Bill Bolling  
Founder & Executive Director, Atlanta Community Food Bank

Bill Bolling is the founder of the Atlanta Community Food Bank and has served as its executive director since 1979. In this capacity he oversees the distribution of over 18 million pounds of good but unmarketable food each year through nearly 800 local and regional nonprofit organizations that feed the hungry. He is a frequent speaker on topics related to hunger, poverty, regionalism, affordable housing and public policy reform. His skills in bridging various public sectors have made him a leader in strengthening the community to serve those most in need. Prior to his association with the Food Bank, he served as Director of Community Ministries for St. Luke's Episcopal Church in Atlanta.

Mr. Bolling holds degrees from Central Piedmont College and Appalachian State University in Business and Education. He received his Master of Arts degree in Psychology and Counseling from West Georgia College in 1976. He has served as an adjunct professor in the School of Management at the Georgia Institute of Technology, and has taught at Georgia State, Emory and Oglethorpe Universities.

Mr. Bolling is a charter member of the Board of Directors of America’s Second Harvest National Food Bank Network. He currently serves on the Regional Commission on Homelessness, the Nonprofit Advisory Committee of the Andrew Young School at Georgia State University and the Advisory Boards of TechBridge and Hands on Atlanta. He is founder of the Atlanta Housing Forum, begun in 1988, and continues to serve as moderator of the Regional Housing Forum. He is past chair of the Board of the Regional Leadership Forum and the State of Georgia Housing Trust Fund Commission.

Awards include The Southern Institute’s 2005 Ethics Advocate Award, Atlanta Regional Commission’s Golden Glasses Award for Visionary Leadership, the Martin Luther King Jr. Humanitarian Award, the Sidney Marcus Public Service Award of the Atlanta Fulton County League of Women Voters, Unicef’s Child Survival Award, Georgia Department of Community Affairs Housing Champion Award, Atlanta Urban League Distinguished Community Service Award and the second annual John van Hengel Hunger Fellow Award presented by America’s Second Harvest. For several years, Georgia Trend Magazine has selected him as one of the “100 Most Influential Georgians.”

In 2005, Mr. Bolling helped plan and coordinate the first-ever Interfaith Convocation held at the Washington National Cathedral in recognition of National Hunger Awareness Day. Over 37 heads of faith from Jewish, Christian, Muslim, Buddhist and Native American traditions and 1,500 attendees participated in this service calling for an end to hunger in our lifetime.

In 1990, Mr. Bolling was one of 49 Americans selected by the W.K. Kellogg Foundation for Group XI of its Kellogg National Fellowship Program. The Fellowship is structured to develop skills and insights in areas outside chosen disciplines, in order to enable the Fellow to approach society's complex problems more creatively and effectively. His focus of study with the three-year Kellogg Fellowship was on conflict resolution and citizen democracy, especially in emerging democracies, which led him into work internationally in Russia, the Middle East and Latin America. In 1996, he was invited to serve as development consultant by the ambassador of Argentina at the Summit of the Americas World Hunger Conference in Buenos Aires.

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