Community of Experts

Lex Icons™ is an international initiative featuring contributions from artists, design judges, food system experts, and consumer groups from across the globe. Learn more about Lex Icons™ or join the team here.

Community of Experts

Lex Icons™ is an international initiative featuring contributions from artists, design judges, food system experts, and consumer groups from across the globe. Learn more about Lex Icons™ or join the team here.

A fundamental problem facing global food systems is transparency, the impossibility of tracing who grows our food, the practices they use, or the various things that happen to that food as it travels across supply chains until ultimately reaching a consumer. Achieving greater transparency is made all the more difficult because food often travels across borders, passing through people and cultures with different languages and customs.

While it’s true that the more transparent a food system, the greater trust consumers have in what they are buying, it’s equally true that solutions to this challenge remain elusive. Why? Because global citizens lack a common language, which hinders their ability to agree upon let alone communicate important information.

In 2019, The Lexicon, with support from Food at Google, began exploring how a universal language could be created for food and agriculture, something that could be open source, machine readable, and easily adapted to situations where the rapid conveyance of information across multiple languages could help people make important decisions. The approach we decided to employ was an activator, one which gathers domain experts to collaborate in a highly structured six-month sprint to reach alignment and develop a framework for implementing this new visual language. Nathan Shedroff, a graphic designer and sustainability expert, was asked to lead this “Food Clarity Framework” initiative, which eventually included designers and food systems experts from across the globe.

The group began by assembling a general taxonomy of high-level concepts and principles used to describe food systems. From there, a representative sample consisting of 200 terms was selected. After a number of design systems were considered to pictographically represent these terms, the team decided on a hexagonal approach, one that allowed individual terms to be nested together in a highly elastic system similar to the komposita principle used to create compound words. The hexagon also proved useful from a metaphoric standpoint: when gathered in a group, these hexagons resemble a honeycomb, hinting at the hive mind required to create this shared visio-linguistic system.

To conceptualize the standardized graphic style needed for this initiative, Nathan worked closely with graduate students from California College for the Arts in San Francisco. Their initial design insights helped further refine his vision, putting him on a path that eventually led to a pivotal partnership with Adobe and their icon design team based in Hamburg, Germany. In the six months that followed, the group collaborated to develop a powerful tool, supported by a detailed set of design guidelines to help artists anywhere in the world produce icons that would all share a common design, at least this was the theory, one quickly put to the test with the Lex Icons™ Challenge, a global call for designers across the globe to build out the first phase of this language.

Douglas Gayeton

Co-Founder
THE LEXICON

Developing Lex Icons™ is an enormous undertaking, one that requires hundreds of designers and food experts to collaborate on likely one of the biggest design projects ever undertaken.

This is even more remarkable given the complexity of these terms. Because this system was created to help professionals throughout the global food systems to better communicate, the majority are sophisticated terms often obscure to non-professionals. The list of terms given to each designer was a related family from varied categories like: agrobiodiversity, alternative proteins, regenerative agriculture, aquaculture, and equity. With a breadth of terminology from “Fish,” to complex and often abstract processes, like “No-Till Farming”—it’s not realistic to expect that every symbol will be immediately understandable by every stakeholder throughout food supply cycles. Our focus is on a system mostly for professionals that is learnable and memorable.

Consider, for example, the now ubiquitous symbol for Recycling (the three arrows forming a closed cycle).The graphic of one arrow pointing to the next doesn’t immediately communicate the concept of recycling waste, and when it was first introduced, few knew what this icon represented. Over time, it has become one of the most understood symbols internationally. This is what a clear, learnable symbol can achieve and this is the aim of this challenge.

A family of icons wouldn’t be much use if it weren’t freely available for anyone at any point in food systems to use. That’s why the entire collection is open-source. While designers are not only credited but own their work, all icons in the system are available for use for free (but not for commercialization or merchandising). This allows anyone to use the visual language for any need except, for example, to sell t-shirts. Nothing prevents the designers from doing so, however, or licensing their icons for such a use. This innovative agreement balances the needs of those throughout the food system, from farmers to manufacturers to restaurant owners to eaters, without sacrificing the rights of these volunteer creators.

The Lex Icons™ design system focuses on communicating effectively in monochrome (black and white) to ensure that they can be used in a wide variety of applications. And, there is no reason why any icon cannot be extended with color and animations, if needed.

Nathan Shedroff

Designer, author, and educator
NATHAN.COM

Each Lex Icons™ challenge included a set of food terms and definitions with design specifications and instructions, and a timeline for completion. The 3 month timeline allowed for 2 drafts of icon designs with critique and feedback from the design council and food experts. Together, these two groups advised designers on how well their ideas and designs were communicating the terms given and answer any questions that may arise in the design process around communicating subtle or abstract concepts.

For example, in our prototypes, devising an icon to represent “Labor” quickly became more complex as issues arose around how to communicate different types of labor. In reviewing the first draft of this icon, food systems experts and icon designers realized that there are several kinds of labor that might need differentiating, some only now emerging (like automated or robotic labor). Clearly, one icon may not be enough to communicate all kinds of labor, but three different ones might. The food experts consulted in preparation for these challenges identified over 1000 potential food terms and this list has only grown.

The challenges have taught us several important lessons. For example, these icons use a visual vocabulary of reusable elements that can and should be used consistently. A simple symbol for signifying a generic plant could be used within more complex icons™ for Agriculture, Supply Cycles, Crops, and Farms. In this way, one element, reused where appropriate, not only unifies the system as a family, but makes learning new icons much easier. This is especially true of the more abstract icons.

Context, too, matters. Consumers are familiar with fewer food processes and systems and sometimes have a more limited experience or understanding of the commercial and industrial aspects of food. The same elements may communicate differently across groups and this may require the same concepts to be represented differently to different stakeholders.

Details also matter. An icon for “Fish,” if it’s representative at all, needs to represent a fish that people eat. A food process or location, like a barn, needs to be both accurate and recognizable. Consumers may be unfamiliar with industrial processes and objects while still needing to understand an icon that represents an issue important to them, such as “Line-Caught Fishing.”

To be truly useful, this system will need to, ultimately, transcend cultures, communicate clearly to a wide variety of people, be usable in a variety of applications, and be accessible to people with different needs, understandings, and abilities. This all sounds like a tall order, but our prototyping has shown us that it’s possible.

We chose a hexagonal icon shape because it’s more distinct than more common icons, built on squares and circles, and we stood it on a point (rather than a side) to create a more energetic visual appearance. Adobe’s designers chose rounded corners, anticipating a more friendly feel and the difficulties accurately depicting corners on pixelated screens at small scales.

To make things easier, an extensive template was made available as an Adobe Illustrator file (the industry standard) but designers were encouraged to work in any tool they were most comfortable with. The various layers made it easy to integrate the various modes (many icons, like the set of Allergens, needed variations for presence, lack of presence, and warnings, for example), with different borders and elements of the design system. Together with the library of elements, designers had a great place to start their designs and it helped the work more easily stay within the design parameters.

We knew that the icons would begin to create a visual language around specific concepts but we couldn’t predict which ones would emerge. As new terms were tackled, and new connections made, visual concepts quickly expressed themselves. For example, from the initial library of hands, a hand held out came to represent a few, similar concepts: Care (as in Water Care), Friendly (as in Bird Friendly), Management (as in Fire Management), and Welfare (as in Animal Welfare). These couldn’t have been imagined ahead of time. Two hands opposing became a symbol of Equity, spurring all kinds of equity: Food, Wage, Gender, and Fair Trade. Similar enhancements to the vocabulary came from uses of symbols for soil, plate, the Sun, protein, emissions, monitoring, testing, etc.

Some of the elements reinforce the concepts inherent in the terms. For example, Managed Rotational Grazing uses the cycle arrows originally created by Adobe’s designers. During the challenges, it became clear that terms from different food communities, referenced the same thing, representing the barriers created when these communities function inside their own siloes. In this case, Holistic Management is used by some instead of Managed Rotational Grazing but it’s not apparent until you represent them visually. This, too, was one of the opportunities we built this system for (and why we feel its use among professionals is so beneficial).

