U.S. Hunger CEO on Innovative Models for Food Security and Health Equity

About the speaker

Rick Whitted

U.S. Hunger, President & Chief Executive Officer

Rick Whitted is the President & Chief Executive Officer at U.S. Hunger, a global nonprofit whose mission is feeding families today and uniting them to a healthier tomorrow. In total, U.S. Hunger (USH) has provided over 165 million meals to families in need. Before his appointment as CEO in March 2020, Rick served on USH’s board of directors.
Rick has overseen the launch of several of the organization’s initiatives: expanding home delivery of fresh produce into its supply chain; aligning its Full Cart® program with the Centers for Medicare/Medicaid Services’ (CMS) health equity framework; and, developing a cloud based SaaS solution that uses A.I. and Machine Learning to identify root causes of food insecurity in the U.S. and provide real-time actionable intelligence on social determinants of health (SDOH).
Rick is a graduate of Stetson University and Nova Southern University where he received a BA in Political Sciences/American Studies, and an MBA, Business Administration and Management, respectively. Prior to joining USH, he spent 27 multi-faceted years in banking; focusing on small business, government and non-profit banking. He is also an accomplished author and speaker with expertise in leadership, workplace culture and individual and team development.
Affiliations/Membership: U.S. Global Leadership Coalition, Google Refresh Working Group, City of Orlando Mayor’s Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Commission, Aligning for Health Advisory Board

About the host

Chenny Solaiyappan

Mphasis, Vice President

Chenny Solaiyappan is a seasoned product and venture leader with nearly three decades of experience building and scaling enterprise healthcare and government technology platforms. He is currently Vice President, Products at Mphasis, where he is focused on transforming core claims administration platforms into scalable, AI-enabled learning health system for the commercial, self-funded, and TPA markets.

Previously, Chenny spent over 15 years at Cognizant’s TriZetto Product House, where he founded, built, and scaled the ClaimSphere® suite of products and pioneered the Quality-as-a-Service (QaaS) business model. His work helped health plans unlock more than $1B in value-based payments, while repositioning quality measurement from a regulatory obligation into a Learning Health System. Today, ClaimSphere supports tens of millions of lives across leading U.S. health plans.

A recognized thought leader in value-based care, digital quality measurement (dQM), HEDIS, CMS Stars, FHIR interoperability, and population health analytics, Chenny has played a key industry role as HL7 Da Vinci Business Co-Chair for the TriZetto portfolio. He regularly speaks at national forums including NCQA, RISE, AHIP, INFORMS, and Health Plan Alliance.

Chenny is also the host of the Care Catalyst Podcast, where he interviews healthcare executives, innovators, and policymakers on the future of whole-person care, AI, and health equity. He brings an Entrepreneur-in-Residence mindset to large enterprises—combining strategy, product execution, and storytelling to transform complex systems into scalable, customer-centric platforms.