked Arkansas No.1 in the nation for childhood hunger. Handfinger is working to devise new programs to increase children's access to nutritious food, especially after school, on weekends, and during school vacations. Handfinger graduated from the University of Florida in Gainesville in 2010. While in Gainesville, he was a site leader trainer for Florida Alternative Breaks, where he created and implemented a year-long training program for 50 student leaders on how to organize and lead community service trips. His other work and volunteer experiences include work in Africa, with a brief stay in Ghana.

Eric Shelby, Facility Manager

Eric Selby was born in Atlanta, Texas, and graduated from high school there before attending Henderson State University in Arkadelphia, where he met his wife, Julie. He graduated with a bachelor’s degree in psychology and has worked in the construction trades ever since. He worked for a utility contractor doing underground utility installations for the old Southwestern Bell telephone company. For seven years he worked with Thompson Electric in Little Rock. He was the job foreman for Thompson on the project to build the Foodbank’s new warehouse, and when that project was completed he joined Foodbank as facility manager. He and Julie have two children, Hannah, 14, and Nathan, 19, a freshman at Arkansas State University. They live in Bryant and attend Sharon Baptist Church in Benton. His hobbies are fishing, hunting and working for FLW Outdoors fishing tournaments.

Myron Jackson, Warehouse Supervisor