Elsy Cipriani brings a spirit of resilience and commitment to her new role as executive director of the NH Food Bank in Manchester. Cipriani started in March amid a whirlwind of federal cuts to the nation’s food programs.
“It has been an interesting onboarding process,” Cipriani says. “I certainly didn’t expect to be having conversations with less money in the first 90 days.”
Throughout her career, Cipriani has worked with vulnerable populations across the country addressing a range of issues including housing access, education, and health services. In 2019, she was senior director of program operations at Heading Home, the largest provider of family shelter in Massachusetts and later served as managing director of the International
Institute of New England. She succeeds Eileen Liponis, who led the NH Food Bank from 2017 to 2024.
Cipriani says “funding is always a struggle” for nonprofits but adds recent cuts to food programs are “something we’ve never seen before.”
In March, the Trump administration eliminated over $1 billion in funding for programs like the Local Food Purchase Assistance Program enabling food banks and schools to purchase food from local farmers. That money funded the NH Food Bank’s Feeding NH program, which in 2024 provided 522,000 pounds of food sourced from 185 local farmers. The cuts mean the program will lose nearly $1 million in funding through 2028.
In total, the Food Bank, a program of Catholic Charities and a partner of Feeding America, distributed more than 17 million pounds of food to more than 400 partner agencies statewide in 2024. To help stem the growing tide of food insecurity, Cipriani says the Food Bank is trying to tap new sources of funding. “We’ve received calls from individual donors and foundations asking how cuts are affecting us, and we’re actively reaching out to foundations who have supported us in past,” she says.
Cipriani, who lives in Derry with her husband, son, and dog, Ferris, was born in Bogota, Columbia, and attended college in Ecuador where she worked with indigenous populations and with Colombian refugees. She currently serves as an advisor for
VidaAfrolatina, an international women’s fund that supports Afro-Latinas who are survivors of sexual violence in Latin America. She received the Hispanic Heritage Award in 2018 from the Boston City Council for her work with Latino communities in the Boston Metropolitan Area.
When she isn’t fighting food insecurity in the Granite State, Cipriani is probably out training for ultra marathons. Last year she ran a 100-mile race in Vermont and she has another one coming up in July. “I’m a really passionate runner and ultra marathons take a lot of endurance like other things in life,” she says.
