Sacramento, CA – The County Welfare Directors Association of California (CWDA) today announced Andrew Cheyne as the organization’s first Managing Director of Government Relations & Public Affairs. Andrew brings to CWDA more than two decades of experience advocating for policies that alleviate poverty, hunger, and to uplift the voices of people served by human services programs. In this role, he will lead the advocacy and public affairs agenda for CWDA, an organization representing county human services departments across the state as they provide access to nutrition and health care, child welfare, adult protective services and other vital safety net services.  

Most recently, Andrew served as GRACE and End Child Poverty California’s managing director of public policy. In that role, Andrew worked in close partnership with CWDA on enacting a package of reforms to the CalWORKs program that streamlines the client and worker experience. 

“Andrew is an established anti-poverty leader with a proven track record of making policy work for people, centering communities and families throughout his career to ensure government systems are responsive to the needs of those they serve,” said Executive Director Carlos Marquez III. “We’re proud to welcome Andrew to CWDA and look forward to continuing to advance an anti-poverty agenda that puts families and communities first under Andrew’s leadership.” 

“I am thrilled to be joining the CWDA team,” said Andrew. “I have long worked in close collaboration with CWDA on major reforms to strengthen anti-poverty programs and better serve Californians, from the SSI CalFresh Expansion that ended the cash-out policy, to the landmark reimagine CalWORKs reforms last year. I have been excited to see CWDA further embrace partnerships to prioritize impacted community members, and I couldn’t be more excited to advance that vision.”

This past year, Andrew worked in coalition with CWDA to secure $20 million for counties to immediately offset the impact of HR.1 implementation needs. He was also instrumental in securing emergency food assistance for food banks to support humanitarian immigrant CalFresh recipients who will lose benefits imminently due to HR.1. 

Andrew previously served as SNAP deputy director for the Food Research & Action Center, a leading national advocacy organization committed to ending poverty-related hunger. He also served as the director of government affairs for the California Association of Food Banks (CAFB), where he oversaw their state and federal policy agenda to address hunger and poverty, playing key roles in helping expand CalFresh to Supplemental Security Income beneficiaries, reverse Great Recession cuts to state SSI grants, enact Healthy School Meals for All, and establish pandemic EBT. 

Andrew started his new role at CWDA on December 8th.