In retrospect, our hunch that a visual communication system could break some of the paralysis within so many different food communities has proven to enable many new solutions for new professional tools. We expected that the system would need to be extensive so we’re pleased that it’s reached nearly 1000 icons already. In addition, we marvel everyday at the utility of the original design specifications, how they’ve evolved, and how they still enable more results. With all of the planning, we knew that this was a lot to accomplish and we were surprised that such simple tools could enable such complex results (and so much work) managed all with free tools, such as Google Sheets and Slides. The challenge’s clarity and simplicity because it’s strength at every level.

While we expected that hundreds of designers from all over the world could create work that would come together, cohesively, as one system but that was a guess—informed, at best,. That it actually because the result is still something I marvel at and it was an immensely satisfying and inspiring result.

The language is still evolving as more icons are added, they both strengthen previous work and concepts and extend the grammar along with the vocabulary.

Members

Dan Altschuler Malek

Managing Partner, Co-Founder

Unovis Asset Management

Dan is an entrepreneur experienced in sustainability, startups, and international trade. His endeavors over the last 20 years include launching a natural snack company, heading a logistics firm, opening a restaurant, and managing a creative agency. He holds a degree in Business Management from Mexico’s Universidad Iberoamericana and an MBA from Babson College. As Managing Partner, Dan pursues strategic opportunities for New Crop Capital’s portfolio companies.

Doniga Markegard

Regenerative Rancher/Author

Markegard Family Farm

Doniga Markegard is a wildlife tracker, regenerative rancher, speaker, and author. Her teen years in nature school started her on a path that led to a career in animal tracking and then permaculture and ranching in California, where she works to regenerate both soil and community through farming. Using the innovative, carbon-storing methods of regenerative ranching, she’s restoring the land she tends, bringing native grasses and wildlife back to the depleted San Francisco Bay Area rangelands. Doniga is a certified educator for Holistic Management International and a consultant for Nature Awareness Programs around the world. She is a regular speaker at events such as the Bioneers Conference, Food Inspiration Trendsummit, and The Grassfed Exchange, has worked with companies such as Patagonia and Google, and has been featured in articles from FastCompany, GreenBiz, The San Francisco Examiner, and NPR.

Eric Heiman

Class Professor

California College of the Arts (CCA)

Eric Heiman grew up in the backwoods of western Pennsylvania and attended Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh where he completed a Bachelor of Architecture in 1992. His winding, post-graduate path finally led him to the Bay Area where he studied graphic design at the California College of the Arts (CCA) and then later co-founded (with Adam Brodsley) the multidisciplinary, award-winning studio Volume Inc. in 2001.

Eric has taught at CCA since 1999 and was awarded the college-wide Excellence in Teaching award in 2003. At CCA, he currently manages TBD*, a student-staffed design studio that does work for local Bay Area nonprofits and civic institutions. His writing on design has been published in Design Observer, Eye, andEmigré, and he was a founding writer for SFMOMA’s Open Space online publication. In 2017 he was made a Fellow of AIGA San Francisco for his contribution to raising the standards of excellence in practice and conduct within the Bay Area design community.

Guillermo Castilleja

Senior Advisor

Global Alliance for the Future of Food

Guillermo Castilleja is a Senior Advisor at the Global Alliance for the Future of Food. Guillermo’s time has been generously allocated by his foundation, the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation, to help the Global Alliance further its work on true cost accounting. Before being seconded to the Global Alliance, Guillermo, in his position as senior fellow at the Moore Foundation, advised the president on both internal analytics and external relations – providing foresight and judgement to aid in identifying future directions, as well as opportunities to elevate the foundation’s and grantees’ achievements. Guillermo served six years at the helm of the foundation’s Environmental Conservation Program, leading its efforts to protect critical ecosystems and balance long-term conservation with sustainable use.

Before joining the foundation in 2010, Guillermo worked for WWF for 18 years, most recently as executive director for conservation at WWF International. In that capacity, he directed and coordinated its global conservation efforts, leading the development of place-based and policy priorities for the global network. At the beginning of his career in WWF, he was country representative in Mexico and later vice-president for the Latin America and the Caribbean program. Guillermo has also worked for the World Bank and the National Wildlife Federation. He serves on The Economics of Ecosystems and Biodiversity (TEEB) Advisory Board, and the board of the Fondo Mexicano Para La Conservacion De La Naturaleza, A.C./Mexican Fund for the Conservation of Nature, A.C. (FMCN). He was recently appointed special advisor to the China Council for International Cooperation on Environment and Development. Previously, Guillermo was a member of Mexico’s National Commission on Protected Areas and the National Forestry Commission, as well as the board of directors of WWF Russia. Through speaking engagements around the world, research published in peer-reviewed journals and the media, Guillermo has addressed the relationship between protected areas and food security, strategies for long-term financing of large-scale land conservation, and the social opportunities and challenges of biodiversity conservation. Guillermo graduated from the National University of Mexico and received a master’s degree in forestry, a master’s degree in philosophy, and a doctorate in forest ecology from Yale University.

Nathan Shedroff

Designer, author, and educator

nathan.com

Nathan is a seasoned, professional strategist and serial entrepreneur as well as a pioneer in the fields of experience design, interaction design, and information design. Currently, he’s creating new tools and models for new ventures and “total value” (beyond just economic and functional value). He speaks and teaches internationally, and has authored many books (below).

Nathan is the chair of the groundbreaking Design MBA programs in design strategy at California College of the Arts in San Francisco. These programs prepare the next generation of innovation leaders for a world that is profitable, sustainable, ethical, and truly meaningful. The programs unite the perspectives of systems thinking, design and integrative thinking, business models, sustainability, and generative leadership into a holistic strategic framework.

Before academia, he was a pioneer in multi- and online media. He worked with Richard Saul Wurman at TheUnderstandingBusiness and co-founded vivid studios, a pioneering interactive media company and one of the first Web services firms on the planet. vivid’s hallmark was helping to establish and validate the field of information architecture by training an entire generation of designers in the newly emerging web industry.

Paul Zink

Co-Founder and CEO

Jungle Project

A graduate of Antioch College in the United States, Paul Zink continued his training on organic farms and gardens throughout the US, New Zealand, Japan, Panama and Costa Rica. His expertise includes the design, installation and maintenance of customized food-forest garden systems for homeowners, hoteliers and conference centers. His tireless breadfruit efforts have resulted in an important collaboration between EARTH University in Costa Rica and Cultivaris via Global Breadfruit. As a Project Director for Global Breadfruit, he continues the introduction of breadfruit into Central and South America. Paul is bilingual in English and Spanish and brings over 10 years of practical experience to this project.

Robyn Metcalfe

President

Food+City, University of Texas at Austin

Food historian and futurist, with a concentration in the history of urban food markets, particularly in Western Europe during the 19th century. Why does a historian think about the future of food? It’s all about context, having the knowledge about how we got here as we think about the future. Am particularly interested in the use of technology to improve and re-invent the global food supply chain.

Food+City tells stories through print and digital platforms, sparking thoughtful conversations and inspiring change in the global food system. For five years, F+C encouraged entrepreneurs to solve food system problems with an annual challenge prize, working with over 75 food startups and $250K in funding. Currently, the focus of Food+City is to contribute meaningfully to the global food system by highlighting important stories, creating excellent content, and continuing to champion other entrepreneurs improving how the world is fed. .

Other highlights and interests include: researched, wrote, photographed for four consumer interest books, wrote three non-fiction books, consulted for companies, big and small, about electronic publishing strategies, founded non-profit educational farm, participated on a dozen non-profit and for-profit boards, managed and developed boards of directors, planned events, solicited grants, donations, traveled to remote areas of the world, speaking two foreign languages in addition to English. Holds culinary certificates in cheese, Cordon Bleu (London). Produced and marketed heritage food products. Learned how to butcher and aspire to be a cheese affineur.

Beyond professional passions, I love living large, and am an accomplished athlete, having completed ultramarathon races across six global deserts. Also appreciate storytelling and the arts, and expressing myself through painting, drawing, film, and many other creative mediums.

