Kelley Cormier is Food Safety Division Chief in the Center for Nutrition within USAID’s Bureau for Resilience and Food Security. She oversees a portfolio that supports the U.S. Government’s Global Food Security Strategy and USAID's Multisectoral Nutrition Strategy. At USAID, she has worked as agricultural economist and Division Chief for Inclusive Market Development in the Bureau for Food Security. Prior, she managed SPS programs for USDA and led research on agricultural markets. She holds a PhD in Development Studies, specializing in Economics and Law from the University of Wisconsin-Madison and a MS in Agricultural Economics from Michigan State University.

Anne Gerardi is GFSI Senior Manager in charge of regulatory affairs, public-private-partnerships and global capacity building programmes for GFSI, Global Food Safety Initiative. She has a background of economics in economic development and food commodities also on climate change, trade, international affairs and finance. She worked in the retail and banking industry previously. She oversees public-private-partnerships, capacity building and regulatory affairs on food safety and sustainable development goals activities for GFSI Global at the Consumer Goods Forum for 7 years strengthening food safety programmes related to capacity building and public-private dialogue, promoting international trade and food safety management systems through GFSI tools.  

Bersamin’s research focuses broadly on preventing nutrition-related health disparities among underserved, minority youth and their families. Specifically, she is interested in understanding how the social-ecological context of communities promotes or hinders health and health behaviors; designing and evaluating culturally grounded community-based interventions to prevent obesity and improve diet quality; and enhancing local food systems, particularly traditional food systems, to improve food security, and food sovereignty.

Alimatou Diagne is a data science engineer who was invited to participate in the Yali Regional Leadership Center, the US government’s Young African Leaders Initiative, where she designed a project combining digital book writing and audiovisual production in 2017. Realizing another one of her business accomplishments, she launched her dried meat business called “Carvi Food”  in 2017.  Carvi Food is the first Senegalese dried meat production company that has more than 10,000 subscribers on its platform. Its objective is to improve products every day by taking into account the opinions of customers. Carvi Food participated in the Mandela Washington Fellowship in 2019 after being awarded the Francophonie 3535 prize in Abidjan in 2018 being among the 35 under 35 years of age to have an impact in the French-speaking world. At the end of 2020, the Carvi Food diversified by adding fruits and dried chicken. The products’ slogan is: “always better with every bite”. USAID’s Feed the Future Business Drivers for Food Safety project (BD4FS) supported Carvi’s adoption of food safety practices, which helped them secure a lucrative supply contract with a major food retailer in Senegal.

Dr. Nika Larian is a current AAAS Science and Technology Policy Fellow and Food Systems Advisor in the Center for Nutrition within the US Agency for International Development (USAID) Bureau for Resilience and Food Security (RFS). Nika received her Ph.D. in Nutritional Sciences from the University of Kentucky in 2019. Nika serves as Activity Manager for EatSafe, a program focused on improving access to safe and nutritious foods in traditional markets. Nika is the current Chair of the Interagency Food Safety Technical Working Group.

Abiodun Atoloye is an incoming Assistant Professor at Utah State University who holds a Ph.D. in Nutrition Science. She seeks to understand ways to close the nutrition and health gaps experienced by low-resource families, refugees, and immigrant communities using community-based intervention and policy, system, and environment (PSE) change approach.