Ertharin Cousin founded and today guides the Food Systems for the Future team as President and CEO. As a global nutrition and food systems thought leader and advocate Cousin also serves as a Distinguished Fellow at the Chicago Council on Global Affairs and a Visiting Scholar at the Stanford University, Center on Food Security and Environment. From 2012 until 2017, Cousin served as United Nations World Food Programme (WFP) Executive Director. During her tenure, WFP operating in about 80 countries, with a budget averaging over five (5) billion dollars per year and a staff of 14,000 provided direct food assistance to more than 80 million people each year. With Cousin’s support the WFP team also identified, championed and implemented longer-term, more sustainable solutions for global food insecurity and malnutrition.

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 service as the Executive Vice President and Chief Operating Officer of America’s Second Harvest - now Feeding America. Cousin’s previous private sector experience includes working for Albertsons as the Senior Vice-President of Public Affairs.

Cousin is currently the nonexecutive board chair of Camelot North America, an advisory board member of the Angelena Fund, a member of the Bayer AG Supervisory Board, the Royal DSM Sustainability Board, the Heifer International Board and a trustee of Akaydemia2063.

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, as the Fortune 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.

Moderated by IR Faculty Director Professor Stephen Stedman 

Professor Stephen Stedman is a Senior Fellow at the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies (FSI) and the Center on Democracy, Development and the Rule of Law (CDDRL); director of the Fisher Family Honors Program in Democracy, Development and the Rule of Law; an affiliated faculty member at the Center for International Security and Cooperation (CISAC); and professor of political science (by courtesy).

In 2011-12, Professor Stedman served as the Director for the Global Commission on Elections, Democracy, and Security, a body of eminent persons tasked with developing recommendations on promoting and protecting the integrity of elections and international electoral assistance. The Commission is a joint project of the Kofi Annan Foundation and International IDEA, an intergovernmental organization that works on international democracy and electoral assistance.

In 2005, he served as Assistant Secretary-General and Special Advisor to the Secretary- General of the United Nations, with responsibility for working with governments to adopt the Panel’s recommendations for strengthening collective security and for implementing changes within the United Nations Secretariat, including the creation of a Peacebuilding Support Office, a Counter Terrorism Task Force, and a Policy Committee to act as a cabinet to the Secretary-General.

In 2003-04 Professor Stedman was Research Director of the United Nations High-level Panel on Threats, Challenges and Change and was a principal drafter of the Panel’s report, A More Secure World: Our Shared Responsibility.