<p>Ertharin Cousin currently serves as the Managing Director and CEO of FSF Ventures, an impact investment fund, and as the CEO of Food Systems for the Future Institute, the Fund’s sister nonprofit. Each organization supports her vision of a world without hunger and malnutrition. Ambassador Cousin also serves as a Distinguished Fellow at the Chicago</p><p>Council on Global Affairs; a Bosch Academy, Robert Weizsäcker Fellow; and as a Visiting Scholar at the Stanford University, Center on Food Security and Environment. From 2012 until 2017, Cousin led the United Nations World Food Programme (WFP) as Executive Director. During her tenure, the 14,000-member WFP annually provided life sustaining food assistance to over 80 million people. Under her leadership the organization began the longer-term work of identifying, championing, and implementing more sustainable solutions for global hunger and malnutrition.</p><p>In 2009, Cousin was nominated and confirmed as the U.S. Ambassador to the UN Agencies for Food and Agriculture in Rome. Where she served from 2009-2012. Prior to her global hunger work, Cousin helped lead the U.S. domestic fight to end hunger, serving as the Executive Vice President and Chief Operating Officer of America’s Second Harvest, now</p><p>known as Feeding America. Cousin’s private sector experience includes several years of corporate retail leadership with Albertsons and Jewel Food stores.</p><p>Cousin is currently a member of the Bayer AG Supervisory Board, the Mondelez International Board of Directors, Board Chair of Allwyn-North America, and a Trustee of the African agriculture thinktank, Akademia2063.</p><p>Cousin is a graduate of the University of Illinois at Chicago; the University of Georgia Law School and the University of Chicago Executive Management Program in Finance for Non- Financial Executives. She has been listed numerous times on <em>Forbes</em>’ 100 Most Powerful Women List, as <em>Fortune</em>’s Most Powerful Woman in Food and Drink, on<em> Time</em>’s 100 Most</p><p>Influential People list, and as one of the 500 Most Powerful People on the Planet by <em>Foreign Policy magazine.</em></p>
Former Executive Director of the World Food Programme and Lecturer and Visiting Fellow at Stanford University
<ul><li><strong>Women's Leadership and Power When Just Leaning In Isn't Good Enough</strong></li><li>The notion that stepping up and pushing forward will open doors falls short for women in the international arena where cultural norms place roadblocks which limit and even curtail opportunities. The way forward requires a very different brand of feminism.</li><li><span style="color: rgb(62, 62, 60);"><strong></span>The Politics of Hunger<span style="color: rgb(62, 62, 60);"></strong></span></li><li>In 2019 approximately 821 million people experienced food insecurity or hunger according to the UN. During this same period, chronic undernutrition stymied the physical and mental development of 150 million children worldwide; while the “silent Hunger” challenge of micronutrient deficiency continued to rise with 2 billion people lacking regular access to adequate vitamins and minerals. At this same time the number of those suffering overweight and obesity alarmingly topped three billion. These numbers represent not only the hunger and malnutrition challenges of the developing world. The developed world, including the US., today faces a health crisis directed related to malnutrition. </li><li>We ask in 2020 how can anyone really be hungry or malnourished? Don’t we grow more than enough food to feed everyone on the planet? Particularly here in America, why doesn’t everyone benefit from a nation endowed with vast agricultural productivity? The data suggests the majority in our society “care” about the hungry and malnourished. Yet the appropriate role of government in addressing the problem historically and today remains steeped in politics. From the question of agricultural subsidies to favored commodities; from rural vs. urban priorities; from race to gender equality and access; from domestic security to foreign policy and our national security interests and finally from international trade and commodity markets to issues of food sovereignty and the right to food. The problems of hunger and malnutrition impact our politics and politics impact the who, when, where and too often even the why hunger and malnutrition persists in our world of plenty.</li></ul>