Oct. 18, 2018 – HISD Nutrition Services Officer Betti Wiggins has been named one of Time Magazine’s 50 Most 
Influential People in Healthcare for 2018.
The list highlights 50 people who have changed the state of healthcare in America this year.
The magazine announced the official list on Thursday. The print edition featuring Wiggins will be on newsstands Friday, with a printed release date of Oct. 29.
“I am truly humbled by this news,” Wiggins said. “In my career and in my life, I have dedicated myself to making sure our kids have access to good, healthy foods to grow and thrive. I never imagined my passion would be recognized in this manner.”
Wiggins is well-known throughout the industry as a foremost authority on school nutrition and food service management. Affectionately referred to as the “rebel lunch lady,” Wiggins is responsible for managing the HISD Nutrition Services program which serves more than 280,000 nutritious meals to students every day. She also manages operations for the district’s state-of-the-art cooking, storage and distribution center, the largest food production facility of its kind in an urban school district.
Wiggins joined HISD in 2017 after the district moved management of the student lunch program in-house after being managed by Aramark for nearly 20 years. Her arrival came just before Hurricane Harvey hit the Houston area. She and her team led the charge to serve breakfast, lunch and dinner to families in need at nine sites across the city while schools remained underwater and inoperable. When schools reopened, she ensured HISD’s 215,000 students ate meals at no charge for the 2017-2018 school year.
Today, her efforts to provide healthy food options to students continue. This school year, all students in HISD are eating all meals at no charge. Also this year, Nutrition Services is taking their efforts a step further. Salad bars have been implemented across all grade levels at 241 campuses, with remaining campuses set to offer salad bars by the spring.
Her team is taking their efforts “beyond the plate,” focusing on food literacy to teach students to think critically about their diets and to make food choices that establish lifelong eating habits to promote optional health and well-being. Her efforts are centered around the belief that students should eat to learn and learn to eat.
Wiggins is the recipient of numerous awards, including the International Food Services Manufacturers Association’s 2017 Silver Plate award, the School Nutrition Foundation’s 2017 School Nutrition Hero award, FoodService Director Magazine’s 2017 Food Service Director of the Year, the Life Time Foundation Healthy Hero award and the School Nutrition Association of Michigan’s 2015 Director of the Year.
