Dr Sandro Demaio is a medical doctor and globally-renowned public health expert and advocate.

Sandro previously worked for the World Health Organization and was CEO of the EAT Foundation. He also co-founded the NCDFREE global social movement and established a not-for-profit foundation to improve the health and nutrition of Australian kids.

Sandro has published many scientific journal articles and is author of the Doctor’s Diet cookbook. He also co-hosts the ABC television and Netflix show Ask the Doctor.

Alexander Müller served as a city councillor in Marburg, as State Secretary and member of Parliament in Hessen/Germany, and as State Secretary for Consumer Protection, Food and Agriculture for Germany’s Federal Government. From 2006 until 2013, Müller served as the Assistant Director-General of the U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), and was responsible for the FAO’s work on Land and Water, Climate Change, and Genetic Resources for Food and Agriculture. He was a member of the UN Secretary-Generals Advisory Group on Energy and Climate Change (AGECC) in 2009 and has served the Chair of the United Nations System Standing Committee on Nutrition (UNSCN). Müller is also involved in Germany’s green energy transition, known as the “Energiewende“. Since 2014 Müller has served as the study leader for TEEBAgriFood and as the Managing Director of TMG – Think Tank for Sustainability.

Alison Blay-Palmer, the UNESCO Chair in Food Biodiversity and Sustainability Studies, is the founding Director for the Centre for Sustainable Food Systems and a Professor in Geography and Environmental Studies at Wilfrid Laurier University. Her research and teaching combine her passions for sustainable food systems and community viability through civil society engagement and innovative governance. Alison collaborates with academics and practitioners across Canada and internationally including partners in Brazil, France, Germany, Italy, Kenya, Mexico, South Africa, and the United States. This work gained recognition in both 2012 and 2019 when her partnership was one of three nominees for a national SSHRC Partnership Impact Award. Other on-going research projects with partners and students include: City Region Food System, Climate Resilience with the Resources Centre on Urban Agriculture and Food Security (RUAF) and the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO); and food security, health and climate change in the Northwest Territories. Alison has been a member of the Royal Society of Canada’s College of New Scholars, Artists and Scientists since 2016.

Andrew is an agriculturalist at heart with a passion for food and nutrition. Working across the food system, Andrew has worn many hats from field hand to biotechnologist, commercial seed producer to food export strategist, and now, a value chain analyst at ripe.io- a leader in the agrifood blockchain space. A big picture thinker who is not afraid to roll up his sleeves to scout a field or run a statistical analysis; Andrew is excited to use his 10+ years of experience in the food system to drive ripe’s mission- enabling participants to improve trust and transparency in their supply chain.

Andrew Thorne-Lyman, ScD, MHS, joined the center as Affiliated Faculty in 2019. He is an associate scientist at the Center for Human Nutrition in the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health. In his role at The Johns Hopkins Center for a Livable Future, Andrew provides expertise on human nutrition, including in the context of seafood consumption, and he brings an international health background to the Center, as well. Before coming to Johns Hopkins in 2016, he was a senior nutrition specialist and team leader at The WorldFish Center (Malaysia), a lecturer at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health and a director of nutrition research at the Earth Institute, Columbia University. He has also served in various capacities at the UN World Food Programme (Rome) and Helen Keller International (Bangladesh). Current research interests include exploring the role of fish in meeting the nutritional needs of vulnerable populations in low and middle income countries, particularly of young children, studying links between food systems, diet and nutrition and health outcomes, and the development and validation of indicators to measure the effectiveness of nutrition programs. Andrew earned his BA at Pomona College, his MHS at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, and his ScD at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health.

