Food for Humanity Initiative
Core Team
Jessica Fanzo
Professor of Climate and Director of the Food for Humanity Initiative, Columbia Climate School
Affiliated with: M.A. in Climate and Society
Columbia Climate School
The Forum at Columbia University
601 W 125th St, Office 216
New York, NY 10027
BIOGRAPHY:
Jessica Fanzo is a Professor of Climate and Director of the Food for Humanity Initiative at the Columbia Climate School. Her research focuses on the transdisciplinary field of food systems and the linkages between agriculture, health, and the environment in climate-impacted countries that have limited resources. She has twenty years of experience working in sub-Saharan Africa, South Asia, and East Asia on the diversity and quality of diets, nutrition and health outcomes, environmental sustainability, and climate adaptation. She was the first laureate of the Carasso Foundation’s Sustainable Diets Prize in 2012 for her research on sustainable food and diets for long-term human health.
Fanzo has worked as an advisor for numerous international organizations, including the International Food Policy Research Institute, USAID, the World Bank, and the World Health Organization. She also collaborates with governments to regain food security in post-conflict regions through evidence-based food policy and governance.
She currently leads the development of the Food Systems Dashboard and the Food Systems Countdown to 2030 Initiative in collaboration with the Global Alliance of Improved Nutrition. She has participated in numerous other collective endeavors, including the Food Systems Economic Commission, the Global Panel of Agriculture and Food Systems for Nutrition Foresight 2.0 report, the Lancet Commission on Anaemia, and the EAT-Lancet Commissions 1 and now 2. She was also the Co-Chair of the Global Nutrition Report and Team Leader for the UN High-Level Panel of Experts on Food Systems and Nutrition.
Before joining Columbia, Fanzo was the Bloomberg Distinguished Professor of Global Food Policy and Ethics and the Director of Hopkins’ Global Food Policy and Ethics Program. She has held positions at the UN Food and Agriculture Organization, the UN World Food Programme, Bioversity International, the World Agroforestry Center in Kenya, and the Doris Duke Charitable Foundation. She has also held several positions at Columbia over the last two decades, serving as the Director of the Earth Institute's Nutrition Policy at the Center on Globalization and Sustainable Development, the Nutrition Director at the Center for Global Health and Economic Development, as well as holding roles at Columbia's Irving Medical Center and School of International and Public Affairs.
Fanzo has a Ph.D. in Nutrition from the University of Arizona and completed a Stephen I. Morse postdoctoral fellowship in Immunology in the Department of Molecular Medicine at Columbia University's College of Physicians and Surgeons.
Alison Rose
Pronouns: She/her
Senior Program Manager, Food for Humanity Initiative , M.A. in Climate and Society, Columbia Climate School
The Forum at Columbia University
601 W 125th St
New York, NY 10027
USA
BIOGRAPHY:
Alison Rose has over fifteen years of professional experience in the sustainable development field, focusing on climate adaptation, food systems, and agriculture. She is Senior Program Manager at Columbia, where she is helping build the Climate School's inaugural program in food systems.
Most recently, she was at the Climate School's International Research Institute for Climate and Society, where she developed and coordinated a trans-disciplinary food systems research network, which reached across the university's many schools. She also helped develop and implement the $60 million World Bank-funded Accelerating Impacts of CGIAR Climate Research for Africa (AICCRA), which worked with national and regional partners in six countries in Africa to transform climate services and scale climate-smart agriculture for the benefit of millions of small-scale farmers in Africa.
From 2016-2021, she was with the CGIAR Research Program for Climate Change, Agriculture, and Food Security (CCAFS), where she helped design and execute a three-year $3 million workplan for climate services activities in six countries and at thematic level. In both projects, she also contributed to numerous global initiatives, including publications and events at international policy forums such as COP, Climate Week, and the UN Food Systems Summit. She was also co-author of the Global Commission on Adaptation’s Blueprint for Climate-Informed Digital Agricultural Advisory Services
Prior to joining the IRI, she was the Manager of Research Programs at the Agriculture and Food Security Center at the Earth Institute, where she collaborated with a multi-disciplinary team of researchers on a range of projects that aimed to mobilize science and technology to advance sustainable agricultural intensification, particularly among smallholder farmers in Africa.
