Founding Coordinator: Dustin Kemp
Dustin received his Bachelor’s degree in Agricultural Leadership & Development in 2007 after an almost 8 year hiatus spent traveling the country as the front man for Austin-based band J. Greene & The Steady (formerly known as Suite 709). During this period Dustin was voted one of The Austin Chronicle’s Best Male Vocalists two years in a row. His music has been featured on hit TV shows "Nashville" and "The Fosters". Kemp and his band were featured on Google+ and Billboard.com.
In 2015 Suite 709 disbanded, and Dustin found himself without a college degree or a performance group. At the urging of his mother he was inspired to return to Texas A&M to finish his degree. With only $99 in his pocket, he came back to Aggieland in Fall 2015.
Homeless and hungry much of Fall 2015-Spring 2016, Dustin crashed on friends couches, slept in his car in parking lots and snoozed on the steps of Academic Building while working and taking classes. He was eventually taken in by Dr. Aisha Brown until she left in May 2016. Dustin persevered with encouragement from his mentor Dr. Danielle Harris and his grandmother, and walked across the stage to receive his diploma from TAMU in December 2016 with an offer of employment as the Capstone Program Assistant for LAUNCH.
Dustin has spoken about his path towards becoming a college graduate in a TEDxTAMU talk (http://www.tedxtamu.com/dustin-kemp). Those experiences have made him very aware of the problems many of our TAMU students and staff face with hunger and homelessness. In his role as a Capstone Program Assistant, he spent a week in Puerto Rico in the summer of 2018 to help in disaster recovery and understand the potential for international experiences as service learning opportunities. The conditions Dustin saw in Puerto Rico reinforced his desire to address the problem of hunger, and he leaped at being given the opportunity to pull together resources, expertise, and information that can help all of us at TAMU find new and better ways to help address food insecurity on campus, in the community, nationally, and around the world. Thus was born The Hunger Consortium.