IPESFOOD - Key Persons
Job Titles:
- Member of the IPES - Food
Angela Hilmi is a member of the IPES-Food panel, an Associate Professor Research in the Centre for Agroecology, Water and Resilience at Coventry University, and an agronomist socio-economist, experienced in sustainable agriculture and rural development with over thirty years of professional experience in Africa, Asia, Latin America and Caribbean, USA and Europe.
She was awarded the 2001 Prix Export for excellence in private business development, was named French Foreign Trade Advisor by French Prime Minister 2002, and has participated as Advisor for Partnerships and Alliances in UN-FAO office for Latin America and Caribbean. She has in recent years been leading the creation of new financial instruments for the development of agroecology in peasant communities.
Her previous professional work includes Secretary of the Strategic Planning Group in the Office of the Assistant Director-General of the Agriculture Department, FAO; Senior Officer in the Crisis Management Centre for the Food Chain; Senior Officer in the International Treaty on Plant Genetic Resources for Food and Agriculture; International Development Director of Ecocert, a world leader in certification of organic agriculture; Programme Officer FAO Representation for Tanzania and Seychelles; Natural Resources Officer, and Prevention of Food Losses Officer, FAO Rural Development Division. She holds an MSc in Biology and a PhD in social and economical sciences.
Job Titles:
- Consulting Deputy Director
Job Titles:
- Member of the IPES - Food
is a member of the IPES-Food panel, and a nutritionist and public health expert, and Professor in the Department of Nutrition at the University of Brasília, with both academic and governmental expertise in food and nutrition policies and the right to food. She worked on the implementation of Brazil's Food and Nutrition National Policy (Ministry of Health - 2000-2003). She is President of the Brazilian National Food and Nutrition Security Council (Consea) 2023-2024 - which comprises civil society and government representatives and advises the Presidency of the Republic - a post she also held in 2017-2018. Currently she is also the coordinator of the Observatory for Food and Nutrition Security Policies of the University of Brasília. She is a longstanding member of the UN's High Level Panel of Experts on Food Security and Nutrition, and board member of various networks including the Brazilian Alliance for Healthy and Adequate Food. Elisabetta's professional life has been guided by relating different dimensions of food systems to nutrition and the progressive realisation of the right to adequate food. Elisabetta holds a PhD in Public Health.
Job Titles:
- Member and Founder of the IPES - Food
is a member and founder of the IPES-Food panel, a senior advisor to the Agroecology Coalition, and an expert on conservation and agricultural biodiversity who has headed global research-for-development organisation Bioversity International for ten years, after holding top positions at several global research institutes. A Belgian national, Emile obtained an MSc in Agricultural Sciences from the Catholic University of Louvain, Belgium and a PhD in Agricultural Science from the University of Gembloux in Belgium.
He has spent most of his career in international agricultural research for development, starting as a researcher at the International Institute of Tropical Agriculture (IITA) in Nigeria in 1979, and working in Mauritania for USAID. He joined the International Board for Plant Genetic Resources in 1987 and became Regional Director for Europe of the International Plant Genetic Resources Institute in 1992. He became the Director of the International Network for the Improvement of Banana and Plantain (INIBAP) in 1995 and Director General of Bioversity International in 2003. He has been a Chair of the Board of Directors of Ecoagriculture Partners. He is currently the Chair of the International Scientific Committee on Sustainable Food Systems of the Daniel and Nina Carasso Foundation. His areas of expertise include the conservation and use of agricultural biodiversity. He has a particular interest in sustainable food systems and the deployment of agricultural biodiversity to improve nutrition and the resilience and sustainability of agricultural systems.
Job Titles:
- Member of the IPES - Food
Errol Schweizer is a member of the IPES-Food panel, and has over 30 years of experience in the food industry.
Born and raised in the Bronx, New York, he started out as a stock clerk and grill cook, and has worked at all levels of grocery retail, wholesale and consumer packaged goods. He worked for Whole Foods for 14 years and was responsible for the grocery, dairy, frozen and bulk foods divisions from 2009-2016. In that role, he developed supplier relationships, product assortments, pricing strategies, supply chains and promotions for over 75 product categories and 1,000 suppliers.
He has helped create strict procurement and sourcing standards for consumer trends such as Organic, Non-GMO, fair labor, humanely raised animal products and plant-based processed foods. Since 2016, he has been an advisor and board member for over 20 emerging food brands, grocery cooperatives and independent retailers. He has also worked on local food policy, public food procurement and healthy food access and is a board member of the Non-GMO Project.
