About the Founders

Tanikka Cunningham

The Co- Founder and Executive Director of Healthy Solutions is Tanikka Cunningham. Mrs. Cunningham formed the first and only African American woman owned produce Distribution Company to exist and has worked in produce wholesale and retail distribution for over 10 years; her experience includes developing markets and chains in urban and rural areas. Mrs. Cunningham has overseen the purchasing, procurement, and distribution of products from farmers with military, schools, prisons, community organizations, wholesalers, and retailers. She has overseen and sourced government contracts for food distribution totaling over 10 million dollars. With her expertise in distribution and socially disadvantage farmers, Mrs. Cunningham brings an expertise that is hard to find, and is rare for an African American woman. National Healthy Solutions has a network of over 609 limited resource and socially disadvantaged farmers that we source from and work with, as well as another 15 international farmers for items that cannot be grown in the United States. All the food that is offered to our community members is sourced directly from farms and delivered to our communities. Tanikka believes that food alone will not change our communities, so she works to insure that community members have access to information on entrepreneurship, nutrition, and cooking to have a broader impact on the communities Healthy Solutions services. Tanikka is very active in Advocacy and Policy work, and is the Co-Chair and the Commerce Chair of the Live Well DC Community Coalition, as well as the Co-Chair of the DC Cancer Policy Taskforce.

LaTisha Watford

The Co- founder and Director of Finance of Healthy Solutions is LaTisha Watford. Ms. Watford has overseen the operation of numerous large scale programs on a global scale. With 13 years of grant management experience, Ms Watford will bring Healthy Solutions this knowledge to help develop, implement, and keep programs running while making sure deliverables are met. She has overseen a 28 million dollar budget and has worked with the Department of Commerce and with USAID funded programs. She has also worked with an International Non-government Organization where she has audited program expenses, managed programs, and prepared organizational and program budgets. As an entrepreneur and an employee, LaTisha has conducted, planned, and participated in marketing, feasibility discussions, and business trainings, governmental technical assistance trainings, and nonprofit organizational trainings. LaTisha is also very active in agriculture and food systems change and in 2010 was appointed by the Governor of North Carolina to the Food Retail Chair of the North Carolina Local Food Policy Board.