Billy Shore is the founder and executive director of Share Our Strength, a national nonprofit that is leading the fight against childhood hunger in America, and the chairman of Community Wealth Ventures, Inc., a for-profit subsidiary of Share our Strength that offers strategy and implementation services to foundations and nonprofit organizations, partnering with them to design and implement innovative approaches to growth and sustainability to promote social change.
From 1978 through 1987, Billy served on the senatorial and presidential campaign staffs of former U.S. Senator Gary Hart (D-Colorado). From 1988 to 1991, Shore was chief of staff for former U.S. Senator Robert Kerrey (D-Nebraska). He founded Share Our Strength in 1984 in response to the Ethiopian famine and subsequently renewed concern about hunger in the United States.
Shore’s transition from politics to innovative community service and his prescription for community change are documented in his first book, Revolution of the Heart (Riverhead Press, 1995). Shore’s second book, The Cathedral Within (Random House, 1999), profiles a new breed of community leaders who are tapping every sector of society to improve community life. Shore’s most recent book is The Imaginations of Unreasonable Men to be published in November by PublicAffairs.
He currently serves on the board of directors of The Timberland Company and Venture Philanthropy Partners. He has been an adjunct professor at New York University’s Stern School of Business and is currently an advisor for the Reynolds Foundation Fellowship program at the John F. Kennedy School of Government. In 2008, he received the Gleitsman Citizen Activist Award from the Center for Public Leadership at the John F. Kennedy School of Government. The biennial award recognizes exceptional citizen-leaders and their work to correct social injustice. U.S. News & World Report also named him one of America’s best leaders in 2005.
Shore earned his B.A. at the University of Pennsylvania and his law degree from George Washington University in Washington, D.C.