Valerie Christy

Impact Investor

Astanor Ventures

Prior to being Investor at Astanor Ventures, Valerie Christy was a Founding Partner at Almanac Insights. After initially enrolling in the Blue Hill at Stone Barns FARMS Apprenticeship in 2014, she began managing special projects at Blue Hill, ranging from the wastED pop-ups in New York and London to the launch of Blue Hill’s first nationally-distributed CPG product. Before that, Valerie was an early member of the team at LivingSocial, where she developed and implemented new business verticals aimed at expanding the company’s audience and brand. Through these combined experiences, Valerie learned firsthand both the opportunities and challenges facing early-stage businesses across industries. Valerie holds a B.A in International Studies from Middlebury College. As the west coast anchor for Almanac, she currently lives in San Francisco, CA.

Design Judges

Anne Digges

Creative Director

Digges Design

For over twenty years I’ve specialized in shaping meaningful ideas into powerful visual expression across a wide range of graphic mediums from print to digital. Whether working for a start-up or a premium brand, those who work with me rely on my ability to capture their unique brand flavor visually and feel confident that I understand their business strategy and goals. The result is design that really ‘nails it’.

Christoph Schmid

Design Lead and Partner

Interactive Things

As Design Lead and Partner at Interactive Things, Christoph approaches design challenges with empathy for the user and meticulous attention to detail. He is passionate about supporting designers to sharpen their skills individually while refining their process collectively.

At Interactive Things, he leads projects for clients including OECD, UNESCO, UBS and the German Federal Government.

Previously, Christoph worked as a freelance UX designer and as an interface designer for Swisscom, a major telecommunications provider in Switzerland. He received a Bachelor’s degree in Interaction Design from the Zurich University of the Arts.

Dava Guthmiller

Founder and CEO

Noise 13

As the Founder and Chief Creative Officer at Noise 13, the San Francisco brand strategy and design agency, Dava is the driver behind building thoughtful, sustainable brands. For more than two decades, Dava has been distilling business vision into the potent essence of brand experience.

A design evangelist, Dava is the Co-Founder of In/Visible Projects. At its core, In/visible Projects believes in the power of design. Healthy cross-functional collaboration leads to innovative decision making.

Always inventing, Dava is also an advisor, mentor, and investor, speaker, moderator, and artist. She sits on the advisory boards for all things good–Good People, Good Food Foundation, and the Visual Media Alliance. She is also part of the REGEN1 team building tools and big picture plans for a regenerative food system.

Diane Mikhael

Associate Professor (Tenured), Graphic Design Department

OCAD University

Diane Mikhael is a design educator, author, curator, and researcher. She is the author of the book Bilingualism in Visual Communication: Visible Forms and Meaning of Arabic and Latin Typography (2017). She holds an MFA in Criticism and Curatorial Practices (OCAD University, Toronto, Canada), and an MA in Design (Middlesex University, London, UK). Diane holds International recognition from the International Society of Typographic Designers London, (1996). She is the co-founder of the Middle East Design Educators Association (MEDEA).

For more than twenty-five years, Diane works as a design educator in the design department at different universities in Toronto, and the Middle East. She lectures and publishes in many international conferences. She runs workshops on design and serves as a juror in many international design contests and projects.
With an infinitum passion for cross-cultural engagements, her intrinsic research is an amalgam of theoretical and pragmatic examinations around the thematic path of Design and Culture, and design for social change.

Eric Heiman

Partner / Creative Director

Volume Inc.

Eric Heiman is principal and co-founder of the award-winning, oft-exhibited multidisciplinary studio Volume Inc. He also teaches at California College of the Arts (CCA) where he currently manages TBD*, a student-staffed design studio creating work to help local Bay Area nonprofits and civic institutions. Eric writes about design every so often, has curated one film festival, occasionally podcasts about classic literature, and was recently made an AIGA Fellow for his contribution to raising the standards of excellence in practice and conduct within the Bay Area design community.

Francisco Javier Cueto Avellaneda

Public Information Officer

United Nations OCHA

Javier Cueto is the Head of Design and Multimedia in the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs.

Javier and his team, based in New York, Geneva and The Hague, are behind the Humanitarian Icons. A collection of more 350 icons that are used in reports, dashboards and infographics in humanitarian emergencies to represent crises-related concepts, such as “earthquake”, “refugee” or “food security”. Learn more about the Humanitarian Icons here.

Hugh Dubberly

AIGA SF Fellow

AIGA

Hugh Dubberly studied environmental design (University of Colorado) and graphic design (RISD and Yale). At Apple Computer (1986 -1994), Dubberly was a Creative Director, managing graphic design and corporate identity; he also produced the technology-forecast film Knowledge Navigator presaging the Internet and interaction via mobile devices. At Netscape (1995 – 2000), he became Vice President of Design managing groups responsible for the design, engineering, and production of Netscape’s web services. He co-founded Dubberly Design Office (2000), a software, service, and systems design consultancy.

He has served on AIGA’s national board, the SIGGRAPH Conference Committee, and chaired ACD’s “Design for the Internet” Conference. He has taught at San Jose State, Art Center, CMU, Stanford, IIT/ID, Northeastern, and CCA. He edited a column “On Modeling” for ACM’s journal, Interactions, and has published more than 50 articles on design methods. He was elected to the ACM CHI Academy and is an AIGA Fellow.

Hürsu Öke

Designer, Design Researcher and Educator, Musician

Istanbul Işık University

Hürsu is a designer, design researcher and educator, and a musician. For over two decades he has worked with many leading multinational corporations as well as start-ups across various parts of the planet, helping them build their brands with powerful ideas and clear visual expressions. He has also been working as a full-time lecturer at universities in both Istanbul and Liverpool for over ten years.

Having his professional, research, and teaching interests in graphic design, interaction, user experience and new musical interfaces, Hürsu is passionate about inter-disciplinary projects, particularly ones that bring together design and sound. He holds a BID degree and two masters degrees (MSc and MMus) from Istanbul Technical University and a PhD in Industrial Design from Middle East Technical University.

Isabelle Hamlin

Design Manager at Adobe

Adobe Systems Inc.

Experience Designer with a demonstrated history of working in the computer software industry. Skilled in Information Design, Icon Design, Graphics, User Experience (UX) and Fashion Illustration. Strong information technology professional with a Graphic Design focused in visual design from Alsterdamm, Kommunikationsdesign.

Jan Wächter

Senior Interaction Designer

Interactive Things

Jan Wächter is a Senior Interaction Designer at Interactive Things. He transforms complex ideas into beautiful and engaging digital products. He enjoys crafting visualizations that make data usable and understandable for everyone.

At Interactive Things, he leads projects with a focus on holistic design systems, usable interfaces and data visualizations in the areas of consumer products, healthcare, journalism, telecommunications, and government services.

Before joining Interactive Things, he was an Art Director at Neko Interactive. An experience design agency with a focus on user experience and brand communication.

He received a Bachelor’s degree in Visual Communication from Basel School of Design, where he later worked as a Scientific Assistant.

Joachim Müller-Lancé

Typeface Design Director

Fontworks Inc.

Joachim’s work is characterized by an expressive, direct visual language that always comes to the point. Diverse background and interest in Asia and Europe make him quintessentially cross-cultural, between modernist and experimental. His approach is integrative, not additive: Shape and meaning turn into a coherent One, getting to the essence with consistency and simplicity — useful design need not be dry, and entertaining imagery not shallow.

Specialties: information design, logos and identity, pictograms, type design (western and kanji), illustration, character creation.

John Gillespie

Co-Founder

Scaling Nonprofits

Since 1998, the majority of my work has helped nonprofits, social enterprises and for profit organizations achieve their missions by providing hands-on, objective financial expertise. I leverage my in-the-trenches CFO expertise to guide CEOs and boards on how to grow their enterprises in a strategic manner. I’ve been featured in the Chronicle of Philanthropy, NonProfit Times, Entrepreneur.com, The Wall Street Journal, The New York Times, Investors’ Circle Entrepreneur Newsletter and other publications.

Maria Giudice

Founder

Hot Studio

For three decades, creative teams and business leaders have sought the provocative vision and mentorship of Maria Giudice. After founding the pioneering experience design firm Hot Studio and leading global teams at Facebook and Autodesk, Maria’s mission today is to build the next generation of creative leaders. As a leadership coach, Maria unlocks the potential hidden in executives and the people they lead. A popular speaker at design and business conferences, Maria is also the author of three design books, including Rise of the DEO: Leadership by Design, which has been translated into several languages.

