Food, Farming and the Future: How Can We Feed a Growing Global Population Responsibly?
Speakers
-
Willy Foote is founder and CEO of Root Capital, a nonprofit that offers farmers around the world a path to prosperity by investing in the agricultural businesses that serve as engines of impact in their communities. Root Capital provides these businesses with the capital, training, and access to markets they need in order to grow, thrive, and create opportunities for thousands of farmers at a time. Since its founding in 1999, Root Capital has provided more than $1.7 billion in loans to 770 agricultural businesses in Africa, Asia, and Latin America. Together, these businesses have bought and marketed crops for 2.4 million smallholder farmers, reaching over 10 million people in rural communities.
-
Chief Sustainability Officer, President, Walmart Foundation, McKinsey and Company
Kathleen McLaughlin leads McKinsey’s Social Innovation Practice, which works with clients to develop breakthrough solutions to social challenges. She is also a member of the Retail and Organization Practice leadership teams. She works across the private, public, and non-profit sectors globally, helping improve the performance of institutions and systems (health systems, food systems, economic development) more broadly.
Jens Riese is the co-leader of McKinsey’s Economic Development Practice. Jens has helped governments and development agencies address issues such as climate mitigation, agricultural development, public finance, energy access, emissions control, and deforestation.
Lynn Taliento leads McKinsey’s Social Sector Practice in the Americas. After joining McKinsey in 1999, Lynn co-founded the firm’s first practice dedicated to serving nonprofits. She works exclusively with nonprofits, philanthropies, and private and corporate foundations on strategic planning, organizational design, board governance, and advocacy.
-
Senior Vice President, Markets; Executive Director, Markets Institute, World Wildlife Fund US
Jason Clay, SVP, Markets, WWF-US is a thought leader on global issues and trends affecting food and soft commodities. He ran a family farm, worked in the USDA, taught at Harvard and Yale, and spent 15 years working with indigenous people. In 1988, he began to help 200 companies buy ingredients that support communities and conservation by making and selling rainforest products to support local economic development. He sourced all the nuts for Ben & Jerry’s Rainforest Crunch and 200 other products generating $100M in sales. The work tripled the price to gatherers and doubled nut prices to all other collectors. The Xapuri rubbertappers in Acre took political power for 25 years.
Since 1993, Clay launched WWF’s aquaculture, ag, livestock, finance, and market transformation programs. He led a 3-year program to reduce key impacts of shrimp aquaculture. He helped develop standards for the production of some two-dozen ag, livestock and aquaculture commodities. He has worked with 70 of the 100 largest food companies to improve their supply chain management.
In 2015, Clay founded the Markets Institute at WWF to spot emerging global issues and trends that will affect the production and trade of food commodities. Each year, the Institute and identifies 15 trends, issues and tools that will be important, publishes a weekly newsletter, and prepares briefs and white papers as well as 4-5 case studies documenting innovation or pilots to address key issues and trends.
Clay has authored 20 books and 700 articles and given more than 1,500 invited talks. He is currently working with companies to address ESG issues and identifying new business models and markets to address them. Clay is helping WWF explore ways to use impact investing to reduce key impacts in the food system. Clay studied at Harvard and the LSE and got his PhD in anthropology and international agriculture from Cornell.
-
Director, Stanford University
Debra is focused on achieving a more just and sustainable economic system through collaborative action, human centered design and transformational systems change. She serves on the Boards of the Skoll Foundation, B Lab, IDEO.org, Imperative 21 and the global advisory boards of the African Leadership University and the Wellbeing project. She also works as an advisor to social ventures around the world.
Pre-Covid, Debra was a faculty member at Stanford University's d.school where she co-founded the FEED (Food Entrepreneurship, Education and Design) Collaborative.
Pre-Stanford, Debra was a business executive at Hewlett Packard where the common threads in her broad, 22-year career were driving large scale change, creating new businesses and producing positive social impact and good business results concurrently.
-
CEO, Alight
Jocelyn Wyatt is the CEO of Alight, where she leads more than 3,500 team members globally. Her vast experience in strategic development on a global scale is intrinsically human-centered. Alight works in more than 20 countries, co-creating dignified spaces and human-worthy services for and alongside more than 3.5 million displaced people every year.
Prior to Alight, Jocelyn was the Cofounder and CEO of IDEO.org, a global design studio partnering with NGOs to design products and services that create a more just and inclusive world. During her decade of leadership there, she spearheaded collaborations with DFID (the UK’s Department for International Development), the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, PSI (formerly Population Services International), and many other organizations with broad global reach. In addition to her role as a founding board member of Airbnb.org, Jocelyn serves on the advisory boards of Marketplace and the Drucker Institute. She is also a founding member of Chief.
