Ertharin Cousin currently serves as a Distinguished Fellow at the Chicago Council on Global Affairs, a Visiting Scholar at Stanford University, Center on Food Security and Environment, and as the CEO and Founder of Food Systems for the Future, a nutrition impact investment fund.
From 2012 until 2017, Cousin led the United Nations World Food Programme (WFP). As Executive Director, Cousin guided the 14,000-member WFP team in feeding more than 80 million people each year. She also identified and championed longer-term, more sustainable solutions for global food insecurity and hunger.
In 2009, Cousin was nominated and confirmed as the US Ambassador to the UN Agencies for Food and Agriculture in Rome. Prior to her global hunger work, Cousin helped lead the U.S. domestic fight to end hunger, including her service as the Executive Vice President and Chief Operating Officer of America’s Second Harvest – now Feeding America.
Cousin is currently a member of the Bayer AG Supervisory Board, the Royal DSM Sustainability Board, and the Heifer International Board of Directors.
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 – Finance for Non-Financial Executives. She has been listed numerous times on the Forbes 100 Most Powerful Women List, and was on the Fortune Most Powerful Woman in Food and Drink list, the Time’s 100 Most Influential People list, and the 500 Most Powerful People on the Planet list by Foreign Policy magazine.