Ambassador Ertharin Cousin

Ambassador Ertharin Cousin is the founder and CEO of Food Systems for the Future Institute, a nonprofit organization dedicated to transforming food systems to create a healthier and more sustainable future. From 2009-2012, she served as the U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Agencies for Food and Agriculture in Rome, where she led aid programs providing food relief following the 2010 Haiti earthquake, among other initiatives. 

Ambassador Cousin has made a tremendous impact in both global and domestic food systems reforms, powered by her vision of a world without hunger and malnutrition. Following her ambassadorship, Cousin led the United Nations World Food Programme as Executive Director, providing vital food assistance to over 80 million people. Under her leadership, the organization began the longer-term work of identifying, championing, and implementing more sustainable solutions for global hunger and malnutrition. Ambassador Cousin has also served as the Executive Vice President and Chief Operating Officer of America’s Second Harvest, now known as Feeding America.

Ambassador Cousin serves as a Distinguished Fellow at the Chicago Council on Global Affairs; a Bosch Academy, Robert Weizsäcker Fellow; and as a Visiting Scholar at the Stanford University, Center on Food Security and Environment. Cousin is currently a member of the Bayer AG Supervisory Board, the Mondelez International Board of Directors, Board Chair of Allwyn-North America, and a Trustee of the African agriculture thinktank, Akademia2063. 

Ambassador 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 in Finance for Non-Financial Executives. She has been listed numerous times on Forbes’ 100 Most Powerful Women List, as Fortune’s Most Powerful Woman in Food and Drink, on Time’s 100 Most Influential People list, and as one of the 500 Most Powerful People on the Planet by Foreign Policy magazine.

She has served on the Truth Initiative board of directors since 2025.