Lauren Waits

Lauren Waits is Director of Government Affairs for the Atlanta Community Food Bank, where she leads advocacy initiatives at the state and federal level. Lauren develops and implements strategies to advance the Food Bank’s policy priorities, largely focused on Georgia’s SNAP and WIC programs. She serves as the Food Bank lobbyist and conducts outreach to elected and government agency officials.

Lauren was the first policy director at Voices for Georgia’s Children, where she helped to establish an advocacy framework and select indicators to measure progress in child well-being. Most recently, she worked as a facilitator at StoryCorps Atlanta, where she had the opportunity to engage deeply with community partners gathering stories to advance a range of social justice causes. As a graduate of the T.H. Chan Harvard School of Public Health, Lauren has worked in diverse communities from Ghana, West Africa to Oaxaca, Mexico. A sixth-generation Georgian with family roots in Polk County, Lauren is also a proud graduate of the DeKalb County Public Schools.