Maurice Cousin Sr.
Vice President of Global Special Project
Prior to joining the Food Depository, Cousin served as President of Polk Street Group Consulting (PSG), a Chicago based, minority owned, boutique consulting firm specializing in community development and relationship management for urban market support services to corporate, non-profit, and governmental clients. PSG programming ensured minority and small business inclusion within civic and private sector supply chains as well as developing “Best in Class” Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) and DEI initiatives for food producing and retail distributing corporate clients. In 2008, Cousin was promoted to lead PSG when its founder, Ambassador Ertharin Cousin, was tapped by the Obama Administration to serve as Ambassador to and later supported her bid as CEO of the World Food Programme, The largest food insecurity addressing humanitarian agency in the world.
Earlier in his career, whether managing a portfolio of clients at The Target Group, a Chicago based, national leader in the minority supplier diversity space; as government affairs liaison for the capital construction department at the Chicago Housing Authority (CHA) during the $1.5 billion, Plan for Transformation redevelopment project or on the three (3) presidential or dozens of state and local campaigns, the theme of addressing systemic issues plaguing black and brown communities through investment and development remain true through today.
Maurice holds an Executive MBA from the University of Illinois in organizational leadership and change management, Bachelor’s degree in Business Economics from Florida A & M University (FAMU) and is certified in Project Management from Loyola University.
Maurice Cousin brings more than twenty plus (20+) years of experience in minority community engagement and small business development consulting work; specializing in solutions rooted in diversity, equity and inclusion principles. Cousin maintains a stellar reputation for providing strategic solutions to urban development and community relations questions specifically in food insecurity and “grocer desert” challenges. He is known for working with diverse teams to develop and implement tactical and justice focused solutions to systemic issues plaguing minority and BIPOC communities.
Previously, at the Greater Chicago Food Depository, Cousin leads the Food Access, Partner Services, Partner Capacity Building and newly formed Food Rescue/Agency Enabled teams, all of which comprise the community and partner facing group responsible for providing food allocations, relationship management, trainings, and capacity building resources to the Food Depository network of over 400 traditional pantry, soup kitchens and shelters across Cook County. Since, Joining in January 2021, Cousin has become a thought leader in advancing the Food Depository, community impact goal of Transforming the Emergency Food System both internally, co-chairing the executive leadership team workshops curated by the Vocati Group focused on Justice, Equity, Diversity and Inclusion (JEDI) learnings and externally, co-leading the initiative of providing $10M in capacity building grants to partners operating in the black and brown communities most disproportionally affected by the pandemic.