He was recently named one of the Project NOSH Grocery Industry Top 50, and was recognized in 2015 by Supermarket News and 2019 by the Hemp Industries Association. He is presenter and co-founder of The Checkout podcast and is a contributor to Forbes and Salon with a focus on food economics, supply chains, labor and technology.
Job Titles:
- Member of the IPES - Food
Georgina M. Catacora-Vargas is a member of the IPES-Food panel, and Professor at the Academic Peasant Unit 'Tiawanacu' of the Bolivian Catholic University. She is president of the Latin American Scientific Society of Agroecology, and advisor to the Agroecology Fund. She is an Agricultural Engineer with a PhD in Agroecology.
For several years she was an advisor to the National Competent Environmental Authority of Bolivia and negotiator in various international agreements on environmental issues - including on biodiversity, genetic resources, biosafety of biotechnology, and farmers' rights.
Her professional practice focuses on the implementation of participatory action research projects with indigenous peoples and peasant communities, and advice on public policies and programs in agroecology and biodiversity. Her work is transdisciplinary, with a territorial perspective of food systems and gender, intergenerational approaches (particularly children and youth) and human rights and the rights of peasants. She advocates for different expressions of arts as an integral part of research.
Job Titles:
- Research and Project Assistant
Job Titles:
- Member of the IPES - Food
is a member of the IPES-Food panel, an urban geographer with an interest in all things food, and Associate Professor at the African Centre for Cities at the University of Cape Town, South Africa. Her current areas of particular interest are urban food systems, urban food policies and the construction of food security theory in Northern and Southern research contexts. Her applied work focuses on African cities. Jane was awarded the Premio Daniel Carasso laureate in 2017 for her work on food system sustainability. She is actively engaged in international, national, provincial and local government policy process, having acted in an advisory or consultative position at these levels. She also works with community groups to increase agency in local food system governance. Jane serves on the advisory boards of several international research projects, has served as a member of the Independent Expert Group of the Global Nutrition Report, and contributed to the UN High Level Panel of Experts on Food Security and Nutrition (HLPE) report on Reducing Inequalities for Food Security and Nutrition. Jane holds a DPhil from Oxford University.
Job Titles:
- Member of the IPES - Food
is a member of the IPES-Food panel, is Professor and Canada Research Chair in Global Food Security and Sustainability at the University of Waterloo, and is Vice-Chairperson of the High Level Panel of Experts on Food Security and Nutrition of the UN's Committee on World Food Security (CFS) - the United Nations body for assessing the science related to world food security and nutrition. She holds a PhD in International Political Economy from the London School of Economics. Throughout her career, her research has focused on the global governance of problems that arise at the intersection of the global economy, the environment, and food security. In particular, her research and her books have centred on questions of how international economic policies can better foster food security and environmental sustainability goals on a global scale - including responses to the global food crisis. She takes an interdisciplinary approach to her research, combining insights from political science, international relations, economics, environmental studies and food studies.
Job Titles:
- Member of the IPES - Food
is a member of the IPES-Food panel, and has been an active campaigner and advocate over the past 35 years on indigenous peoples human rights at community, national and international levels. She is the Senior Policy Advisor and former Director of Forest Peoples Programme (UK). She also worked as Indigenous Policy Advisor and Team Leader of the Indigenous Peoples' and Biodiversity Programme Tebtebba Foundation (Indigenous People's International Centre for Policy, Research and Education) from 2004- 2013. She is an environment and development educator and researcher with expertise on indigenous knowledge and traditional occupations, cultural and biological diversity, international standards on forests, water and energy, extractive industries and corporate accountability.
An additional focus of her work is community-based monitoring and information systems as tools for local governance. Indigenous and Local Communities are supported to map and monitor the state of their lands, territories and resources; track implementation of the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples and the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development and hold governments and corporations to uphold applicable standards and obligations. She co-ordinated an International Expert Seminar on Indicators Relevant for Indigenous Peoples.
She has served as Member, UN Secretary General's Scientific Advisory Board (UNSAB) (2014-2016); as Commissioner, World Commission on Dams1(1998-2000) and as Executive Secretary of the International Alliance of Indigenous and Tribal Peoples of the Tropical Forests (international network of indigenous organisations in tropical forests from 1994 - 1999).