Angie Tagtow is the Founder and Chief Strategist of Äkta Strategies, a consulting firm that designs authentic solutions for systems change. She has more than 25 years of experience working at local, state, federal, and international levels in agriculture, food, and nutrition policy; public health; and food and water systems. In 2014, she was appointed by President Barack Obama to serve as the Executive Director for the USDA Center for Nutrition Policy and Promotion in which she co-led the development and launch of the 2015-2020 Dietary Guidelines for Americans. Angie is a registered dietitian and served as a Senior Fellow and Endowed Chair at the Minnesota Institute for Sustainable Agriculture, University of Minnesota College of Food, Agricultural and Natural Resource Sciences, and as a Food and Society Policy Fellow with the Institute for Agriculture and Trade Policy. She was the founder and CEO of a successful consulting firm that provided program and policy development, strategic planning, capacity building, communication, and education services to diverse clients that worked toward advancing sustainable, resilient, and healthy food and water systems. She co-founded a non-profit focused on health and food systems in addition to forming a statewide community of practice that promoted evidence-based strategies to increase access to healthful food. Angie has served in professional leadership positions within the Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics, Iowa Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics, Society for Nutrition Education and Behavior, and the American Public Health Association. In addition to launching the Journal of Hunger & Environmental Nutrition in 2005 in which she served as the managing editor for 11 years, she has published numerous peer-reviewed articles, book chapters, and reports. Angie has been honored by many organizations for her leadership and professional contributions to nutrition, public health, and food systems. Angie is currently a doctoral candidate at the University of Illinois at Chicago School of Public Health. She is a graduate of the University of Northern Iowa and Iowa State University and resides on a reconstructed tallgrass prairie in central Iowa.

Anne Palmer, MAIA is a program director at the Johns Hopkins Center for a Livable Future and an associate scientist at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health in the Department of Health, Behavior and Society. She directs the Food Policy Networks project, which seeks to improve the capacity food policy councils and similar organizations to advance food system policies. Ms. Palmer’s research interests include food retail, food policy and food policy councils, food environments, obesity, urban agriculture, local and regional food systems, and community food security. Prior to joining CLF, Palmer worked for the Johns Hopkins Center for Communication Programs for 13 years developing and managing strategic communication plans and large-scale health communication campaigns and programs in Asia.

Becky is a senior program officer at the Johns Hopkins Center for a Livable Future, where she oversees research, communication, evaluation and programming that facilitate a shift toward sustainable, healthy diets that are plant-forward and lower in meat. She is primarily responsible for managing the Center’s science advisory role with the Meatless Monday Campaign.

Prior to joining the CLF, Becky worked as a Technical Advisor for Nutrition and Food Security to projects in Afghanistan and Ethiopia, helping women produce and utilize food for family consumption and income generation. She also worked as a nutrition consultant for community, worksite, and school-based programs developing and implementing health and nutrition curricula.

Becky studied nutrition at the University of California, Davis and became a registered dietitian in 1990. She received her Master in Public Health from Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health in 1999. She worked clinically and then internationally developing a clinic-based diabetes nutrition education program in Tanzania. Throughout her career, Becky has worked in the nutrition/public health field focusing on helping individuals and organizations make healthful, lifestyle choices that are evidence based, relevant, and sustainable.

Bela Gil is a chef, nutritionist, activist and author of 5 bestselling books in Brazil. Her career has spanned many fields: food, television and media, healthcare, women’s rights, public policy, and education. Underlying her work is the belief that a life of quality should be a right for everyone. More than that, she works towards a future where we are not only surviving, but thriving. She graduated with a BS in Nutrition from Hunter College and a diploma in Culinary Art’s from the Natural Gourmet Institute, both in New York. In 2019 she got a Master degree of Gastronomy at the University of Gastronomic Sciences in Italy.

