Meet our Director of Communications

Name: Mark Cherrington

Your role at Foodshare: As Director of Communications, my role is to consider the strategic role of communications for the organization: what we say, who we say it to, and how to best communicate it to achieve our mission. I also help produce our communications pieces.

How long have you been with Foodshare? Four whole months!

Hobbies: Music, photography, nature, travel, plus reading and writing (but not ‘rithmetic).

Why I do what I do: Because it’s just plain wrong that people in a country like ours should have to go hungry, and I can’t live with myself if I see a problem like this and don’t try to help fix it.

Most recent accomplishment: Completing the Foodshare orientation, which is only slightly less involved than applying for citizenship (and just as worthwhile).

Last read: “The Price of Inequality,” by Joseph Stiglitz

What is your favorite book? My favorite book(s) is Patrick O’Brian’s Aubrey-Maturin novels (actually, one huge book split into 20 volumes). I’ve read the whole things six times, and I still go back to them regularly. Some of the finest writing every committed to paper and the deepest study of friendship, courage, and humanity I know of—a whole world between two covers.

If you could be, or do, anything else – what would it be? A forest ranger. Solitude, trees, animals, and no meetings—what’s not to like?

What one word would you use to describe yourself? Perspicacious, mostly because I just like saying that word.

Share something about yourself that few people know: I have faced down lions, Komodo dragons, and polar bears (Oh my!).

If you could be any character in fiction, who would you be?  Why? Most mornings, I wake up feeling like I already am a fictional character, and I spend most of the day trying to become real. . .

If Hollywood made a movie about your life, what actor would you like to see play the role of you? Ernest Borgnine

Anne Frank once said that in spite of everything, she believed people were basically good. Do you agree or disagree? Why? This is, in fact, my core belief and operating principle, and I have yet to find an exception. When people do terrible things (and they do, all too regularly), it’s usually out of fear, insecurity, or ignorance, not because they are inherently bad. To me, the world would be unlivable if I didn’t think people are inherently good.