Michael Everitt

Information, interface and interaction designer, Owner

Informativity

Art Center, College of Design graduate in 1980, soon abducted by Richard Saul Wurman for The Understanding Business. Astonished by maps, astounded by graphs, and absorbed by information design through a freelance career of 40 years, Michael admits an attraction for authenticity and an addiction for pattern, along with aspirations for abundant alliteration.

Nathan Shedroff

Designer, author, and educator

nathan.com

Nathan is a seasoned, professional strategist and serial entrepreneur as well as a pioneer in the fields of experience design, interaction design, and information design. Currently, he’s creating new tools and models for new ventures and “total value” (beyond just economic and functional value). He speaks and teaches internationally, and has authored many books (below).

Nathan is the chair of the groundbreaking Design MBA programs in design strategy at California College of the Arts in San Francisco. These programs prepare the next generation of innovation leaders for a world that is profitable, sustainable, ethical, and truly meaningful. The programs unite the perspectives of systems thinking, design and integrative thinking, business models, sustainability, and generative leadership into a holistic strategic framework.

Before academia, he was a pioneer in multi- and online media. He worked with Richard Saul Wurman at TheUnderstandingBusiness and co-founded vivid studios, a pioneering interactive media company and one of the first Web services firms on the planet. vivid’s hallmark was helping to establish and validate the field of information architecture by training an entire generation of designers in the newly emerging web industry.

Nayane de Souza Hablitzel

Product UX Designer

IKEA

Hi! I am a Brazilian designer, currently working and living in Hamburg, Germany. I always knew I wanted to dedicate my life to a form of creative visual expression. I have a pragmatic way of solving communication problems, and I like to have fun and drink coffee while doing so.

Phil Hamlett

Board Member

AIGA San Francisco

Phil Hamlett is a design leader, educator, and first-generation digital native. Wherever he may be found — he unites creative minds to common purpose, utilizing the transformative power of design to cultivate good ideas. He is committed to helping people achieve their visions through the rigorous application of innovative education, design thinking, responsible leadership, and co-creation.

Phil is currently the Director of the School of Graphic Design at the Academy of Art University in San Francisco, a unique academic institution with a large international student body and robust online program. In this setting, he does everything from teaching classes to setting the strategic agenda for the School. His students emerge as advanced design practitioners and go on to acquire positions at leading studios and technology companies in the Bay Area and around the world.

Prior to joining the Academy, Phil led design studios on both coasts, creating award-winning work for clients large and small. He is a past president of the AIGA San Francisco chapter and a former AIGA national board member. He is also an advisor to San Francisco Design Week, founder of Compostmodern and co-author of the Living Principles for Design — the means by which he guides the development of sustainable business practice within the design community. As a charter member of the Winterhouse Institute Founder’s Circle, he helps articulate the value of design education for social impact.

Ric Grefé

Design Thinker in Residence

Williams College

Ric Grefé is Design Thinker in Residence at Williams College. He is director emeritus of AIGA, the professional association for design, the oldest and largest professional association of designers in the United States representing the interests of 27,000 designers working in a variety of communication media and dimensions, ranging from type and book designers to new media and experience designers.

Ric earned a BA from Dartmouth College in economics, served in naval intelligence in Asia, reported from the Bronx County Courthouse for AP, wrote for Time magazine on business and the economy, and then earned an MBA from Stanford Graduate School of Business. Following an early career in urban design and public policy consulting, Ric managed the association responsible for strategic planning and legislative advocacy for public television and led a think tank on the future of public television and radio in Washington.

Simge Göksoy

Assistant Professor

Istanbul Bilgi University

She gained her BA major in Industrial Design and minor in Psychology at Middle East Technical University in Ankara. She completed her MA in Visual Communication Design at Bilgi University, Istanbul. She completed her PhD on design education, specifically on design studio course, at Istanbul Technical University, and finally, her PostDoc on design thinking and professional design practice in Turkey at Winchester School of Art, University of Southampton.

She taught various topics of visual communication design, such as typography and word-image relationship, animation from cel to 3D, interactive and media arts, visual/digital storytelling as well as basic design and graduation project at Bahçeşehir University, Istanbul and Kyungsung University, Busan, South Korea.

Currently, she is an Assist. Prof. in the Department of Industrial Design at Istanbul Bilgi University. She is the cofounder and colecturer/supervisor of the design studio course series Studio Sustain, where, in autumn semesters, issues of design for sustainability are tackled on specific locations in Turkey. Studio Sustain also encompasses craft practice as an alternative means of production, during spring semesters., under the brand Objects of Şişhane.

@studiosustain
@objectsofsishane

Sonja Hernandez

Senior Experience Design Manager 2, Brand, Icons, and EGD design teams

Adobe

Sonja Hernandez leads the Brand and Icons design teams at Adobe, who design the brand architecture, product logos, splash screens, and the in-app workflow icons that appear in all of Adobe\’92s desktop software and mobile products. She also creates environmental graphics and large-scale art pieces for Adobe offices around the world, and speaks about Branding at conferences and creative events. Outside of Adobe, Sonja teaches Graphic Design and Typography at California College of the Arts in San Francisco, and can often be found hiking in the Berkeley hills.

Sonja is a holds a BFA Studio Art from Simmons College, studied Graphic Design at California College of the Arts, and has a post-graduate certificate in Typeface Design from Cooper Union.

Food Judges

Alexandre Gellert Paris

Technical Officer

UNFCCC

Alex Paris holds a master’s degree (MSc) in fuel cell technologies from the University of São Paulo, Brazil. He participated in the 2016 global solutions program (GSP) at Singularity University held at NASA Research Park in Mountain View, USA, receiving a full scholarship from Google.

Alex established and worked at UNFCCC regional collaboration centres (RCCs) in Bogotá, Colombia (Latin America) and St. George’s, Grenada (Caribbean), responsible for the technical support and capacity-building activities on climate change mitigation with governments and the private sector.

Alex introduced to the UNFCCC secretariat the concept of distributed ledger technologies (DTLs) as a tool for climate action. During the 2017 UN Climate Change Conference (COP23) in Bonn, Germany, he was a jury member of the first edition of Hack4Climate. Moreover, Alex has led the conceptualization and organization of high-level panel discussions, such “Climate Change Data using Satellites, AI and Big Data” at the UN Climate Dialogues. Alex led the implementation of UNFCCC sustainable food initiative at COP25 in Madrid, Spain.

Andre Degenszajn

Diretor-presidente

Instituto Ibirapitanga

Andre Degenszajn is the Executive Director of Instituto Ibirapitanga, a foundation created in 2017 by Brazilian filmmaker Walter Salles. He was Secretary-General of GIFE, the Brazilian association of foundations, from 2013 to 2017. He has a Masters in International Relations from the Catholic University of São Paulo (PUC-SP) and was a professor of International Relations from 2007 to 2011. He was a founding member of Conectas Human Rights, where he currently serves at the board. He is also a board member of Oxfam Brasil.

Audra Leah

Communications and Community Coordinator

WE HELP YOUth FARM (WHYFARM)

Audra Leah Francis Smith has been working in the Agriculture Journalism field for the last ten years.

She is currently the Communications and Community Coordinator at WE HELP YOUth FARM (WHYFARM) , a global NGO that has created the world’s first and only food and Nutrition Security Super Hero AGRIMAN.
Her passions includes Youth Development through Agriculture and Education, Food, Nutrition and Storytelling.

Brent Kim

Assistant Scientist

Johns Hopkins Center for a Livable Future

My research spans food systems challenges from farm to fork, with published works on sustainable diets, industrial food animal production, food and agricultural policy, soil safety, urban food systems, and climate change. As a frequent speaker, educator, and writer on these topics, I thrive on translating the science for policy makers, journalists, and other key audiences. My work has been featured in Popular Science, The Guardian, The Huffington Post, NPR, Newsweek, Civil Eats, and the China Global Television Network, among other major media outlets.

