“Change doesn’t happen by wishing for it.”
That is a key lesson David Annis said he has learned in a career covering more than four decades of campus foodservice leadership. A past president and current board member of the National Association of College & University Food Services (NACUFS), Annis explained that effective growth and change requires building a strong foundation first.
But you can’t do it alone, he added.
“You have to build a strong team to be successful,” Annis said. “Once there, stand back and let them go while remembering to give credit where the credit is due.”
This attitude of servant leadership and collaboration has proven efficacious for Annis in both his professional roles and his longstanding service to NACUFS.
With his father a founding member of the association, Annis’s connection to NACUFS began when he was just a child. He became a regional president in 1997 and NACUFS president in 2007, volunteering in numerous other service positions before and since. In 2023, he won the Theodore W. Minah Distinguished Lifetime Service Award, NACUFS’ highest honor.
Annis was born on his father’s birthday, Dec. 20, 1955. Born and raised in Vermillion, South Dakota, he lived and attended school there for his first 30 years, earning a bachelor’s in secondary education from the University of South Dakota in 1983. While at school, Annis started his first job in food service as a student employee in the dish room, becoming a dining hall manager in 1984. That same year, he married his wife, Susan Johnsen-Annis. A couple years later, he took a job at the University of Oklahoma (OU), and they moved south, where they had two children, Larry and Leslie.
Annis became the executive director of food services at OU in 1993, eventually rising to the role of associate vice president and director of housing and food services. In 2019, he retired from OU in order to become the director of dining at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln (UNL)—a longtime dream of his and a location he and Sue always knew they would retire.
"Sue and I never thought we would spend 33 years at OU, but it was a great university with great opportunities,” Annis said. “Still, when the dining director position opened up at UNL in December of 2018, I asked Susan if it was silly 33 years later to still have that same dream. And here I am, living the dream.”
Soon after, in October 2019, his first granddaughter, Amelia, was born to Larry and Mika Annis in a small city in Nebraska not too far away from Lincoln.
A year of significance, 2019 also marked the start of what Annis cited as the greatest challenge of his career, the COVID-19 pandemic, which would turn the industry upside down just as Annis began his tenure at UNL. The pandemic, which took full force at the beginning of 2020, devastated the workforce and has posed complex labor challenges ever since.
“Still working on that one actually,” Annis said.
The achievement Annis said makes him most proud, however, was creating the Student Room and Board program at OU in 1996.
“A student could work 18 hours a week in food services during the school year and earn enough money to pay for their room and board, plus have a little bit left for incidentals,” Annis said. “This program not only helped food services by recruiting student workers, but also helped over 3,000 students afford to attend OU.”
Annis's favorite quote, from a song by Harry Chapin, encapsulates his approach to life and work: “Now if a man tried to spend his time on Earth and prove before he died what one man's life could be worth, well, I wonder what would happen to this world?”
In a career demonstrating just that kind of impact, Annis's path from a small city in South Dakota to the forefront of collegiate dining is a story of dedication, leadership, and a deep-seated belief in service and community. His legacy within NACUFS and the broader collegiate dining community continues to inspire and guide the next generation of food service professionals.