While Bob will tell you modestly that he’s not an academic or a scientist, his extensive expertise in public policy and knowledge of agriculture, environmental and health issues ultimately brought him to the Center for a Livable Future in 2011, where he is now the director of the Food System Policy Program. During his years working for members of Congress from the Midwest, Bob gained a knack for strategizing and “bringing the right people together,” he says. Previously, Bob worked on Capitol Hill and in a state legislature, as well as for a family farm advocacy group. He also worked for the Pew Charitable Trusts, where he served as a senior officer at the Pew Environment Group following the dissemination of his work as Executive Director of the Pew Commission on Industrial Farm Animal Production. Bob worked closely with staff at the Center and other experts from JHSPH on the Commission, which was a joint venture of Pew and JHSPH. Ultimately, the Commission published 8 technical reports and one seminal report entitled “Putting Meat on the Table: Industrial Farm Animal Production in America.” “Food has become the social issue of our time,” he says. “I was lucky enough to participate in an effort to shine a bright spotlight on one aspect of the food system that is in crisis.” At the Center, Bob’s role will be to enhance policy efforts based on research conducted by the Center and other organizations. As the Center has grown substantially in recent years, one of Bob’s responsibilities will be to ensure that it takes a coordinated approach to research and policy while optimizing partnerships with colleagues at other organizations.

Brent earned his Master’s in Global Disease Epidemiology from the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, where he serves as a Program Officer at the Center for a Livable Future. Since joining the Center in 2008, his work has spanned farm to fork, with published works on sustainable diets, climate change, industrial food animal production, food and agricultural policy, soil safety, and urban food systems. His work has been featured in Popular Science, The Guardian, The Huffington Post, NPR, and Newsweek. A former computer scientist, digital artist, and high school educator, Brent has never lost his love of teaching and visual communication.

Prof. Bryndis Eva Birgisdóttir is a professor in nutrition at the University of Iceland. She started out with a BSc in nutrition from the Karolinska Insitute and University of Stockholm, as a stepping stone towards a further degree in Clinical Dietetics from Gothenburg University. After graduation she worked for a few years as a clinical dietitian at the National University Hospital in Iceland along with research and lecturing. However, after her PhD in nutritional epidemiology from the University of Iceland, she worked on public health nutrition projects and research, both in Iceland and from Bruxelles. When relocating to Oslo, Norway Bryndis worked on several research projects at the Norwegian Public Health Institute before moving to Iceland again, as an associate professor/professor in nutrition at the University of Iceland. Bryndis is currently a guest researcher at the University of Copenhagen, Denmark.

Carla Martins is currently a professor at the School of Public Health of the University of São Paulo (FSP/USP) and a researcher at the Center for Epidemiological Research in Nutrition and Health (NUPENS/USP). She worked as part of the team that developed the Dietary Guidelines for the Brazilian Population. Her work focuses on cooking and its impact on ultra-processed food consumption; and cooking as a tool for protection and promotion of human health and environmental sustainability.

Carlo Fadda, Research Director, Biodiversity for Food and Agriculture, joined Bioversity International in 2004 in Vietnam, where he spent almost three years as part of a project to manage agrobiodiversity in situ. Carlo has managed projects in China, Ecuador, Morocco, Kenya, Ethiopia, Papua New Guinea, Uganda, and Tanzania, among others. In 2015, Carlo moved to Ethiopia to establish Bioversity’s office in the country. From 2016, he represented all Bioversity’s country offices on the Senior Management Team. For the last six years, he led the ‘Seeds for Needs’ research team, which matches genetic diversity to farmers’ needs and brings material from genebanks back into production systems. His work centres on the understanding that conservation and use of genetic resources cannot be decoupled from rural development, livelihoods, and economics. He has a PhD in evolutionary biology and zoology from the Sapienza University of Rome. Carlo is also an adjunct researcher at Scuola S. Anna Pisa in Italy. He is based in Nairobi.

