Alanna Mallon is currently serving her third term on the Cambridge City Council, and is serving her second terms as Vice-Mayor.
In 2013 as an active participant in her children's school community, Alanna became aware that food insecurity was a barrier for academic success for many of our public school students. She founded the Cambridge Weekend Backpack Program not only to address the needs of these vulnerable students, but also to connect their families to other vital resources that are available in the community. For the last four years she has passionately dedicated her life to working on issues of food insecurity in Cambridge and she has had the privilege and pleasure of helping schools, families, the business community and concerned residents form a partnership to help Cambridge students succeed.
As the Education Liaison to Mayor David Maher in 2015-2016, she learned first-hand that dedicated public service combined with strategic public policy can be an effective tool to change our residents’ lives for the better. Our city has a great many resources, but many who live here are facing significant challenges and their needs are not being met. Alanna is determined to ensure that those resources can be directed to those who may not have a voice in decision making.
Since January of 2016, she has been working at Food For Free, working closely on issues of food insecurity in Cambridge not just for students, but for various vulnerable populations in Cambridge and the Greater Boston area. Through this work, she came to realize that there is a link between the resources and services that residents need: affordable housing, access to high quality day care and early education opportunities, mental health and human services, and many more. Working on these linked issues for our residents and using her skills to build broad coalitions of support to find meaningful solutions to the complex issues and challenges that face our community members is the natural extension of her work, and issues she cares deeply about.
Alanna was born and raised in Brockton, Massachusetts and moved to Cambridge with her husband in the summer of 2004. They are proud to call Cambridge home. Alanna and her husband have two children, a freshman and senior at CRLS, both of whom have been enrolled in the Cambridge Public School system since they were in Junior Kindergarten.
Contact
Alanna Mallon amallon@cambridgema.gov
617-800-9571 (home)
www.alannamallon.org
Photos
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Photo Credit: Kyle Klein Photography