Job Titles:
- Member of the IPES - Food
Jomo is a member of the IPES-Food panel, and Senior Adviser at the Khazanah Research Institute of Malaysia. He is also Fellow of the Malaysia's Academy of Science, and Emeritus Professor of the University of Malaya.
He was UN Assistant Secretary General for Economic Development in the Department of Economic and Social Affairs (DESA) (2005-12), Research Coordinator for the G24 Intergovernmental Group on International Monetary Affairs and Development (2006-12), Assistant Director General for Economic and Social Development, UN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) (2012-15) and third holder of the Tun Hussein Onn Chair in International Studies at the Institute of Strategic and International Studies, Malaysia (2016-17). He received the 2007 Wassily Leontief Prize for Advancing the Frontiers of Economic Thought.
Jomo has authored and edited over a hundred books and translated 12 volumes besides writing many academic papers and media articles.
Job Titles:
- Co - Chair of IPES - Food
Lim Li Ching is co-chair of IPES-Food and a Senior Researcher at Third World Network (TWN), with expertise on biodiversity, biosafety and sustainable agriculture. TWN is an international policy research and advocacy NGO based in Malaysia, focusing on the rights of peoples in the Global South, a fair distribution of world resources, and ecologically sustainable development that fulfills human needs.
A leading civil society voice in numerous intergovernmental processes, Li Ching has also served on various expert groups established under the Convention on Biological Diversity and its Cartagena Protocol on Biosafety. She has contributed to various international publications on sustainable agriculture (e.g. by UNESCAP, UNEP, UNCTAD) and was a regional lead author of the International Assessment on Agricultural Science, Technology and Knowledge for Development (IAASTD). And she currently serves as an advisor to the Agroecology Fund. She has a B.Sc. in Ecology and an M.Phil. in Development Studies.
Job Titles:
- Member of the IPES - Food
is a member of the IPES-Food panel, and a development Socio-Economist and specialist in education and training systems. He is the Executive Director of the Institute for Research and Promotion of Alternatives in Development (IRPAD). He works closely with farmers' organizations in Africa and other continents. He has been Executive Secretary of ROPPA (West Africa Farmers and Producers Organization). Prior to his position at IRPAD, he worked in West Africa with UNICEF, UNDP, OXFAM-Belgium and ACORD. He is a founding member of COPAGEN (the Coalition to Protect African Genetic Heritage) and AFSA (Alliance for Food Sovereignty in Africa). He has also worked as technical/academic support for the Committee on World Food Security's (CFS) Civil Society Mechanism Working Group on ‘Smallholders access to markets' (2016) and was Director of CODESRIA's Institute of governance (2014). In 2013, Mamadou served as a project team member of the CFS's High Level Panel of Experts on Food Security and Nutrition. He currently sits on a numerous international boards (USC Canada, Afrique Verte International, More & Better network, Global Green Grants) and is a member of multiple African networks (Pan-African Network in the Defence of Migrants' Rights (PANiDMR), African Development Bank's CSOs coalition, AIMES, POSCAO).
Job Titles:
- Member of the IPES - Food
Melissa Leach is a member of the IPES-Food panel, and is the forthcoming executive director of the Cambridge Conservation Initiative - a unique collaboration between the University of Cambridge and ten leading internationally focused biodiversity conservation organisations. She is also a professor of Social Anthropology at the University of Cambridge. Previously she was Director of the Institute of Development Studies (IDS) at the University of Sussex, and co-founder of the ESRC STEPS (Social, Technological and Environmental Pathways to Sustainability) Centre, with its pioneering pathways approach to innovation, sustainability and development issues.
Her interdisciplinary, policy-engaged research in Africa and beyond links environmental, agricultural, health, technology and gender issues. Her highly-cited publications include the books Dynamic Sustainabilities: Technology, Environment, Social justice (2010, Earthscan); Green Grabbing (co-ed, 2012, Taylor and Francis); The Politics of Green Transformations (co-ed, 2015, Taylor and Francis) and Gender Equality and Sustainable Development (ed, forthcoming).
She is a Fellow of the British Academy, the Academy for Social Sciences, Academia Europaea and the International Science Council and was awarded a CBE in 2017 for services to social science. She has been vice-chair of the Science Committee of Future Earth and lead author of several UN reports, as well as the 2016 World Social Science Report 2016 on Challenging Inequalities.