Carlos Monteiro is a Professor of Public Health Nutrition at the University of Sao Paulo, Brazil where he chairs the Center for Epidemiological Studies in Health and Nutrition. His main academic achievements include extensively quoted studies on the nutrition transition and the development of the most used food classification based on food-processing (NOVA) which is the basis for the internationally acclaimed Dietary Guidelines for the Brazilian Population. He has served on numerous national and international nutrition expert panels and committees and, since 2010, he is one of the members of the WHO Nutrition Expert Advisory Group on Diet and Health. In 2010, he received the PAHO Abraham Horwitz Award for Excellence in Leadership in Inter-American Health, and, in 2018 and 2019, he was listed by Clarivate’s Analytics/Web of Science among the top 1% of scientists in Social Sciences whose publications reached higher impact (2018 and 2019 Highly Cited Researchers).

Professor Christel Cederberg from Department Space, Earth and Environment at Chalmers University of Technology in Gothenburg, Sweden does research in the area of sustainable biomass production with a focus on agriculture and food. She has a long experience of environmental system analysis, e.g. life cycle assessment (LCA), especially livestock production systems. In on-going projects, she is investigating grass-based biorefineries, food systems with improved nutrient cycles and potentials for carbon sequestrations in soils and forests.

Dr. Christian Bunn is scientist for climate smart coffee and cocoa value chains at the International Center for Tropical Agriculture (CIAT) in Cali, Colombia. His work combines quantitative climate data analysis with participatory and qualitative research with the objective to mainstream climate adaptation into sustainability projects.

Dr Christian Reynolds is Senior Lecturer at the Centre for Food Policy, City University, London; and an adjunct Research Fellow at the Institute for Sustainable Food, University of Sheffield, and at the Barbara Hardy Institute for Sustainable Environments and Technologies, University of South Australia. Christian researches the economic and environmental impacts of food loss and waste, and the how to shift towards sustainable diets and cookery.

Christina A. Roberto, Ph.D. is the Mitchell J. Blutt and Margo Krody Blutt Presidential Assistant Professor of Health Policy at the Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania. She is a psychologist and epidemiologist who studies policies and interventions to promote healthy eating habits and prevent nutrition-related chronic diseases. Dr. Roberto is Director of the Psychology of Eating And Consumer Health lab, or PEACH lab. Her research strives to provide policymakers and institutions with science-based guidance on creating and implementing food and nutrition policy.

Christopher Gardner is a nutrition scientist and the Rehnborg Farquhar Professor of Medicine. For 26 years at Stanford he has studied what to consume and to avoid for optimal health, and how best to motivate individuals to achieve healthy dietary behaviors. He has served on many committees for organizations such as the American Heart Association and the American Diabetes Association, and has conducted and published dozens of human nutrition intervention trials. Current research interests including collaborating with chefs and dining operators as research partners in an effort to identify strategies to optimize the intersection of taste, health and environmental sustainability. Christopher teaches several food and nutrition classes, including an on-line course recently launched through the Stanford Center for Teaching and Learning.

Corey has worked on sustainable seafood issues for more than 17 years and is the co-founder of Postelsia, a company that supports innovative solutions for sustainability challenges in the seafood industry. Postelsia works toward inclusive solutions that seek to solve problems for the whole supply chain. Their recent work includes supporting the development of the James Beard Smart Catch program, a chef education program that seeks to educate chefs about sustainable seafood and supports their involvement in efforts to improve seafood. Postelsia has also been supporting the development of the Asian Seafood Improvement Collaborative, a group of stakeholders working to build their own fisheries and shrimp aquaculture improvement tools in Southeast Asia.

Dana Gunders is Executive Director of ReFED, a nonprofit focused on activating solutions to U.S. food waste. Deemed “the woman who helped start the waste-free movement” by Consumer Reports, Dana is a national expert and one of the first to bring to light just how much food is wasted across the country through her 2012 report Wasted: How America is Losing Up to 40% of Its Food from Farm to Fork to Landfill. For almost a decade, she was a Senior Scientist at the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC) and then launched her own business Next Course to strategically advise on the topic. Some of her career highlights include authoring Waste Free Kitchen Handbook, launching the Save the Food campaign, testifying in Congress, and appearing on John Oliver. When not worrying about it professionally, she spends far too much time convincing her two young kids to eat broccoli stalks and not throw food on the floor.

