Shelly Parks brings over fifteen years of social work experience as a direct service provider and nonprofit administrator. She has been engaged as a CIE partner and thought leader through her work at Jewish Family Service of San Diego and the Jacobs & Cushman San Diego Food Bank. Pivoting her experience and passion for CIE in 2023 to bolster CIE San Diego’s national movement, Shelly co-facilitates communities of practice, plans and executes the annual CIE Summit, and provides technical assistance for communities across the country in all stages of planning and implementing CIEs.

Prior to joining 2-1-1 San Diego, Shelly served as the Senior Director of Programs at the Jacobs & Cushman San Diego Food Bank, ensuring equitable and dignified service delivery among the Food Bank’s direct service and partner agency network throughout San Diego County. During Shelly’s nine years with the Food Bank, she supported the growth from 300 partner agencies to more than 500 partners and navigated a dramatic spike in demand for emergency food during the pandemic amounting to 60 million pounds of food, a 76% increase, distributed in one year. Leveraging the local CIE to ensure all people needing access to food had real-time information and CIE partners could make direct referrals to hunger relief was critical to the success of the Food Bank throughout the pandemic. Beyond food security work, at Jewish Family Service Shelly spearheaded implementation of a national model program, providing character-based auto-loans to help low-income families access personal transportation while rebuilding their credit score and gaining education on a variety of financial skills. Shelly brings wide-reaching talent from her varied career experiences in program planning, development, implementation, as well as impact and outcome evaluation to the 2-1-1 San Diego team in her role with the CIE national movement.

Outside of her career, Shelly is currently serving as an elected member of the Ocean Beach Town Council, is an avid hiker, and spends weekends stand up paddle boarding on the bay. She holds a License in Clinical Social Work (LCSW), Master of Social Work degree from San Diego State University, and a Bachelor of Science degree in Criminal Justice from University of Wisconsin – Eau Claire.