Prior to joining the Johns Hopkins Center for a Livable Future in 2008, I earned my Master’s in Global Disease Epidemiology from the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health. As a former high school educator, I have never lost my love of teaching, and continue to thrive in graduate, undergraduate, and secondary school classrooms. I am equally at home developing quantitative models in Python or illustrating figures for scientific manuscripts–building on my experience as a computer scientist and, later, a senior digital artist on several award-winning AAA historical video games. My current role as a research program manager combines my experience in public health, computer science, education, and the arts with my love of food and farming.

Taken together, my diverse portfolio of work has prepared me to excel in visual, verbal, and written communication, bolstered with a deep understanding of food systems, public health, and quantitative methods. Above all, I value compassion, integrity, and a commitment to quality work.

Charisse McElwaine

Program Nutritionist

National Enrichment Group

Charisse M. McElwaine is a practicing Registered Dietitian and New York State Certified Dietitian Nutritionist (CDN). After receiving a Bachelor’s in Psychology from St. John’s Charisse pursued a career in marketing at John Wiley & Sons, Inc and Invesco (formerly known as OppenheimerFunds, Inc.) Exercise, food and nutrition have always been passions and ultimately the desire to help people led her to pursue a M.S. in Clinical Nutrition from New York University. With over two decades of experience in healthcare, Charisse specializes in clinical and public health nutrition. Currently she is focusing on educating the next generation of health professionals in all things nutrition and food as an Assistant Professor, Adjunct at Nassau Community College in New York. In her spare time, she is putting the finishing touches on a forthcoming book based on her blog “Fashionably Healthy” which will be released in early Spring 2022.

Chris Castro

Inaugural Chief of Staff, Office of State and Community Energy Programs (SCEP)

U.S. Department of Energy (DOE)

Chris is an award-winning sustainability professional, clean energy enthusiast, and eco-entrepreneur with a passion to advance smart, resilient, and sustainable cities in balance with nature.

Since 2014, Chris has worked at the City of Orlando as the Senior Advisor to Orlando Mayor Buddy Dyer, Director of Sustainability & Resilience, and ‘Future-Ready’ steering committee member, developing a comprehensive set of policies & programs that advance the City’s sustainability, climate action, and smart city goals.

Chris is best known for his entrepreneurial efforts prior to coming to the City, including co-founder and President of IDEAS For Us, a global UN-accredited 501c3 nonprofit working to incubate and fund innovative projects that advance the UN Sustainable Development Goals. In 2012, Chris also started a clean-energy consulting and development firm called Citizen Energy that operates in Washington DC, and in 2013 co-created “Fleet Farming”, the renowned urban farming social enterprise program that is redefining local food systems by building organic farms on homeowner lawns, schools, and underutilized land throughout neighborhoods and communities.

In 2020, Chris joined partners to launch ‘Climate First Bank’, the first B-Corp, values-based community bank in Florida working to advance ESG and local sustainable investing.

Outside of work, Chris sits on nearly a dozen nonprofit and academic boards, including the Florida Solar Energy Center, US Green Building Council of Florida, Project Greenschools, and Goodwill Industries of Central Florida. He has previously held sustainability positions with University of Central Florida, Orange County Government, and the U.S. Department of Energy.

Over the years, Chris has been internationally recognized for his efforts; including being named the 2018 Public Official of the Year by Governing, a ‘Champions of Change’ by President Barack Obama, the ‘Guru of Green’ by the Orlando Business Journal, the Grist 50 Fixer Award, Top 30 Under 30 sustainability professionals by GreenBiz, and formal recognition from President Bill Clinton, President Jimmy Carter, and Vice President Al Gore.

In December 2018, Chris starred in the National Geographic documentary on climate change called “Paris to Pittsburgh” to share the Orlando journey on climate action to millions of people around the World.

As a thought leader, Chris has spoken at more than 150+ conferences and events, including the United Nations Summits, Vatican Youth Symposium, Smart Cities Connect, NASA Innovation Expo, Sustainatopia, TEDx Orlando, and more.

Chris Costanzo

Founder and Editor

Food Bank News

Chris Costanzo is the Founder and Editor of Food Bank News, the only publication to acknowledge the critical role that food banks play in the wellness and livelihood of millions of people living in the United States. By promoting conversation and information exchange around best practices in food banking via a national news source, Food Bank News aims to generate more effective and lasting solutions to hunger. Prior to founding Food Bank News, Chris worked in various magazine and newspaper jobs, including as an editor, reporter and freelance writer. She is a member of the Board of Trustees of MEND, a hunger relief agency serving Essex County, NJ, and a graduate of Cornell University.

Christian Cadeo

Managing Partner, Asia

Big Idea Ventures

Christian Cadeo is currently the Managing Partner, Asia for Big Idea Ventures. Big Idea Ventures is a new alternative protein venture capital fund based in New York and Singapore. It is has major investors in the fund such as Temasek Holdings, Tyson Food (NYSE: TSN/Fortune 100 company), Buhler Group and some of the largest family offices globally.

Prior to this Christian was a seasoned operator with experience in bringing US based startups to Asia. His first startup was at AdMob which was eventually acquired by Google for US$750MM. The second startup was JUST where he was the 1st employee internationally and the company had only raised US$30MM and valued at US$90MM (currently raised US$300MM/valued at $1.2B). Recently he was at Domo where he joined pre-IPO as the 1st employee in Southeast Asia. The company IPO on NASDAQ in 2018.

Christian also has extensive experience working at some of the largest technology companies in the world including Google and Microsoft.

He graduated with a Bachelor of Art from the United States and will be attending the University of Oxford, Master of Science program in the fall of 2020.

Christina Badaracco

Registered DietitianHealthcare, Nutrition, Food Is Medicine, and Culinary Medicine Consultant

Self-Employed

Christina Badaracco, MPH, RD, LDN, is a registered dietitian seeking to improve access to healthy and sustainable food for all Americans and to educate them about the connections between food and health. Christina has conducted surveys for The Lexicon and the Teaching Kitchen Collaborative, clinical nutrition education at the National Institutes of Health, menu planning and nutrition education at the Oakland Unified School District, and communications at the Environmental Protection Agency’s Office of Water. She has also enjoyed contributing to children’s gardens, farmers markets, and a number of organic farms. She has taught and tutored in science, writing, and sustainable agriculture for many years. She contributes monthly articles about nutrition to Soulful Insights, developed 4 cookbooks for the Transamerica Center for Health Studies, and co-wrote a book about the farm bill in 2019. Christina completed her dietetic internship at Massachusetts General Hospital; earned her Master of Public Health degree from the University of California, Berkeley; and her bachelor’s degree in Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, with a certificate in Italian Language and Culture, from Princeton University. She currently works as a healthcare consultant at Avalere Health and also teaches culinary medicine classes at MedStar Health and Georgetown University School of Medicine. She was recently selected as a 2021 Recognized Young Dietitian of the Year by the Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics.

Dag Hvaring

Chief Executive Officer

Studio City Norway AS

He has been a business leader and -developer for more than 25 years. He has headed award winning companies within several professions; media, communication, artist management, show biz and TV-production. He has been politically active, elected to the City Council in Narvik and to regional and national boards of the Conservative Party in Norway. His main focus has been business- and industry policy. He served as board member of the Confederation of Norwegian Enterprise and as a member of Prime Minister Gro Harlem Bruntland’s “Forum for Value Creation”. Dag is a Norwegian national.

Dan Altschuler Malek

Managing Partner, Co-Founder

Unovis Asset Management

Dan Altschuler Malek is a Managing Partner at Unovis Asset Management / New Crop Capital, a global asset management firm that provides early-stage funding to entrepreneurs developing plant-based and cultivated meat alternatives to foods derived from conventional animal agriculture including beef, chicken, pork, dairy, egg, fish, and shellfish. Through its initial fund, New Crop Capital, the team has invested in more than 42 companies including Beyond Meats, Memphis Meats, BlueNalu, The Protein Brewery, Heura, Good Catch, Nova Meats, Alpha Foods, Zero Egg, Aleph Farms, and Miyoko’s. As Managing Partner, Dan heads the firm’s activities in North America and Israel, exploring deal- flow, creating strategic opportunities, and working with founders to solve daily challenges and evaluate strategic decisions.

