Ann M. Steensland
Lecture: "Building Sustainable Breadbaskets: The Time is Now!"
About the speaker
Ann M. Steensland is Deputy Director for the Global Harvest Initiative, a private sector policy voice for productivity and sustainability throughout the agricultural value chain. Ann leads GHI’s policy work on agricultural development and nutrition. In this role, she served as a private sector representative at the negotiations for the Second International Conference on Nutrition (ICN2), co-sponsored by the UN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) and World Health Organization (WHO).
Ann is the co-author of the 2015 Global Agricultural Productivity Report® (GAP Report®): Building Sustainable Breadbaskets in which she wrote about agricultural productivity in Zambia. Ann is a frequent contributor to GHI’s Harvest 2050 blog and served as editor of a special guest blog series for the 2015 GAP Report®.
In her career, Ann has worked with U.S. and global non-profit organizations focusing on a variety of issues, including hunger and malnutrition, affordable housing, and the performing arts. Prior to joining GHI, Ann served for four years as Chief of Staff of the Alliance to End Hunger, a coalition of more than 80 organizations, companies, universities, and NGOs working to build public and political will to end hunger. While at the Alliance, she helped establish the National Alliance Partnership Program – a capacity building initiative to end hunger and malnutrition by strengthening civil society around the world.
Ann holds an M.A. in African History from George Mason University in Fairfax, Virginia. She was awarded the Lawrence Levine Prize for her M.A. thesis exploring socio-economic and environmental dimensions of rural poverty in early twentieth-century South Africa. Ann has a B.A. in International Relations from Wheaton College in Norton, Massachusetts.