Lindsey Sullivan selected as new HHC Executive Director

Starting June 1, the Hunger and Health Coalition will welcome a new face, and yet a familiar one, at the helm of the organization. 

Lindsey Sullivan was chosen as the Hunger and Health Coalition’s next Executive Director. Kerri Whittaker, the Chair of the agency’s Board of Directors, said the organization is excited to welcome Sullivan to the team. She added that Sullivan’s community health, social work, and data-driven strategic planning experience — combined with her record of collaborative solutions for challenges in the High Country — makes her a perfect fit for HHC.

“Our organization understands improving the community’s health is a multi-faceted challenge and Lindsey has the ability to focus and improve the work of the Hunger and Health Coalition,” Whittaker said.

Having stepped into the Interim Executive Director role while the agency searched for a permanent successor, Catherine King will reprise her role as Director of Finance for the agency. King said she’s “thrilled to welcome Lindsey into the agency” and looks forward to great things in the future for the community health and wellness organization.

Sullivan comes to HHC after having been at AppHealthCare since 2018 when she started as a grad school intern and later transitioned in 2020 to COVID-19 response and community health. Eventually, she began overseeing AppHealthCare's Community Health Department, which assists with community outreach, health education, assessing broader public health issues, and facilitating community action plans around local priorities and topics. This would be topics including food and health access — HHC’s two banner priorities. 

“The kind of work that really gets me excited is looking at two seemingly disconnected things and finding the connection, and innovating in that space,” Sullivan said. “Any time I get to see alignment between the resources we have, the communities need, and the talent we have at the table is the high point for me — being able to find how those can match up to create high impact work.”

As Sullivan looked back on her career path, she noticed a link among all of the pieces that led her to the decision to seek out HHC’s Executive Director position.

“Everything for me comes back to this kind of complete reverence for humans and human potential, and anything that can be done to that end is what we're responsible for,” Sullivan said. “How can we maximize any one person being their best and being able to bring their gifts to the community? When you get things out of the way that keep them from being able to do that, such as hunger or health concerns — whatever it is — that's what a vibrant community is to me.”

It’s that care for others that originally encouraged Sullivan to complete her undergraduate degree at Appalachian State University in Psychology. For several years she served as a full-time nanny for a family and then later worked at the Children's Council of Watauga County assisting with family support and early care and education. 

While working at the Children’s Council, Sullivan said she realized she was interested in systems level work and understanding how different components come together to create change. She decided to pursue a Masters of Social Work at App State, during which time she completed a split internship between the Children's Council and AppHealthCare. She explained that AppHealthCare played a role in the parent support program the Children's Council had started. This led her into wanting to better understand partnerships in the community and how different topics of wellness come together.

Sullivan stayed with AppHealthCare to complete her second year of her MSW internship, later starting in a parent support role with the Positive Parenting Program, then shifting to other topics until she eventually was leading her department and earned the title of Health Strategist. In this role, Sullivan said she enjoys finding the connections between different health topics, working with community partners to organize resources, creating plans and then tracking data after plans are set in motion. 

“Planning and collaboration are where I get really excited,” Sullivan said.
”I really love breaking up silos.”

One of these community projects has been STABLE Workplaces, a collaboration she has helped to lead among a variety of agencies including AppHealthCare and the Boone Area Chamber of Commerce to create a healthier workforce and community. Sullivan said this initiative came about after initial conversations where leaders wanted to evaluate the intersection of community health and the local economy. STABLE Workplaces aims to promote health and well-being across Watauga County through our local workplaces to benefit individuals and families to encourage better outcomes in the home.

“The biggest thing that people don't realize is how much happens behind the scenes to ensure wellness in a community and how many people are working hard across many agencies, many different topic areas and many different forms of expertise or backgrounds to maximize wellness in our community,” Sullivan said.
”There are a lot of folks behind the scenes working every single day to do that and people have no idea.”

Sullivan plans to bring this curiosity for how systems come together for a common good into her new role as the Executive Director at the Hunger and Health Coalition. She said that through her leadership, the community can expect “a supported and empowered team, data-driven and human-centered services and a strong network of partnerships that are innovating and leveraging resources.”

The agency welcomes community members to meet Sullivan and see the newly renovated HHC space on June 10 at noon during a ribbon cutting with the Boone Area Chamber of Commerce. To RSVP to the ribbon cutting, contact Director of Development Tara Stollenmaier at tara@teamhhc.org.