Dan is passionate about food, startups, and sustainability and prior to joining Unovis his endeavors included launching a snack company, heading a logistics firm, opening a restaurant, and managing a creative agency. He received his BA from Mexico’s Universidad Iberoamericana and an MBA from Babson College. In addition to his other work, Dan serves as a mentor at Food-X and is a board member of Zero Egg and Alpha Foods.

Daphne Miller

Faculty Member

LifeLong Medical Care

Daphne Miller, MD, is a practicing family physician, Clinical Professor at the University of California San Francisco and Faculty at the Lifelong Medical Residency Program where she directs the Wellness Center and the Integrative Medicine Curriculum.

Dr. Miller is the founder of the Health from the Soil Up initiative, which brings together experts from medicine, public health and agriculture, to build a “health sensitive” food system from the soil up. Miller is a graduate of Brown University and Harvard Medical School and completed her family medicine residency and an NIH-funded primary care research fellowship at University of California San Francisco. She was as a senior advisor for Prevention Institute, is on the Advisory Board of the Center for Health and Nature at Oakland Children’s Hospital, the UC Berkeley Institute for Parks, People and Biodiversity and the Edible Schoolyard Foundation and a past Fellow at the Berkeley Food Institute and the University of Arizona Center for Integrative Medicine.

Miller was a science contributor to the Washington Post and continues to write for scientific peer-reviewed publications and the popular press. She has written two books about food, agriculture and health: The Jungle Effect, The Science and Wisdom of Traditional Diets (HarperCollins 2008) and Farmacology, Total Health from the Ground Up (HarperCollins 2013). Farmacology appears in four languages and was the basis for the award-winning documentary In Search of Balance. She is currently developing interdisciplinary education programs for professionals in medicine, public health, and agriculture so that they can work together to find solutions that nourish soil and people.

Dylan Mackay

Assistant Professor of Food and Human Nutritional Sciences and Internal Medicine - Endocrinology

University of Manitoba

Dylan MacKay has a background in nutritional biochemistry and is an Assistant Professor in the Rady Faculty of Health Sciences, and a clinical trialist at the George and Fay Yee Center for Healthcare Innovation, at the University of Manitoba. His research focuses on lifestyle interventions for chronic conditions like type 2 diabetes and chronic kidney disease. Dylan was diagnosed with type 1 diabetes when he was 13 and this experience has strongly shaped his approach to research. He supports person-oriented clinical trials where members of the population of interest contribute to, or are partners in, the research process. He is interested in how changes in diet and physical activity can modify chronic disease trajectories, both at the individual and community level.

Emily Janoch

Associate Vice President, Thought Leadership and Design

CARE

Emily Janoch is the Director for Knowledge Management and Learning at CARE, focusing on ways to better learn from, share, and use implementation experiences on eradicating poverty through empowering women and girls in order to improve impact. With 14 years of experience, she is an expert in designing systems to capture and share information across many sources, and facilitating conversations with practitioners and decision makers. She has a BA in International Studies from the University of Chicago, and a Masters’ in Public Policy in Internationals and Global Affairs from the Harvard Kennedy School.

Erin Meyer

Director of Food Rescue and Health and Wellness Initiatives

Community Initiatives for Collective Impact

Saving the food, feeding the people.

I coordinate Food Connect, Bobcat Eats Food Waste Awareness and Prevention Program, No Food Left Behind, the Pop-Up People’s Pantry and the People’s Fridge. My goal is to move UC Merced towards zero food waste, to simultaneously reduce food insecurity and to improve the sustainability of our food and food programs.

Gelsey Bennett

Senior Director, Resilience & Growth

ACDI/VOCA

Gelsey Bennett has over 15 years of experience in the sustainable development and agriculture fields. She currently serves as a Senior Program Manager at Digital Green. In this role, she oversees the implementation of donor-funded projects, including the global Developing Local Extension Capacity project, funded by the U.S. Agency for International Development. As a member of Digital Green’s strategy team, she supports communications efforts, monitoring and evaluation, and business development. Prior to Digital Green, Gelsey spent 13 years at Winrock International in various project management roles in the agriculture and forestry sectors and supported the institutionalization of improved project management practices. For the past two years, Gelsey has volunteered as a judge evaluating proposals in the food systems sector for an early-stage, university-based innovation contest. Gelsey has a master’s degree in international development studies from George Washington University and a bachelor’s degree from Rhodes College.

James Dayani

Communications Consultant, Ecosystems Division

UN Environment Programme

Janie Simms Hipp

CEO

Native American Agriculture Fund

Immediate prior experience: Director, Indigenous Food and Agriculture Initiative, University of Arkansas; Of Counsel OFW Law, Washington DC

Senior Advisor for Tribal Relations to Secretary Tom Vilsack, USDA, Washington DC and Director, Office of Tribal Relations, USDA

Prior Experiences Include:

Director, Risk Management Education, Risk Management Agency, USDA, Washington DC

National Program Leader, National Institute for Food and Agriculture, USDA, Washington DC (NPL for Risk Management Education, Farm Financial Management, Trade Adjustment Assistance and Beginning Farmer and Rancher Development Program)

Consultant, Food and Agriculture Policy; Indian Law Policy

Assistant Professor, University of Arkansas Fayetteville (College of Agriculture) teaching in the Law, Agriculture, Engineering, Honors, and Arts and Sciences Departments (agriculture law and policy; environmental law and environmental justice)

Jesse Smith

Director of Land Stewardship

White Buffalo Land Trust

Jesse Smith is a regenerative agriculture practitioner, designer and consultant. He is the Director of Land Stewardship at White Buffalo Land Trust, where their team is focused on practicing, promoting and perfecting the principles and practices of Regenerative Agriculture.

Jill Isenbarger

Chief of Staff

Environmental Defense Fund

Jill is an experienced CEO with expertise in environmental conservation, sustainability, food and agriculture. She oversaw the growth of a non profit start-up, Stone Barns Center, including developing its strategic vision and program, growing fundraising, building staff and leadership capacity, and creating an institutional culture modeled on Bell Labs and focused on innovation. Her experience as Chief of Staff at The Nature Conservancy — one of the country’s most successful non profit organizations — included strategic planning, complex problem solving, board management, marketing and communications, policy work and philanthropy.

Throughout her career Jill has been recognized for developing creative programming that advances mission, raises awareness and engages people in conversation about conservation, nature, food and community. Noteable projects and programs include an international traveling photography exhibition, In Response to Place; Food For Tomorrow conferences developed with The New York Times; the publication of Letters to A Young Farmer in collaboration with Princeton Architectural Press.

Jillian Hishaw

Social Entrepreneur & Founder

Family Agriculture Resource Management Services

Jillian Hishaw is the Author of “Systematic Land Theft” her new book in addition to an agricultural attorney, founder, and C.E.O. of F.A.R.M.S. Inspired by her own family’s land loss this international non-profit provides technical and legal assistance to small farmers while reducing hunger in the farmer’s community. Hishaw’s book “Don’t Bet the Farm” on Medicaid, available on Amazon, examines how U.S. long-term care facilities can exercise their federal authority to place a lien on a resident’s property, forcing the sale if an outstanding debt is owed. Hishaw has over 15 years of professional experience in the areas of civil rights, land protection, and agricultural policy. Her prior experience working on land protection matters for local and state agencies and on civil rights matters for the U.S. Department of Agriculture within the Office of Civil Rights in Washington, D.C. has given her immense insight on the topic of land loss. Past academic publications include Drake Journal of Agricultural Law, The Journal of Food Law & Policy, South Dakota Law Review, Environmental and Energy Law Policy Journal, and American Bar Association Environmental, Energy and Resources Agricultural Management Newsletter.

Hishaw’s recent advocacy work for Black farmers in the hemp and cannabis space has led to published op-ed articles in Civil Eats, The Counter, and HempLand U.S.A. In 2017, Hishaw was recognized as a Food Changemaker by the Clif Bar Foundation and has been featured in O, The Oprah Magazine, The Atlantic, Vice News, The Washington Post, and more. In 2019, the Food Tank organization voted Hishaw 1 of 15 women in the World Impacting the Food Industry.

