Our Network

Dr. Kalibata joined AGRA as its President in September 2014. She led the organization’s efforts with public and private partners to ensure a food secure and prosperous Africa through rapid, inclusive, sustainable agricultural growth, improving the productivity and livelihoods of millions of smallholder farmers in Africa.

Under Dr. Kalibata’s leadership, AGRA worked to increase the incomes and improve food security for 30 million farming households in 11 African countries by 2021 through targeted investments to strengthen 3 core areas: State capability and policies; input delivery systems in agriculture: and partnerships for inclusive agricultural growth

Prior to joining AGRA, Dr. Kalibata was Rwanda’s Minister of Agriculture and Animal Resources (MINAGRI) from 2008 to 2014, where she drove programs that moved her country to food security helping to lift more than a million Rwandans out of poverty.

Dr. Kalibata sits on various boards, councils and commissions including the Global Commission on Adaptation, the Global Agenda Council of the World Economic Forum, the Malabo-Montpellier Panel, the Food and Land Use (FOLU) Coalition, the Architecture for REDD + Transactions (ART), the International Fertilizer Development Corporation (IFDC), Bioversity International, and Africa Risk Capacity, among others.

She has a distinguished record of accomplishment as an agricultural scientist, policy maker and thought leader. She served as the Special Envoy of the UN Secretary-General for the 2021 Food Systems Summit, accelerating action to transform food systems around the world to achieve the Sustainable Development Goals. She was also awarded the Yara Prize, now the Africa Food Prize, in 2012, Honorary Doctorate from the University of Liège in 2018, and the National Academy of Sciences’ Public Welfare Medal in 2019 for her work to drive Africa’s agricultural transformation through modern sciences and effective policy thereby improving livelihoods of stallholder farmers. She holds a doctorate in Entomology from the University of Massachusetts, Amherst.

Nutrition expert, author, and entrepreneur Sam Kass served as the Senior Policy Advisor for Nutrition in the Obama administration, Executive Director of Michelle Obama’s “Let’s Move!” Campaign, and the Obama family chef. Following his time at the White House, Kass has continued to innovate in the nutrition and wellness spaces as an entrepreneur. He founded TROVE, a strategy firm focused on working with corporations who are serious about transforming our health, climate, and planet through food, and is a partner in Acre Venture Partners, a capital fund investing in the future of food with a mission to improve human and environmental health in the food system. Kass shares his passion for health, disruptive investing strategies, and overall sustainability in invigorating keynotes and conversations.

Kass is a James Beard Leadership Award Winner, one of Fast Company’s “100 Most Creative People,” and author of Eat a Little Better: Great Flavor, Good Health, Better World. The World Economic Forum named him to its 2017 Class of Young Global Leaders, recognizing people “pushing boundaries and rethinking the world around them.” Kass is a sought-after speaker offering leading insights about health and sustainability.

Alessandra is currently the Meals Director for Heinz, with P&L responsibility for the Beanz, Soup, Pasta and Baby Food portfolio in the UK. 

She is also a trustee for the IGD board in the UK and a member of the ISBA council.

She has been at Kraft Heinz for over 8 years, with a strong track record in marketing & commercial roles across different categories and within both regional & local teams. Most recently she spent two years leading the People & Performance team for Northern Europe, taking engagement from an all-time low post pandemic to close to best in class UK benchmarks and rolling out the culture changing Living Leader program across the entire business.

Before joining Kraft Heinz, Alessandra developed her marketing experience in the dairy industry at Danone in France and at Bel in the UK. Prior to this, Alessandra graduated from the French business school EM LYON with a major in Marketing. During her studies she lived six months in Argentina and one year in Spain.

Alessandra is a curious learner, entrepreneurial, caring and driven. She is passionate about understanding peoples’ behaviours, connecting dots to bring new growth opportunities as well as coaching & structuring teams to help achieve their highest potential.

Half-Italian, half-French, she has been in London since 2013, where she met her husband and decided to raise her two young children.

Paul Newnham is the Executive Director of the Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) 2 Advocacy Hub, a secretariat catalysing, convening, and connecting NGOs, advocacy groups, civil society, the private sector and UN agencies to coordinate global campaigning and advocacy to achieve food systems transformation.

Stephen Palacios is the Senior Vice President of Marketing and Innovation at Bush Brothers & Company. In that capacity, he is an officer of the company and member of the Senior Leadership Team.

Previously, he was a partner and principal at Ahzul, a marketing strategy agency focused on using research and insights to better understand culture. Palacios directed strategy on client engagements relating to new market assessment, product innovation, and communication strategy. Palacios has 20 years of business development and consulting experience and has led CEO/CMO engagements in Retail, Consumer Goods, Pharmaceutical, Media, and Financial Services sectors. Clients include Pepsi, Wells Fargo, Samsung Global, Target, Liz Claiborne Inc, Time Warner Inc., and AstraZeneca. His passion lies in finding where companies can create new opportunities and derive new revenue streams by creating or expanding their brand. He is a leading expert in the U.S. Hispanic market, having helped guide strategy for organizations such as Blue Cross Blue Shield (various regions), Meredith Corporation, and the National Council of La Raza.

