SALEM — Project Bread recently announced that Salem resident Alex Dery Snider has joined the organization as its new chief policy officer.
The nonprofit said Dery Snider, a Dracut native, caught the policy bug in high school, competing in New Hampshire’s Youth in Government program. She’s carried it through stints on Capitol Hill, at The Pew Charitable Trusts and at a civil legal aid nonprofit in New York, and now brings it home to Massachusetts.
In this new role, the Salem resident leads Project Bread’s policy team as the East Boston-based statewide food security organization continues its advocacy for state and federal investment in food security programs, including its push for increased staffing at the Mass. Department of Transitional Assistance to improve SNAP access. In her first months, she is focusing on building relationships across the nonprofit’s team and partners, including U.S. Reps. Jim McGovern and Ayanna Pressley, co-leaders of the Make Hunger History Coalition, while preparing the organization’s advocacy strategy for the upcoming legislative session.
“Access to food is such a universal, fundamental need, and food insecurity has such long-term, cascading effects on people’s lives,” said Dery Snider. “I’ve always loved policy work and advocacy, and I’m glad to be able to focus that work on food security here at home in Massachusetts.”
Dery Snider joins Project Bread from Empire Justice Center, a civil legal services nonprofit in New York, where she directed policy and communications work on a broad range of issues, including civil rights, disability advocacy and public benefits, including SNAP. Earlier, she worked at Bennington College in Vermont and, in Washington, D.C., at The Pew Charitable Trusts, where she worked on a partnership with the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation to bring health into decisions in other sectors, including grantees nationwide, and a report examining the health impacts of proposed SNAP cuts in a Farm Bill reauthorization.
In 2024, Dery Snider was recognized for her policy and communications work with Empire Justice Center in New York; she worked as part of the New York Legal Services Coalition, which was recently named one of the most effective coalitions in the state. At Empire Justice Center, she crafted the organization’s policy agenda to protect vulnerable New Yorkers, including their response to a proposed budget cut for legal services for low-income residents. She previously served as communications director for the U.S. House Committee on Science and Technology and holds a degree in English writing and Speech and Theater from St. Lawrence University.
“Alex has spent her career on the frontlines of strategic policy campaigns, successfully changing policy from Capitol Hill to New York State, and she knows firsthand what it takes to get SNAP access right and to make sure constituents know why these policies are urgent and relevant to them,” said Erin McAleer, Project Bread’s CEO. “That’s exactly the expertise we need as we push Massachusetts to become the first state in the country to permanently end hunger.”