Daphene joined the Center for a Livable Future in 2019 as a Program Officer with the Food Communities & Public Health Program, following a year-long dietetic internship that led to her becoming a registered dietitian/nutritionist (RDN). Before that, she was an epidemiologist and lead evaluator at the Maryland Department of Health and Mental Hygiene, Oral Health Department. While there, she performed all data collection, analysis and reporting activities, and served as the chief evaluator for the HRSA workforce grant and CDC’s Cooperative Agreements oral health grant. She developed and implemented a five-year evaluation plan for Maryland’s oral health program and evaluated legislation to determine effectiveness and impact.

At the Center, Daphene uses her expertise and experience as a nutritionist to support the Meatless Monday campaign. She’s especially interested in reaching young people with wellness messages through school programs and community outreach to effect generational change. “Get them started early,” is one of her guiding principles.

As the granddaughter of long-lived Haitians who “ate what they grew and what they raised on the land,” Daphene learned first-hand about the benefits of eating fresh, organic, whole, locally-grown foods. “They taught me the importance of family, wholesome eating and how to live simply,” she says about her grandparents, who lived into their late 80s and 90s. She feels that her work at the Center and with the Monday Campaign is an opportunity to apply her experience in public health epidemiology to issues she feels passionately about—public health and sustainability.

Dr. David Love, PhD, MSPH, is an Associate Scientist in the Department of Environmental Health and Engineering at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health and the Johns Hopkins Center for a Livable Future. His work relates to food systems, seafood, and public health.

I am a global food system expert and advisor, with specialist knowledge in sustainable diets, food and nutrition security and agricultural diversity. I am an expert public speaker and have spoken at universities, festivals and to the EU parliment and the FAO, I have appeared on radio and TV and on podcasts and have contributed to various books and blogs. I am a founder and a Director at Eating Better. Currently I am participating in the Global Alliance for the Future of Food (GAFF) Salzburg process on food systems. I am on the advisory body for the DiverIMPACTS project, which focuses on crop diversification through crop rotation with multiple actors across Europe. This built on my work at WWF UK on agricultural diversity, which partially led to their partnership with Knorr and the Future 50 report. I am on the steering group for foodSIVI – the impact valuation of Food System program looking at the true cost of food, run by Oxford University. I am on the advisory group for the Food and Climate Research Network and the Food Bites project. I have participated in various Food Systems Dialogues, led by David Nabarro. I have been on steering groups and advisory bodies for Forum for the Future’s Protein 2040, and the Food Foundation’s Peas Please and Veg Power programs. I was one of only 2 Civil society experts invited to join the steering group that negotiated the format of the One Planet Network’s Sustainable Food Systems Program, previously under the UN’s 10YR Sustainable Consumption and Production banner. Until April 2020 I was the Global Head of Policy and Research at Compassion with the goal of helping to create a global agreement for sustainable food systems. Whilst WWF UK I led the work food systems, diets, nutrition security, agricultural diversity and behaviour change. I developed and delivered the on-going Livewell project, which demonstrates that a healthy diet can be sustainable. I ran WWF International’s area of collective action on sustainable diets for the food practice and on the steering group for the SDG post 2015 agenda.

Felipe Frangione’s passion for food and cooking started at a young age, by assisting his Italian grandmother to make craft pasta and breads. After graduating in Culinary Arts in Brazil, he started working in restaurants and in the hospitality market, and was invited to run the culinary operation for branded products from St. Marché, a big retail chain in São Paulo. In 2014, Felipe won the Best Dish Brazilian Contest, promoted by the International Oil Council. Since 2015, Chef Felipe has been working for Compass Group on the Google account, currently overseeing culinary operations in Latin America.