Palacios holds a B.A. from Saint Joseph’s University (PA), where he was Valedictorian, and an M.A. from American University, where he was awarded a Fellowship. He frequently spoke at industry conferences and has been quoted in publications including the Los Angeles Times, NY Times, Financial Times, and AdAge; he has been featured on ABC’s Nightline and PBS’s Latino market documentary, Brown is the New Green. Palacios has written for the Harvard Business Review, AdAge, and the Huffington Post. He has been a keynote corporate speaker for Starbucks, Smucker’s, Johnson & Johnson, Church and Dwight, Kellogg’s, Wells Fargo, to highlight a few.

Wawira is the founder of Food for Education, a social enterprise that is creating the blueprint for school feeding in Africa. Led by African women, they leverage payment technology and smart supply chains to source nutritious ingredients from local smallholder farmers, simplify distribution, and bring high-quality daily school meals to children. They have provided over 25 million meals since their first central kitchen opened in 2016 and their scalable, efficient model is creating a sustainable path to solve the child nutrition crisis for over 200 million African children.

Wawira is the winner of the 2022 Global Icon Award by the World’s 50 Best Restaurants, a 2021 Young Global Leader with the World Economic Forum, 2020 Ford Foundation Global Fellow, a 2018 Rainer Arnhold Fellow, a recipient of the Builders of Africa Award 2018, one of 2018’s Top 40 under 40 women in Kenya, and the youngest recipient of the University of South Australia’s alumni award in 2017. She is also the inaugural recipient of the Global Citizen Youth Leadership Prize 2018 presented by Cisco and the 2021 United Nations Kenya Person of the Year.

drew Zimmern is an Emmy-winning and four-time James Beard Award-winning TV personality, chef, writer and social justice advocate. As the creator, executive producer and host of the Bizarre Foods franchise, Andrew Zimmern’s Driven by Food, MSNBC’s What’s Eating America, Magnolia Network’s Family Dinner, and the Emmy-winning The Zimmern List, he has devoted his life to exploring and promoting cultural acceptance, tolerance and understanding through food. You can also find him judging the epic culinary battle Iron Chef: Quest for an Iron Legend on Netflix and teaching live fire cooking on Outdoor Channel’s Andrew Zimmern’s Wild Game Kitchen. He has written four books, including the Ippy Gold Medal award-winning AZ and the Lost City of Ophir. Andrew is the founder and chairman of Intuitive Content, named one of the top 100 production companies in the world by Realscreen, and Passport Hospitality, a restaurant and food service development company. He is passionate about his philanthropic endeavors and sits on the boards of Services for the UnderServed, EXPLR Media and Soigne Hospitality. He is on the advisory boards of the Charlize Theron Africa Outreach Project, serves on City Harvest’s Food Council, is the International Rescue Committee’s Voice for Nutrition, a Global Goodwill Ambassador for the United Nations World Food Programme as well as The Nature Conservancy. Andrew is a founding member of the Coalition for Sustainable Aquaculture and the Independent Restaurant Coalition. He resides in Minneapolis.

Andy Jarvis is the Director of the Future of Food at the Bezos Earth Fund. He has worked for over 20 years in research and development to support the delivery of food security and environmental sustainability in the food system.

His research has focused on data-driven policy analysis on various topics, from agrobiodiversity conservation to climate impacts and adaptation. Andy holds a Ph.D. in Geography from King’s College London and is based in Cali, Colombia.

Jean Claude Rubyogo is the Leader of the Bean Programme and Director of PABRA at the Alliance of Bioversity International and the International Center for Tropical Agriculture (The Alliance).

For more than 30 years, he has focused on impactful seed systems research and development, seed delivery systems, and inclusive agricultural enterprise development.

He has led multi-country public-private partnership initiatives and multi-disciplinary teams developing and deploying sustainable and impact-oriented bean and other legume seed systems in member countries of the Pan Africa Bean Research Alliance (see http://www.pabra-africa.org).

He has co/-authored more than 80 publications on bean research and development.

Betty Kibaara is a Director, Food Initiative, The Rockefeller Foundation and supports advancement of more nutritious foods for institutional procurement including high iron and zinc beans for school feeding programs in Africa.

Betty brings in over 23 years of experience in agriculture, policy and philanthropy to promote the wellbeing of humanity in collaboration with public and private stakeholders.

Caspar Chater is a Research Leader in Crops and Global Change at the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew, UK.

Ellen Cecilie Wright is Senior Science Officer at EAT, where she plays a key role in in the EAT-Lancet Commission 2.0 as well as other science projects at EAT. Ellen has a background in nutrition and a passionate commitment to promote sustainable diets for people and planet. Prior to joining EAT in 2023 she has more then 10 years’ work experience from UN agencies and international organizations. While her early work was related to nutrition and food security in emergency contexts, she has increasingly engaged more in the transformations towards healthy diets from sustainable food systems. Ellen holds a master’s degree in nutrition and is currently pursuing a PhD at the University of Oslo, focusing on sustainable diets.

Jacqueline McGlade FLS, FRSA is Co-Founder and Chief Scientific Officer at Downforce Technologies and Professor of Public Policy and Natural Prosperity at University College London UK and Strathmore University in Kenya. Previously she was the UN Environment Program’s Chief Scientist and former Executive Director of the European Environment Agency.

Her expertise is in nature-based solutions to food security and climate adaptation and mitigation, marine plastics and oceans health, the circular bioeconomy, natural capital modelling, and intergenerational prosperity. She is an advisor to the European and UK Space Agencies and has designed geospatial, fuzzy logic and AI applications such as Flood Ranger and SimCoast for decision-making under high degrees of uncertainty.