Sheelah Muhammad

Co-creator, Fresh Moves Mobile Market; Co-founder, Food Desert Action

Sheelah Muhammad is co-founder of Food Desert Action and co-creator of the Fresh Moves Mobile Produce Market. Her social enterprise uses innovative community-based solutions to increase access to fresh, healthy food options in low-income, historically excluded and underserved communities. Sheelah is known for her high energy, proactive leadership style and her wide-range of expertise developed over nearly twenty years of professional history. She has successfully worked in domestic and international markets with Fortune 500, government, philanthropic and nonprofit organizations. As a social entrepreneur, a naprapath and the daughter of a grocer, Sheelah is ardent about positively shifting the health trajectory of children and families in low-resource communities. She has spent the vast majority of her career creating and implementing organization and strategic program initiatives to advance social, economic, racial and health equity. Her years of experience in community development and social justice have shaped her belief that where you live determines how you live.

Prior to launching Fresh Moves, Sheelah was program officer at Oprah’s Angel Network and The Oprah Winfrey Foundation where she developed and advanced the charity’s research agenda on social determinants of health and health inequities.  She led the Healthy Communities program area focusing on key initiatives linking education, youth development, economic opportunity, housing and community health.

Sheelah currently serves on the National Advisory Council for the Office of Minority Health’s Action Learning Collaborative focused on healthy school food and environments. She is a member of the Joint Center for Political and Economic Studies’ Cook County Place Matters team, board Treasurer of Healthy Schools Campaign, and a guest lecturer at Northwestern University School of Education & Social Policy. Sheelah holds a Doctorate in Naprapathic Medicine from the National College of Naprapathic Medicine, a BS in Business Administration from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and a MBA from the Kellogg School of Management at Northwestern University.