Biosketch

Jessica Fanzo, Ph.D., is a Professor of Climate and the Director of the Food for Humanity Action Collaborative at Columbia University’s Climate School in New York City. Before coming to Columbia in 2023, Professor Fanzo was the Bloomberg Distinguished Professor of Global Food Policy and Ethics at Johns Hopkins University. She has also held positions at the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (UN), the UN World Food Programme, Bioversity International, the Earth Institute, the Millennium Development Goal Centre at the World Agroforestry Center in Kenya, and the Doris Duke Charitable Foundation. She has participated in various collective endeavors, including the Food Systems Economic Commission, the Global Panel of Agriculture and Food Systems for Nutrition Foresight 2.0 report, the Lancet Commission on Anaemia, and the EAT-Lancet Commissions 1 and now 2. She was also the Co-Chair of the Global Nutrition Report and Team Leader for the UN High-Level Panel of Experts on Food Systems and Nutrition. She currently leads the development of the Food Systems Dashboard and the Food Systems Countdown to 2030 Initiative. Professor Fanzo received a PhD in nutrition from the University of Arizona and Stephen I. Morse postdoctoral fellowship in Immunology in the Department of Molecular Medicine at Columbia University’s College of Physicians and Surgeons. Professor Fanzo became an elected member of the U.S. National Academy of Sciences in 2024 and was the first laureate of the Carasso Foundation’s Sustainable Diets Prize in 2012 for her research on sustainable diets.

Research Interests

Dr. Fanzo’s research focuses on sustainable food systems and their impacts on healthy and equitable diets in resource-constrained contexts, particularly in sub-Saharan Africa and South and East Asia. She concentrates her efforts on four major areas that intricately link how food systems shape human and planetary health. They aim to:
• Analyze the impact of climate change on food systems and sustainable diets;
• Understand multi-sectoral approaches and linkages between agriculture, diets, and health; and
• Investigate the ethics, political economy, and governance of food system policy and programming in resource-constrained settings and contexts.
• Develop metrics, indicators, and frameworks to articulate the performance of food system dynamics and drivers of change.

Membership Type

Member

Election Year

2024

Primary Section

Section 64: Human Environmental Sciences

Secondary Section

Section 61: Animal, Nutritional, and Applied Microbial Sciences