Job Titles:
- Member of the IPES - Food
is a member of the IPES-Food panel, and a specialist in hunger, food systems, and multi-actor collaborations for sustainability who has created and led inter-disciplinary academic programmes and participated in local and regional food system planning. She holds the William R. Kenan Jr. Chair in Food Studies at Middlebury College in Middlebury, Vermont, where she teaches on hunger and food security, fixing food systems, food policy, and sustainability.
She is especially interested in food system resilience, human rights in the food system, the right to food in the US and other industrialized countries, and the transition to a post-petroleum food economy. She also works to bridge the interests and concerns of academicians, NGOs and community-based activists. She is involved in food system activities and planning at the local, state and regional scales, and participates in the national Inter-Institutional Network for Food, Agriculture & Sustainability and the regional Food Solutions New England network.
She has worked as a private consultant for domestic and international organizations, with Oxfam America, and at Tufts University, where she was the founding Director of the Agriculture, Food and Environment Graduate Program in the School of Nutrition Science & Policy and directed Tufts Institute of the Environment for 2 years. Molly earned an interdisciplinary Ph.D. in Systems Ecology from University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and a B.S. and M.S. in natural resource management and a certificate in Latin American Studies from Colorado State University.
Job Titles:
- Member of the IPES - Food
is a member of the IPES-Food panel, and has combined social activism and political engagement with academic pursuits and food production throughout her life. She and her partner farm in Saskatchewan, Canada growing organic grains and pulse crops as well as raising cattle. She is a Professor Emerita at St. Andrew's College, University Saskatchewan, having taught ethics and social justice courses there from 1999-2015.
Nettie served in elected leadership positions of the National Farmers Union (NFU) for ten years, four of them as President - the first woman to lead a national farm organization in Canada. Under Nettie's leadership, the NFU helped build the global peasant, small-scale farmers, rural workers and indigenous peoples movement, La Via Campesina (LVC). Initially the only woman on the International Coordinating Committee of LVC, she encouraged and inspired women to take their rightful places as key actors and leaders in defending food sovereignty, ecological health and the diverse cultures of rural communities. She is currently a civil society participant at the Committee on World Food Security in Rome.
Nettie has spoken in hundreds of venues and contributed numerous articles and interviews to the popular press, farm papers, local and national media. Her list of publications includes co-editing two volumes on food sovereignty (2010) and co-authoring several articles on land grabbing in Saskatchewan. Most recently she contributed chapters to textbooks: "Crisis in the Food System: the Farm Crisis" in Critical Perspectives in Canadian Food Studies, (2nd ed. 2017) and "Reaching Beyond Hunger: the Right to Food and Food Sovereignty" in Canadian Social Policy for Social Workers, (forthcoming).
Job Titles:
- Co - Chair of IPES - Food
Olivier De Schutter is co-chair of IPES-Food, and since May 2020 is the UN Special Rapporteur on extreme poverty and human rights. He also served as UN Special Rapporteur on the right to food from 2008-14 and was elected to the UN Committee on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights from 2014-20.
With an LLM from Harvard University, and a PhD from the University of Louvain, he teaches at UCLouvain and at Sciences Po Paris, and has taught in the past at New York University, Columbia University, UN Berkeley and Yale University.
In 2013, he was awarded Belgium's top scientific award, the Prix Francqui, for his contribution to the advancement of EU law, the theory of governance, and human rights law. In 2002-06, he chaired the EU Network of Independent Experts on Fundamental Rights, a high-level group of experts which advised the European Union institutions on fundamental rights issues. His publications are in the area of international human rights and fundamental rights in the EU, with a particular emphasis on economic and social rights and governance.
