JENNY RAMO
Founder & Executive Director

Jennifer Ramo is the founder and Executive Director of New Mexico Appleseed. An experienced attorney, she designed New Mexico Appleseed’s effective system of change and created Appleseed’s first-in-the-nation programs such as the Hunger-Free Students’ Bill of Rights (prohibited lunch shaming children whose parents owe school meal debt), the Breakfast After the Bell law (requires all high poverty elementary schools to serve breakfast during the school day that has been replicated by over a dozen states and districts) and the Food Access Navigator project on the Navajo Nation (awarded a USDA innovation demonstration grant).

Ms. Ramo’s professional focus is on multi-generational systems involvement and using community voice/qualitative data and quantitative data to improve poverty outcomes. The lens of racial equity in the poverty arena is a natural extension of this work.

Her anti-hunger and homelessness work has received international attention and been highlighted in the New York Times, CNN, USA Today, Le Monde, BBC and Al Jazeera, among others.

Ms. Ramo is a graduate of the Albuquerque Academy, the University of Southern California and Tulane Law School. She was a recipient of the Coro Fellowship. She also holds a Certificate of Behavioral Economics from Booth School of Business at the University of Chicago.