By Ethan Hartley

You don’t see too many “North Dakota” license plates in Rhode Island, but those who put in long hours volunteering for their neighborhood food banks might be seeing one somewhat consistently in the coming months and years.

Melissa Cherney, a North Dakota native and president of the Great Plains Food Bank since 2019, was named the new CEO of the Rhode Island Community Food Bank in May, after the retirement of Andrew Schiff, who headed the backbone agency of the state’s food assistance efforts for 17 years.

Cherney stopped in for a visit to the Good Neighbors food pantry in Riverside on the afternoon of Sept. 23, part of a six-stop tour last week to better get to know some of the food bank’s community member agencies that help distribute food to some 89,000 Rhode Islander

See Full Page