Job Titles:
- Member of the IPES - Food
is a member of the IPES-Food panel, and the co-founder and former executive director of the ETC Group, and is an expert on agricultural diversity, biotechnology, and global governance with decades of experience in international civil society and several awards to his name. Pat Mooney has almost half a century of experience working in international civil society, first addressing aid and development issues and then focusing on food, agriculture and commodity trade. The ETC group is an international civil society organization headquartered in Canada with offices in Mexico, Philippines, Nigeria and USA, with consultative status with ECOSOC, FAO, UNCTAD, UNEP, UNFCCC, IPCC and the UN Biodiversity Convention. Since 1977, ETC group has focused on the role of new technologies on the lives and livelihoods of marginalized peoples around the world. He received The Right Livelihood Award (the "Alternative Nobel Prize") in the Swedish Parliament in 1985 and the Pearson Peace Prize from Canada's Governor General in 1998. He has also received the American "Giraffe Award" given to people "who stick their necks out." The author or co-author of several books on the politics of biotechnology and biodiversity, Pat Mooney is widely regarded as an authority on issues of agricultural diversity, global governance, and corporate concentration. Although much of ETC's work continues to emphasize plant genetics and agriculture, the work expanded in the early 1980s to include biotechnology. In the late 1990s, the work expanded further to encompass a succession of emerging technologies such as nanotechnology, synthetic biology, geoengineering, and new developments ranging from genomics and neurosciences to robotics and 3-D printing. Pat Mooney and ETC group are known for having discovered and named The Terminator seeds - Genetically-modified seeds designed to die at harvest.
Job Titles:
- Member of the IPES - Food
is a member of the IPES-Food panel, and a professor in the Department of Community Sustainability at Michigan State University, and an expert in food system changes and the visualization of these trends. He has authored prominent contributions to the public debate on concentration and power in food systems. Phil has analyzed increasing consolidation in numerous industries, including processed organic foods, beer and commercial seeds. He is the author of Concentration and Power in the Food System: Who Controls What We Eat? (2016, Bloomsbury Academic). His work has been featured extensively in media outlets, including The New York Times, Washington Post, Chicago Tribune, Forbes, and more. He conducted research at the Center for Agroecology and Sustainable Food Systems at the University of California, Santa Cruz from 2002 to 2006, was a visiting scholar in the Division of Nutrition at the University of Utah in 2013-2014, and a visiting research fellow at Lund University in Sweden in 2021. Phil was president of the Agriculture, Food and Human Values Society from 2015 to 2016. He holds a PhD in Rural Sociology from the University of Missouri.
Job Titles:
- Member of the IPES - Food
is a member of the IPES-Food panel, and a Research Professor in the Lyndon B Johnson School of Public Affairs at the University of Texas, Austin and a Senior Research Associate at the Unit for the Humanities at Rhodes University (UHURU), South Africa. His research on political ecology and food systems has been widely translated and taught, particularly his book "Stuffed and Starved: The Hidden Battle for the World Food System" (2008). He has testified about the causes of the global food crisis to the US House Financial Services Committee and the European Union, has conducted research across different scales of policy, from global hunger to the needs of low income communities in Austin, Texas. He has scholarly publications in economics, philosophy, politics and public health journals, writes for a range of newspapers, and is committed to democratizing political ecological debate. He is currently completing a documentary project on the global food system. He has a PhD in Development Sociology from Cornell University.
Job Titles:
- Communications Manager
- Media and Communications
Job Titles:
- Research and Project Assistant
Job Titles:
- Member of the IPES - Food
is a member of the IPES-Food panel, and the Secretary General of FIAN International. FIAN is an international human rights organization working for the right to food and nutrition. She holds a master's degree in political science and philosophy. Before turning Secretary General in 2016, she coordinated FIAN's program on land and natural resources for more than 15 years. This work included field research visits and fact-finding missions to 20 countries; as well as close collaboration with peasants, family farmers, landless people, fisher folks, indigenous peoples and rural workers organizations. She has extensive advocacy experience in the UN human rights system, FAO and the UN Committee on World Food Security (CFS) contributing to the development of human rights standard setting. Likewise, she has undertaken conceptual work and research particularly on the intersection between human rights, land and natural resource governance in collaboration with various academic institutions.
Job Titles:
- Member of the IPES - Food
is a member of the IPES-Food panel, and the Director of Vital Landscapes at the World Resources Institute (WRI), where she leads WRI Africa's work on forest protection and landscape restoration, food systems transformation, water and governance. She is a scientist with extensive research and development experience in more than 20 countries across Africa. Susan is a global ambassador for the Race to Zero and Resilience under the UN High Level Champions for Climate Action. She serves on advisory boards of several organizations and has received several global recognitions for her work - including being named as one of Global Landscapes Forum's ‘16 Women Restoring the Earth' in 2021 and one of the top 25 women shaping climate action globally by Greenbiz.
Susan holds a PhD from in forest governance from the university of Copenhagen, Denmark, two MSc.s from the universities of Copenhagen and Bangor, and a BSc. in forestry from Moi university in Kenya.