Max Finberg

Max Finberg is the Director of AmeriCorps VISTA (Volunteers In Service To America), a national service program to fight poverty in America. He most recently served as Director of Faith Based and Neighborhood Partnerships at the U.S. Department of Agriculture, where he serves as a senior advisor, coordinating Secretary Vilsack’s rural anti-poverty and diversity and inclusion initiatives. In that role, he worked with communities around the country to promote growth and opportunity in high-poverty rural areas. He was Acting Director of the Office of Tribal Relations and Director of USDA’s Center for Faith-Based and Neighborhood Partnerships. In 2012, he served on the White House’s Domestic Policy Council as a senior policy advisor working on immigration, child nutrition, and outreach to various communities.

Prior to joining President Obama’s Administration, Max directed the Alliance to End Hunger, a non-profit organization that engages member organizations in building the will to end hunger. He has also served as special assistant to the ambassador at the U.S. Mission to the UN Agencies for Food and Agriculture in Rome, Italy, which works with the U.N.'s Food and Agriculture Organization, the World Food Program and the International Fund for Agriculture Development. Previously, Finberg was a senior legislative assistant covering domestic hunger and poverty issues for Representative Tony Hall and worked on the successful passage of The Hunger Relief Act and the Community Solutions Act with a variety of anti-poverty and faith-based organizations. He is also the founding director of the Mickey Leland/Bill Emerson Hunger Fellows Program at the Congressional Hunger Center. Finberg graduated from Tufts University with degrees in Political Science, German and International Relations. He received his master’s degree in Social Ethics from Howard University's School of Divinity and is a Harry Truman Scholar from New York. Originally from the Catskill Mountains, he currently resides in Washington, D.C. with his wife, daughter and son.