A specialist in international food and nutrition policy, Geoffrey Cannon works with the Centre for Epidemiological Research in Nutrition and Health (NUPENS), University of São Paulo, Brazil, directed by Carlos Monteiro. He was a member of the team responsible for the technical content of the second Brazilian official national nutrition guidelines, published in 2014. He was editor, founder and designer of the then monthly on-line journal World Nutrition from its launch in 2010 to 2016. The Giessen Declaration of the New Nutrition Science, which identifies nutrition as a social, economic and environmental as well as a biological and behavioural science, the result of a 2005 three-day workshop with 21 participants at Giessen he co-convened with Claus Leitzmann, published in a whole special issue of Public Health Nutrition of which he was chief editor, is now a foundation of UN and other leading reports. He has over 650 papers, commentaries and other work registered on ResearchGate, with a score of 41.17, and over 85 registrations on PubMed. From 2000-2002, he worked at the Brazilian federal Department of Health in Brasília. He drafted the first national official 2006 Brazilian nutrition guidelines. He was a member of the Brazilian government delegation to the WHO Executive Board meeting in Geneva in January 2001. Living in Britain until 2000, he was a member of the UK government delegation engaged with the 1992 WHO-FAO report Food, Nutrition and the Prevention of Chronic Diseases, which met in Copenhagen, Geneva and finally Rome. Previously, he was head of science at the World Cancer Research Fund International. As such he was director for WCRF and the American Institute for Cancer Research, of the first AICR/WCRF report Food, Nutrition and the Prevention of Cancer: A Global Perspective, published in 1997. He was chief editor of the second AICR/WCRF report published in 2007, and of a separate report on policy implications published in 2009. All three reports have summaries in various languages. His books include The Fate of Nations: Food and Nutrition Policy in the New World, Superbug, The Politics of Food, Fat to Fit, and Dieting Makes You Fat. In the 1980s in the UK he was an assistant editor of The Sunday Times, chair of the National Food Alliance (now Sustain), and secretary of the Caroline Walker Trust, the McCarrison Society, the Guild of Food Writers, and the London Road Runners Club. Born in 1940, he was educated in the UK at Christ’s Hospital and Balliol College, Oxford. He is a British citizen, resident and working in Brazil. He is married with Raquel Bittar de Oliveira and has a son Gabriel with her, and by a previous marriage two adult sons (one has died) and an adult daughter.

With an MSc in biochemistry (1973) and a PhD in microbiology (1977), Harry Aiking worked as a research associate at Indiana University in Bloomington, USA, 1978-79. Subsequently, he became a KWF (Royal Dutch Cancer Fund) Fellow at the Central Blood Bank Laboratory in Amsterdam before joining VU University in Amsterdam in 1980. There he has been leading dozens of multidisciplinary projects on the interface of natural and social sciences. He has been Advisor to the Dutch Attorney General in cases of industrial soil pollution 1987-2014 and a European Registered Toxicologist (ERT) 1997-2018. During 1999-2005, he led the NWO programme PROFETAS (Protein Foods, Environment, Technology And Society). He authored over 400 publications. After his formal retirement in 2014, he was rehired by the Institute for Environmental Studies (IVM-VU) in 2017. Thus, he remains affiliated there, continuing to supervise PhD students, lecture and publish.

I’m a tropical forester and extension scientist by training. Have PhD at University of Amsterdam based on research about multi-scale environmental coalition building. Worked for 5 years at Oxfam Novib at global environmental programs, and the past 10 years I have been a senior officer based at IUCN Netherlands focusing on agro-commodity governance.
I’m a passionate participant, designer and facilitator of sustainability debates.
Last not least..I sing and write songs, often inspired by nature, and coach people to perform as singers. For my work in music check my website http://www.heleenvandenhombergh.com and greenbeatperformers.nl

Isabela Sattamini is a Brazilian nutrition researcher who holds a PhD in Public Health Nutrition from the University of São Paulo. Her expertise is focused on dietary diversity and ultra-processed foods consumption. Isabela was involved in the multi-country study on “Ultra processed food consumption, nutritional profile of diet and obesity ” and the “Nutrinet Brazil Cohort project: Food and Chronic Non-Communicable Diseases”. She coordinated the advocacy project for advancing trans-fat restriction laws in Brazil, that later culminated in the national ban law approval in December 2019. Currently, Isabela is a consultant at the Nutrition and Food Systems Division (ESN) in the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO), dedicated to the Minimum Dietary Diversity for Women of reproductive age indicator (MDD-W) project, based in Rome, Italy.

