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Ellen Gustafson      

Co-Founder of Food Tank; Co-Founder of FEED Projects; Founder of 30 Project & ChangeDinner

Ellen Gustafson is a sustainable food system activist, innovator and social entrepreneur. She is best known for co-founding FEED Projects with Lauren Bush, as well as for founding 30 Project, a nonprofit that aims to look at the link between obesity and starvation rates. In addition, she has been a US spokesperson for the UN World Food Programme and founded Food Tank: The Think Tank For Food with Danielle Nierenberg.

FEED Projects is a charitable company that creates consumer products that help feed the world. The project aims to feed one child for a year per burlap bag sold, with money from every purchase going to the World Food Programme. Under Ellen's leadership, FEED provided more than 65 million school meals to children around the world—at no cost to them.

in May 2010, Gustafson launched The 30 Project, an effort to address the world’s hunger and obesity problems as one single crisis. In her new venture, she hopes to stimulate a movement that will change our food and agricultural systems over the next 30 years so that healthy, balanced meals are available to all.

Previously, Ellen was a U.S. Spokesperson for the U.N. World Food Program, a terrorism research reporter in the ABC News Investigative Unit and a research associate for the Military Fellows at the Council on Foreign Relations. She has a BA in International Politics from Columbia University and is pursuing a Master's Degree in Food Studies at New York University.

She has been featured as one of Fortune Magazine's 2009 Most Powerful Women Entrepreneurs, Inc Magazine's 2010 30 Under 30, and has spoken at Fortune's Most Powerful Women's Conference. Amongst her many public speaking accomplishments, Ellen has given multiple TED talks, keynoted to the Italian Parliament, lectured at Harvard, NYU, Columbia University, The U.S. Naval Academy, Feeding America, Davos and many more. She also serves on the Columbia University Alumni Board of Directors and is a Term Member of the Council on Foreign Relations.

Speech Topics


Inspiring Female Leaders

Widely acclaimed as one of the most powerful and innovative female leaders in the world, Ellen Gustafson, who is still in her early thirties, shares her lessons learned from a variety of experiences, including co-founding a multi-million dollar charitable fashion brand, working with the United Nations, consulting for some of the largest companies on the planet, acting as a Term Member for the Council on Foreign Relations, and encountering hardship after hardship first-hand as a global social entrepreneur. From all-female schools to the Fortune Most Powerful Women Conference, Ellen’s groundbreaking ideas, inspirational stories, and views of Innovation and Leadership have inspired tens of thousands of current female leaders and the leaders of tomorrow.

A New Understanding of Hunger, Obesity and the Food System

With a background as a U.N. World Food Program Spokesperson, Co-Founder of FEED Projects and the FEED Foundation, and Founder of Change Dinner, Ellen has wide experience in the fields of fighting hunger, addressing obesity and understanding the way forward for agriculture. Her nuanced perspective that hunger and obesity are essentially the same problem is backed up by an interesting look at the changes in our food system in the last 30 years. By outlining the common roots of the problems of one billion hungry and one billion overweight on the planet today, Ellen lays out a compelling case for the system being the problem as well as a few simple things that all people can do to push towards a better global food system.

Leading Change & Innovation

As an early innovator in the social entrepreneurship field and now a system-change thought leader in the food movement, Ellen speaks to a new way to look at problems and solutions. Through her personal story of a non-traditional career path and the trials and triumphs of starting FEED, a company that has provided over 65 million meals to hungry children, and Change Dinner, a non-profit focused on addressing the underlying causes to food system problems, Ellen inspires people to follow their passions and lead.

News


Food Activist Ellen Gustafson On How To Be A Change-Maker
Food activist Ellen Gustafson speaks with Eve Turow Paul about her new role as Principal at Summit Series and Co-Director of the Summit Institute and how to ...
Ellen Gustafson: Obesity + Hunger = 1 Global Food Issue | Organic ...
According to Food Tank co-founder Ellen Gustafson, the consolidation of the American food system has contributored to the current problem of one billion ...
Change Dinner, Change Health, Change Altantic Canada with Ellen ...
Change Dinner, Change Health, Change Altantic Canada with Ellen Gustafson. Posted by Jolene MacEachern on 05/31/2013 in Events. ellen_gustafson.

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