Laura Rhea

For Laura Rhea, the president and CEO of Arkansas Rice Depot of Little Rock, hunger is not abstract. She has experienced it. Worse, Rhea watched her daughter, Allison, cry as her parents went without food so Allison could eat.
“That was the most difficult thing you could ever imagine,” Rhea said. “But I would not change any of my experiences for anything in the world because it made me who I am, and it made me passionate about what we do.”
Rhea has worked at the Rice Depot for 26 years, overseeing its growth into a leading hunger-fighting nonprofit. She has seen her Food for Kids program expand throughout Arkansas and into more than 40 states. Food for Kids gives schoolchildren — more than 30,000 of them during the last school year — backpacks full of healthy but “kid-friendly” food so they can feed themselves without embarrassment.
Rhea has done this while experiencing profound hardship. In 2002, she lost the ability to walk and now uses a wheelchair. And last year, her only child, Allison, died. Allison, who was only 38, had worked with Rhea at the Rice Depot for 15 years.
Though Rhea is still working through her grief, she finds solace in the time she and her daughter had together and in what they accomplished.
Rhea knows tragedy can be a tool for good or bad. She decided to use it for good. Because Allison, the nonprofit’s program director, “knew what I was thinking without me saying it, she took a lot of burden off of me, and now that she’s gone, I’ve had to give other staff members many tasks that she did,” Rhea said. In losing the ability to walk, she had to learn to let others help. As a result, both the Rice Depot board and its staff have demonstrated power and talents that might have remained hidden.
Rhea hopes to leave a legacy of empowerment. “I’m looking at retirement in seven or eight years, so I’m trying to build a young and talented and dedicated group of individuals who will be here for years to come.”

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