Hishaw has a bachelor’s degree in biology from Tuskegee University, plus a Juris Doctorate and Legal Masters in agricultural law from the University of Arkansas-Fayetteville Law school. Hishaw’s own land loss experience has influenced her commitment to law and advocacy work in agriculture and asset protection. To learn more, please visit www.jillianhishaw.com

Kantha Shelke

Senior Lecturer

Johns Hopkins University

Kantha Shelke, Ph.D., CFS, IFT Fellow, teaches food safety regulations at Johns Hopkins University, and is a principal at Corvus Blue LLC, a food science and research firm that expedites development and commercialization of new food products and technologies with science and sensibility.

Kantha is a member of the Faculty Advisory Board on Food and Agriculture at McGill University, Montreal, and the Faculty Advisory Board at Southwest College of Naturopathic Medicine, Tempe, Arizona. She is passionate about advancing the understanding of food science, nutrition, food law, food safety, and culinary arts in the marketplace.

Senior Lecturer, Johns Hopkins University: https://advanced.jhu.edu/directory/kantha-shelke/

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/kanthashelke/

Twitter: https://twitter.com/kantha

Food Science Communicator: http://kantha.com/

Karen Leibowitz

Strategic Communications Consultant

Self Employed

Karen Leibowitz is an advocate, writer, and restaurateur seeking improvements to our food system. She has co-written two cookbooks: Mission Street Food (with Anthony Myint) and Atelier Crenn (with Dominique Crenn) and her journalism has appeared in The New York Times, Bon Appétit, Food & Wine, and other publications. As co-founder of several award-winning and pioneering restaurants (Mission Chinese Food, The Perennial, and Commonwealth), Karen was nominated for a James Beard Award for Outstanding Restaurateur in 2019. She has a Ph.D. from the University of California, Berkeley and InStyle included Karen in their inaugural list of “50 Badass Women.”

Lambert Hogenhout

Data, Analytics and AI

United Nations

Lambert Hogenhout has been working on digital technologies for 25 years in the private sector and with the United Nations. Most recently his focus is on data, analytics and AI. Data visualization, storytelling, communicating effectively with data, and user experience has always been a passion for him.

Mark Post

Professor

Maastricht University

Mark Post is an MD, PhD and professor of Physiology at Maastricht University. His main research interest is the engineering of tissues for medical applications and for food, which has led to the development of cultured beef from bovine skeletal muscle stem cells in an effort to supplement and transform the traditional meat production through livestock. In August 2013, he presented the world’s first hamburger from cultured beef. He is CSO and co-founder of two companies, MosaMeat and Qorium that will commercialize cultured meat and cultured leather.

Matthew Zhao

Food Scientist

Big Ideas Ventures

Dr Matthew Zhao is the Food Scientist at Big Idea Ventures, a venture capital firm which invests in future food technologies in the alternative protein ecosystem. His technical expertise includes specialisation in post-harvest technology, food packaging and processing, and shelf-life evaluation. Under his guidance, several companies were successful in adopting innovative novel technology, solutions and processes to commercialise their product with better nutritional value, a stable shelf-life among other value-added functional properties. He holds a PhD in Food Technology from Massey University, New Zealand.

Maureen Muketha

Founder and Executive Director

Tule Vyema

Maureen Muketha is a Nutritionist in Kenya who is passionate about achieving Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) 2. She is the founder of a social enterprise called Tule Vyema.

Maureen is a real agent of change in her community and role model admired by young and old alike. She rolls up her sleeves to do what she loves best – fighting hunger, malnutrition, and poverty.

Her efforts to raise awareness of proper feeding habits, consumption of a balanced / diversified diet, fight malnutrition and improve food security in her community has enabled her impact over 2,000 community members through equipping them with nutrition knowledge through nutrition education talks and improved food security level in over 800 low income earning households

Maureen’s transformative work through Tule Vyema has been recognized by local and global organizations such as UN Food System Summit, Food Tank, Croplife International, Oxfam, Global Changemakers, Global Citizen, Scaling Up Nutrition Civil Society Alliance and Young African Leaders Initiative.

Maureen’s aspiration is to become a leading policy maker in matters nutrition and food security to develop and strengthen the food system now that COVID -19 pandemic has clearly amplified the gaps in the system.

Mia Medicus

Investor

OpenView

Mia engages with startups in the space through each stage of the process, from due diligence and investment decisions to strategic support for portfolio companies. A plant-based eater herself, Mia is a proponent of the alt-protein movement and looks forward to seeing the shift away from animal products continue to improve the health of people and the planet.

Michael Mulet

Senior Program Officer

WWF-Germany

Raja Ramachandran

Founder

ripe.io

Raja is a co-founder of ripe.io; a technology company creating the blockchain of food to help the food supply chain achieve transparency, efficiency and improved value to solve problems around traceability, food safety, quality assurance, regulatory compliance. Raja, a serial entrepreneur, was most recently on the founding team and headed product development at R3, the world’s largest financial institutions consortium for blockchain deployment. Raja has had a 20-year career in financial trading at Bank of America, Citi, Silicon Valley Bank and Wells Fargo. Raja is passionate about connected technologies and how they can be utilized to revolutionize ways to create a more sustainable and healthier food business.

Rebecca Chesney

Creative Leader

Neol

Rebecca Chesney works with organizations to redesign the food system. A food anthropologist, foresight expert, and systems thinker, Rebecca brings over a decade of research and industry insight to help leaders identify better solutions for people, the planet, and their businesses.

Before joining Neol in 2023, Rebecca was a Research Director with the Food Futures Lab at Institute for the Future (IFTF), where she led foresight consulting projects for the agriculture and food and beverage industries. Rebecca has also been a financial management policy analyst with The World Bank and a research assistant at University College Dublin. She was one of ten graduates selected from across the United States for the Financial Accounting Standards Board’s 2007 fellowship, and that same year was awarded Texas A&M University’s Earl Rudder Memorial Outstanding Student among 11,000 graduates.

Rebecca has lived and worked across the globe, from China to Palestine to Lesotho. She holds degrees in accounting and finance from Texas A&M University and an MA in the Anthropology of Food from SOAS, University of London.

Rebecca De Souza

Associate Professor

University of Minnesota, Duluth

Rebecca de Souza is a Professor of Communication at the University of Minnesota, Duluth. Her research is concerned with how political and economic systems impact health, access to food, and social inequalities. Her recent book Feeding the Other: Whiteness, Privilege, and Neoliberal Stigma in Food Pantries (MIT Press, 2019) argues that stigma is a poisonous undercurrent that runs rampant in the lives of food insecure individuals. Her book shows how food pantries stigmatize their clients through a discourse that emphasizes hard work, self-help, and economic productivity rather than food justice and equity. Her work has been published in top tier journals such as Communication Theory, Health Communication, and International Journal of Communication as well as in interdisciplinary journals such as the American Journal of Health Education and Journal of Agriculture, Food Systems, and Community Development.

Sanjeet Baidwan

Medical Director, Complex Care

Yale University School of Medicine

Steven Apfelbaum

Founder, Chairman and Senior Ecologist

Applied Ecological Services

Steven Apfelbaum has conducted ecological research, designed award winning projects, successfully navigated regulatory programs, and contributed his unique creative scientific expertise and enthusiasm to over 7,000 projects throughout North America and beyond. He is one of the leading ecological consultants in the U.S., providing technical restoration advice and win-win solutions where ecological and land-development conflicts arise.

Steven has authored hundreds of technical studies, peer reviewed technical papers, books, reports, ecological restoration plans, and regulatory monitoring and compliance reports. Steve’s book, Nature’s Second Chance (Beacon Press), won accolades from the New York Times, and was listed as one of the “Top 10 Environmental Books of 2009.” Restoring Ecological Health to Your Land (Island Press), his most recent book (coauthored with Alan Haney and part of a three-volume series), has won praise as the first comprehensive ‘how-to’ restoration books for landowners.

Steven promotes using ecological and conservation design principles in developments, industrial projects and parks that help clients save money while increasing ecological functionality, improving public perception and generating award-winning outcomes. Steven is also a much sought after speaker at educational events focusing on ecological restoration, ecosystem assessment, alternative stormwater management and conservation development.

