New Harvesters CEO and President Credits Jesuit Values for Shaping Her Journey

In June, Debbie Espinosa, ’98, was announced as the next president and CEO of Harvesters—The Community Food Network, a regional food bank based in Kansas City.

Serving 27 counties on both sides of the state line, Harvesters distributes over 60 million pounds of food each year to communities in need in northwest Missouri and northeast Kansas. It’s both a new challenge and a familiar role for Espinosa, who credited previous experience in the nonprofit sector and her Jesuit education at Rockhurst University for preparing her well to take the helm.

Espinosa brings more than 30 years of nonprofit leadership to the position. Most recently, she had served as President and CEO for FIND Regional Food Bank, a fellow Feeding America network food bank serving nearly 10,000 sq. miles in California's Greater Palm Springs desert region, since 2018. There she led the network through the challenges of the COVID-19 pandemic and federal cuts to SNAP (Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program) benefits, both of which led to increased demand for services. Coming back to Kansas City is something of a full-circle moment, she said.

“For me personally, there were always two communities that I would always consider moving to if the opportunity and the organization felt right and good to me,” she said. “Seattle was one, and Kansas City was the other. I've always loved the Midwest culture, the people, the kindness, and the love that they show for everyone. I'm also excited to be part of the fabric of the community that I love so much and that's been so instrumental in my life.”

Espinosa’s affection for Kansas City began before she arrived at Rockhurst. Growing up in Seattle, Washington, she was a national leader for Camp Fire while still a teenager. Espinosa said she remembers traveling to Kansas City, where the organization is based, as a member of the board of directors. She not only learned more about the community through that experience — she connected with it in a deep enough way that she decided to move from Washington to Missouri for her undergraduate studies. She earned degrees in sociology and comparative religions and a minor in nonprofit management through the American Humanics program at Rockhurst. The mentorship provided through the program and the University’s approach, grounded in Jesuit values of servant leadership, was crucial in shaping who she has become, she said.

“I'm a Filipino-Catholic and thinking about other people before yourself and service to community before yourself has always been a core value for our culture,” she said. “At Rockhurst, that value was instilled even more deeply in me, integrated into not just my professional development, but in the development of my character, of who I am as a person.”

She later earned a Master of Professional Studies in Community and Economic Development from Penn State University, with an emphasis on rural communities and developing countries. She’s served as a national council member and board member for Feeding America, the national network of food banks of which Harvesters is a part. 

She will draw on all of it — the education, the experience, the values — as she assumes her new role with Harvesters in August, leading both the distribution of food to hundreds of thousands of people and tackling the root causes of food insecurity.

“Going to a Jesuit university, you're a continual lifelong learner. I mean that both in terms of external knowledge and in the internal sense of who you are as a person, the self-awareness,” she said. “I think who I am today as a leader is the result of listening to understand before talking, learning to have empathy and compassion for the people on your team and really being able to understand how to support the leaders in your organization as CEO, as opposed to expecting them to support you.”