Jochebed Louis-Jean

Jochebed Louis-Jean is Associate Director of the Research Program on Sustainability Policy and Management at Columbia Climate School.

From 2010 to 2021, she worked for the United Nations World Food Programme (WFP) at its headquarters in Rome as well as in Afghanistan, South Sudan, and 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 Master of Arts in International Relations from St John’s University’s Rome campus.