She has a Master’s Degree in Public Affairs from Princeton University.
Jochebed Louis-Jean
Pronouns: She/her
Senior Program Manager, Food for Humanity Initiative , M.A. in Climate and Society, Columbia Climate School
The Forum at Columbia University
601 W 125th St
New York, NY 10027
USA
BIOGRAPHY:
Jochebed Louis-Jean is a Senior Program Manager at Columbia's Climate School, helping to build its Food for Humanity Initiative, the school’s inaugural program in food systems.
From 2010-2021 she worked for the United Nations World Food Programme (WFP) at its headquarters in Rome as well as in Afghanistan, South Sudan, Bangladesh. Her main areas of focus included emergencies, information management, monitoring and evaluation, and partnerships. Helping the organization report on its humanitarian and development operations led Jochebed to missions in Iraq and Senegal. Her last posts with WFP were in the office of its Executive Director and its New York office, working on events like the United Nations General Assembly. That decade with WFP underlined the concept of food as a human right and provided context for the many factors that can strain food systems, including conflict and climate change.
After leaving WFP and before joining Columbia, she worked for more than two years at Neon One, a software tech company, as project manager, helping community foundations around the country to build and maintain online fundraising platforms for giving days like Giving Tuesday.
Jochebed has a Masters of Arts in International Relations from St John’s University’s Rome campus.
Dannie Dinh
Program Manager, International Research Institute for Climate and Society (IRI), Columbia Climate School
The Forum at Columbia University
601 W 125th St
New York, NY 10027
USA
BIOGRAPHY:
Dannie Dinh is a Program Manager at the International Research Institute for Climate and Society (IRI) where she implements projects to improve water, food, and energy security through access to knowledge, technologies, and decision-making tools to strengthen resilience in the face of climate change. Currently, she is building a climate and environmental leadership program for youths in the Lower Mekong Delta region along with the Education Development Center (EDC) through the funding of the U.S. Mission to ASEAN’s Young Southeast Asian Leaders Initiative (YSEALI).
Dannie develops education/training frameworks, designs and develops training content, and implements other research activities for IRI Academy for Climate Services and other projects. Previously, she managed the Adapting Agriculture to Climate Today for Tomorrow (ACToday) project’s development, partner engagement, capacity building, and research activities in Vietnam. As a member of the Climate Society Community Outreach pro bono working group at IRI, Dannie contributes to programming and developing materials for local K-12, and public education and outreach efforts. Dannie is co-leading the Columbia Climate School Earth Network: Climate Education for a Resilient Future.
Dannie holds an M.A in Climate and Society degree from Columbia University's Graduate School of Arts and Sciences, a M.P.A in Environmental Science and Policy degree from Columbia University’s School of International and Public Affairs, and a B.A. in Environmental Studies and Political Science degree from Baylor University.
Bianca Carducci
Postdoctoral Research Scientist in the Faculty of Climate, Columbia Climate School
BIOGRAPHY:
Bianca Carducci is a Postdoctoral Research Scientist in the Faculty of Columbia's Climate School. She was previously a CIHR Banting Postdoctoral Fellow at the Johns Hopkins University Berman Institute of Bioethics, School of Advanced International Studies, and Bloomberg School of Public Health. Her research focuses on how best to measure and monitor food systems transformation from farm to fork and tackle the triple burden of malnutrition in a changing climate.
She completed her PhD at University of Toronto with a Collaborative Specialization in Global Health where her dissertation aimed to improve the understanding of the food environment and its relationship with diet-related health outcomes in school-aged children and adolescents in low- and middle- income countries.
Prior to this, she spent eight years at Centre for Global Child Health, SickKids where she led a variety of research, capacity building and advocacy projects on effective direct and indirect nutrition interventions, policies and best practices to promote optimal growth and development in children and adolescents globally.