Timothy Harlan

Executive Director Culinary Medicine Program

The George Washington University

Timothy S. Harlan practices internal medicine in Washington, DC. His love of food began as a teenager working in the restaurant business. Starting as a dishwasher, he worked his way up to managing his first restaurant by the age of eighteen and owning his first restaurant at twenty-two. After operating Le Petit Café as a chef/owner he closed the restaurant to return to school. Dr. Harlan originally intended to pursue a degree in hotel and restaurant management but events led him toward medicine and the decision to become a physician.

After finishing an undergraduate degree in Anthropology Dr. Harlan went on to study medicine at Emory University. Working as a caterer throughout school, he continued to be involved with food and cooking but noticed a lack of knowledge in the medical field around food, eating healthy and eating well. Neither patients nor health care providers understood much about a healthy diet. Patients, it seemed, were usually told not what they could eat but, rather, what they could not eat.

In medical school, Dr. Harlan wrote It’s Heartly Fare a food manual for patients with cardiovascular disease. Since then he has published numerous books focusing on translating evidence based diet and nutrition information for the lay public. He is publisher of the popular Web site DrGourmet.com where information from the Mediterranean diet literature is translated in a practical way for the American kitchen.

He served as Associate Dean for Clinical Services at Tulane University School of Medicine as the Executive Director of the Goldring Center for Culinary Medicine, the first of its kind teaching kitchen operated by a medical school from 2007 to 2019. The center offers an innovative program teaching medical students about diet and lifestyle that bridges the gap between the basic sciences, clinical medicine, the community and culinary education. Medical students work side-by-side in the kitchen with culinary students to teach each other and, most importantly, teach the community and patients how to return to their kitchens and transform their health.

Starting in January 2020 Dr. Harlan joined George Washington University to expand the Culinary Medicine programming as a university-wide project. He continues to serve as Chairman of the Advisory Board for the Culinary Medicine Specialist Board.

Vanessa Garcia Polanco

Government Relations Director

National Young Farmers Coalition

Vanessa is the Government Relations Director at National Young Farmers Coalition. She has worked with Food Solutions New England, MSU Center for Regional Food Systems, and in the U.S. Department of Agriculture. Vanessa is an immigrant from the Dominican Republic, and she brings her identities and experiences to shape her advocacy and research. She is an alumni from Michigan State University and the University of Rhode Island. She is the UNMGCY North America Regional Youth Focal Point, in support of UNFSS.

Designers

Alejandra Soto

Amanda Towner

Amanda Yeoh

Amoolya Sandeep Kumar

Anju John

Ary Istikhory

Ben Schneider

Brianna Moore

Burcu Karahan

Cameron Ward

Christian Rincon

Christine Smith

Danna Gomez

Emily Murphy

Eugenia Lee

Fatima Berfin Bulut

Filipa Campos

Hardik Kumar

Heather Williams

Hessa Sulaiman Ali

Hilary Dana Walrod

Homan Cheung

Janice Hui

Jorge David Mendoza Gordillo

Juan David Salazar Cuellar

Kathleen Foster

Kelsi Yuan

Laura Rickert

Laurent Bruwier

Layan Abuzahra

Lingxi Li

Liz Bravo

Magdalena Weiss

Miriam Young

Neha Stephen

Robert Vidaure

Sarah Stern

Shaun Williams

Subhadra Sridharan

Tatyana Sedeleva

Veeksha Mehndiratta

Verónica Díaz

Vuslat Yimaz

Adobe Team

Isabelle Hamlin

Design Manager at Adobe

Adobe Systems Inc.

Experience Designer with a demonstrated history of working in the computer software industry. Skilled in Information Design, Icon Design, Graphics, User Experience (UX) and Fashion Illustration. Strong information technology professional with a Graphic Design focused in visual design from Alsterdamm, Kommunikationsdesign.

Lisa Pedee

Design Team Operations, Group Program Manager

Adobe Systems Inc.

Nayane de Souza Hablitzel

Product UX Designer

IKEA

Hi! I am a Brazilian designer, currently working and living in Hamburg, Germany. I always knew I wanted to dedicate my life to a form of creative visual expression. I have a pragmatic way of solving communication problems, and I like to have fun and drink coffee while doing so.

Sonja Hernandez

Senior Experience Design Manager 2, Brand, Icons, and EGD design teams

Adobe Systems Inc.

Sonja Hernandez leads the Brand and Icons design teams at Adobe, who design the brand architecture, product logos, splash screens, and the in-app workflow icons that appear in all of Adobe\’92s desktop software and mobile products. She also creates environmental graphics and large-scale art pieces for Adobe offices around the world, and speaks about Branding at conferences and creative events. Outside of Adobe, Sonja teaches Graphic Design and Typography at California College of the Arts in San Francisco, and can often be found hiking in the Berkeley hills.

Sonja is a holds a BFA Studio Art from Simmons College, studied Graphic Design at California College of the Arts, and has a post-graduate certificate in Typeface Design from Cooper Union.

Lexicon Team

Douglas Gayeton

Co-Founder

The Lexicon

Douglas Gayeton, Chief Lexicographer and Co-founder of The Lexicon, is an award-winning information architect, filmmaker, photographer, and writer who has created work at the boundaries of traditional and converging media since the early 90’s. He directed the KNOW YOUR FOOD series for PBS and GROWING ORGANIC for USDA, and has authored two books, SLOW: Life in a Tuscan Town, and LOCAL: The New Face of Food & Farming in America.

Laura Howard-Gayeton

Executive Director

The Lexicon

Laura is the co-founder and Executive Director of “The Lexicon”. A social entrepreneur deeply rooted in the environmental movement, she founded Laloo’s, the first goat’s milk ice cream in the United States, a company based on principles informed by food science, water stewardship, animal welfare and the good food movement. Named a top 10 tastemakers by Newsweek, she continues to advise food companies after a successful exit from ice cream. Prior to Laloo’s, Laura worked in television. She founded Slo.Graffiti, a consumer products branding company subsidiary of Palomar Pictures and owns one technical patent for Tunnelvision, a proprietary storytelling system for subway systems. Laura is a graduate of Miami University where she rode for the Equestrian team, and still rides when she isn’t gardening, composting, or pickling something from the farm she shares with her partner Douglas Gayeton. She serves on several nonprofit boards including Womenserve NGO dedicated to improving the lives of women and girls in Rajasthan, India, and Petaluma Bounty, a community farm. She is an active 4H club Mom who is most proud of her 12 year-old daughter who is the Sonoma county Jr. poultry exhibitor champion and the apple of her eye.

Pier Giorgio Provenzano

Head of Digital

The Lexicon

Pier Giorgio Provenzano is The Lexicon’s Head of Digital and lead Animator and Video Editor. Based near Bristol, England, his projects include a short film series for PBS, music videos for Napster, a feature-length documentary for HBO, several animated shorts for Warner Brothers and Toyota, short films for Sustainable Food Trust, and GrowEatGather, which showcases British farmers and their role in producing good sustainable food.

Alberto Miti

Associate Director

The Lexicon

Alberto is an associate director at The Lexicon, where he leads impact campaigns (A Greener Blue, Seafood MAP) and multi-stakeholder projects in collaboration with both private and public organizations.

His work leverages evidence-based storytelling, collaborative approaches and story-based design.

Nathan Shedroff

Designer, author, and educator

nathan.com

Nathan is a seasoned, professional strategist and serial entrepreneur as well as a pioneer in the fields of experience design, interaction design, and information design. Currently, he’s creating new tools and models for new ventures and “total value” (beyond just economic and functional value). He speaks and teaches internationally, and has authored many books (below).

Nathan is the chair of the groundbreaking Design MBA programs in design strategy at California College of the Arts in San Francisco. These programs prepare the next generation of innovation leaders for a world that is profitable, sustainable, ethical, and truly meaningful. The programs unite the perspectives of systems thinking, design and integrative thinking, business models, sustainability, and generative leadership into a holistic strategic framework.

Before academia, he was a pioneer in multi- and online media. He worked with Richard Saul Wurman at TheUnderstandingBusiness and co-founded vivid studios, a pioneering interactive media company and one of the first Web services firms on the planet. vivid’s hallmark was helping to establish and validate the field of information architecture by training an entire generation of designers in the newly emerging web industry.