Melissa Cherney, the new CEO of the Rhode Island Community Food Bank, received free school lunch and food stamps back in her native North Dakota.

She's spent nearly two decades working to end hunger, which involved fighting for funding and managing complicated trucking logistics.

Cherney recently spent a week touring food pantries across Rhode Island and saw reduced supplies and increased need.

Melissa Cherney , the new CEO of the Rhode Island Community Food Bank , grew up surrounded by food. She also knows what it's like to not have enough.

On her family's farm on North Dakota, "we prided ourselves on growing food to feed the world, and we were entirely dependent on the weather for our income," she told The Providence Journal.

In lean years, she received free school lunches. Later

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