Jacqueline is a nutritionist and has been working with dietary data management and analysis since 2011. She was awarded a Chevening Scholarship to do an MSc in Health Data Science at the University of Manchester. After her graduation, in 2018, she helped to set up a UK-Brazil partnership to study the environmental impacts of foods.

Jamie has worked in the Geographic Information Systems (GIS) field for over 20 years, working on a wide range of projects, from tracking deforestation rates in Southeast Asia, to predicting groundwater recharge rates in Southern Arizona, to mapping bike routes in Baltimore City. Jamie joined the Center for a Livable Future in 2010 and sees his GIS skills as a natural fit in advancing the Center’s mission. Through his work at the Center, Jamie has come to appreciate how complex the food system in Maryland is, even at the local level. He likes the challenge of presenting the many elements of the food system–and their interconnections–in a way that people can easily process and understand. Jamie has helped develop the Maryland Food System Map, a web mapping application that he believes is a useful tool for people to learn more about Maryland’s food system. He has also contributed to the Center’s Baltimore City Food Environment research. Jamie has been motivated by the people and organizations he has encountered while working at the Center. Whether it is a grandmother trying to bring healthier food options to her neighborhood in Baltimore, a researcher trying to better understand the environmental impacts of a particular agricultural practice, or an educator simply helping her students learn where their food comes from, Jamie is inspired by how each contributes to raising awareness about our food environment and moves us closer to making better choices about our food.

Dr. Jennifer Kuk, PhD, is currently an Associate Professor in the School of Kinesiology and Health Science at York University. She has published over 100 scientific papers, reports and chapters related to obesity, health and lifestyle behaviors. Currently, her laboratory is investigating the relationship between obesity and health through clinical human studies and epidemiological approaches. In particular, she is interested in the characterization of the metabolically normal obesity phenotype and is currently working on factors that identify successful weight management in adult and pediatric patient populations. This work will help to clarify the most optimal weight management strategies for maintaining and improving health.

Jess Haines is a dietitian and an Associate Professor of Nutrition at the University of Guelph in Canada. Dr. Haines’s research aims to bridge epidemiologic research on the determinants of health behaviours with the design, implementation, and evaluation of family-based interventions to support children’s healthy eating and growth. Dr. Haines is the co-Director of the Guelph Family Health Study, a family-based cohort study aimed at understanding predictors of health behaviours in families with young children.

For more than a decade, Jessica Hager (she/her/hers) has been focused on social determinants of health, namely food security, and currently serves as director, healthcare partnerships and nutrition at Feeding America. Her work has centered on the development and execution of a national strategy aimed at improving food security through cross-sector partnerships, applied research, and hunger-relief sector transformation. Much of these efforts are featured on Hunger + Health, a site developed by Hager to educate, connect and engage cross-sector professionals addressing food insecurity. She is a proponent and lifelong student of working with communities to illuminate and interrupt systemic barriers hindering humanity’s progress to ensuring dignity and basic needs for all. Hager served as co-lead to the inaugural diversity, equity and inclusion planning team at Feeding America, laying a foundation for evaluation and systems-level change within the organization. She also serves on the board of directors at enfleshed, a national non-profit focused on the centering of marginalized experiences, conversations and communities. Currently a resident of Chicago, Hager hails from Texas where she was an active member of Austin’s non-profit sector. She holds a MA in Social Work from University of Chicago and BA in Communication Studies from Southwestern University.