Mike serves as vice president of operations of Brighter Bites, overseeing and directing programmatic aspects of Brighter Bites across all cities, including program implementation and evaluation, community relations, and site and volunteer recruitment and engagement. He was an integral part of the Brighter Bites roll out and development during the first three years of its existence in his work at the Michael & Susan Dell Center for Healthy Living at the UT School of Public Health, where he worked closely with Brighter Bites Co-Founder Shreela Sharma, PhD.

Mike has had an interest in improving food access and reducing food insecurity since he became a graduate student at the UT School of Public Health in Houston. He lobbied for improved national school lunch standards in 2010 as an intern with the Center for Science in the Public Interest, and worked with Michelle Obama’s “Let’s Move!” campaign in 2012. He has also served on Houston ISD’s School Health Advisory Committee (SHAC) since 2011.

Mike obtained his MPH in 2010 with an emphasis in health policy, and worked with the Michael & Susan Dell Center for Healthy Living from 2008-2015 on multiple health promotion research projects, including the pilot project that launched Brighter Bites. Mike lives in Houston with his husband and their dog Moxie.