In this episode of The HumanUp Imperative, host Rex Wallace sits down with Rick Whitted, 30-year “recovering banker” turned CEO of US Hunger, to explore what it really means to restore dignity in healthcare and community work. From losing everything as a young entrepreneur with a pregnant wife and two small kids, to leading a national nonprofit that treats food as a doorway into people’s stories, Rick unpacks why you can’t human up anyone you haven’t first given voice.
We follow his journey from proud, never-failed banker to a leader who has stared at a pantry box on his own kitchen table—and built an entire model of care around that moment of quiet, complicated shame and relief. Along the way, Rex and Rick make a provocative case: we don’t have a disengaged population, we have an unengaged one—and the difference is everything.
We cover:
🍽 “It’s never about food”: why almost 92% of people US Hunger serves are juggling 2–5 overlapping gaps (not just food), and how food becomes the safest, most flexible social determinant—and the perfect on-ramp to deeper conversations.
🗣 Dignity as voice: how starting with a private, judgment-free conversation (“the bots don’t gossip”) gives people control of their own story, and why you can’t claim dignity, respect, or “human up” if you haven’t listened first.
📊 The hidden hungry: what US Hunger’s real-time data reveals about the “working, insured, food-insecure” class, why benefits or income disruptions push them over the edge, and how the SNAP/WIC shutdown scare surfaced a vulnerable population that doesn’t show up on paper.
🏥 Health plans, supplemental benefits & missed ROI: why the failure isn’t offering food and other benefits—it’s deploying them as transactions with no engagement strategy—and how converting food into an incentive for engagement changes quality and Stars math.
🤝 Community-based orgs as trust brokers: how US Hunger embeds with case management and community teams so members can connect with the plan through a trusted CBO, and why “food is engagement” is more than a tagline when it’s wired into Z codes, SNOMED, and real outcomes.
🏠 “You can’t treat strangers better than your own house”: inside US Hunger’s culture practices—team syncs, quarterly “recharges,” Gallup surveys, and radical manager accountability—and why Rick insists the ethos for member dignity must start with how you treat your employees.
💥 The cardboard box moment: Rick’s most helpful personal failure—losing his business after 9/11, staring at that pantry box from his grandmother and aunts, crying alone in the bathroom—and how that experience shaped his empathy for people who would never ask for help.
💸 The hardest call he ever made: choosing not to furlough two-thirds of his staff in 2020, burning through cash and clawing back over years instead—and how that decision rewired the organization’s trust, fear level, and loyalty.
📚 Books & anchors: Rick’s own book Outgrow Your Space at Work on how we emotionally translate our careers, plus the daily role of faith and devotionals in “saving his humanity from himself.”
✨ One way to human up: stop diagnosing people—and organizations—before you’ve listened. Start inside your own walls, one manager and one conversation at a time, and design every engagement so it quietly tells the person in front of you: you have a voice, and it matters here.
47 mins