Feeding Northeast Florida CEO Susan King to retire in 2026

Susan King will retire later in 2026 after nearly seven years leading the Jacksonville food bank, and Feeding Northeast Florida has opened the search for its next chief executive. The board has formed a search committee and wants a successor named by the end of 2026, while King stays on until a replacement is identified and onboarded.

Feeding Northeast Florida now serves 12 counties, Alachua, Baker, Bradford, Clay, Duval, Flagler, Gilchrist, Levy, Nassau, Putnam, St. Johns and Union, and works with more than 400 anti-hunger organizations and programs. Its food finder page puts the partner total at nearly 500 agencies.

King was a founding board member when Feeding Northeast Florida was established in 2014 and became CEO in 2019. Under her leadership, the organization expanded from an eight-county footprint to 12 counties, moved forward Project SHARE during the pandemic, advanced the Corner Market mobile pantry program, and completed a 2023 merger with Gainesville-based Bread of the Mighty Food Bank as part of a Feeding America realignment project. That merger brought together Feeding Northeast Florida’s 325-plus agency partners and Bread of the Mighty’s 170-plus partners.

Feeding Northeast Florida moved into its new centralized facility in June 2024, a $27 million headquarters that more than doubled storage and distribution capacity and consolidated work from two aging warehouses into one community hub. The campus includes the Florida Blue Community Kitchen, built to turn fresh ingredients into ready-to-eat meals and support nutrition education.

Feeding Northeast Florida’s 2024 annual report says the organization distributed more than 35.6 million pounds of food last year and served 310,020 people across the First Coast facing hunger.