What we eat has long been influenced by travel, trade, innovation, and fundamentally, culture. This panel will explore the threat and impact climate change is exerting on the global food system, and potential solutions. How will climate change affect diets, food culture and food availability, especially for marginalized communities?

Introduction by former US senator Larry Pressler

Speakers

– Johanna Chao Kreilick, President, Union of Concerned Scientists (Moderator)
– Corby Kummer, Executive Director, Food and Society at the Aspen Institute
– Michael Pollan, author, journalist, and Knight Professor of Science and Environmental Journalism at the UC Berkeley Graduate School of Journalism (via video)
– Ricardo Salvador, Senior Scientist on Food & Environment at Union of Concerned Scientists
Alice Waters, Founder of Chez Panisse & The Edible Schoolyard Project

Bios

– Johanna Chao Kreilick is president of the Union of Concerned Scientists, a leading science-based advocacy organization that combines technical analysis and advocacy to create and implement innovative, practical solutions for a healthy, safe, and sustainable future. Ms. Kreilick has three decades of experience with social movements, science policy, and working to combat climate change. Before leading UCS, Ms. Kreilick served on the executive team of the Open Society Foundations, a $27 billion global rights and justice philanthropy. There she established and led the Foundations’ strategy unit responsible for planning, research and assessment for the Foundations’ 50 global programs, national foundations, and advocacy offices. Prior to joining Open Society in 2013, Ms. Kreilick created and led a justice and human rights program at the Hauser Center for Nonprofit Organizations at Harvard University. Ms. Kreilick is a trained mediator and facilitator, and serves on numerous nonprofit boards. She earned a BA with distinction in anthropology from Stanford University and an MPA from the Harvard Kennedy School of Government, where she was named a Lucius N. Littauer Fellow.

– Corby Kummer is executive director of Food & Society at the Aspen Institute, a senior lecturer at the Tufts Friedman School of Nutrition Science, and a senior editor of The Atlantic. In recent years, Food and Society launched new initiatives that include Safety First, Food is Medicine, and Conversations on Food Justice. Corby is the author of The Joy of Coffee and The Pleasures of Slow Food, the first book in English on the Slow Food movement, and has been restaurant critic of New York, Boston, and Atlanta Magazines and food and food policy columnist for The New Republic. Every week he is a featured commentator on food and food policy on WGBH’s Boston Public Radio. He has received six James Beard Journalism Awards.

– Ricardo Salvador, the senior scientist and director of the Food and Environment Program at the Union of Concerned Scientists, has over four decades of experience working with citizens, scientists, economists, and politicians to transition our current food system into one that grows healthy foods while employing sustainable and socially equitable practices. Before UCS, Dr. Salvador served as a program officer for food, health, and well-being with the W.K. Kellogg Foundation, where he partnered with colleagues to create programs that addressed the connections between food and health, environment, economic development, sovereignty, and social justice. Prior to that, he was an associate professor of agronomy at Iowa State University where he taught the first course in sustainable agriculture at a land-grant university. He also worked with students to establish ISU’s student-operated organic farm. Dr. Salvador has been interviewed by the BBC, Wall Street Journal, Financial Times, National Public Radio, Democracy Now!, MSNBC, The Boston Globe and many other leading global publications. In addition, he has authored opinion columns for The New York Times, The Guardian, and The Washington Post. Dr. Salvador earned a B.S. in agricultural science from New Mexico State University. He holds an M.S. and Ph.D. in crop production and physiology from Iowa State University.


Alice Waters is a chef, author, food activist, and the founder of Chez Panisse Restaurant in Berkeley (est. 1971). She has been a champion of local sustainable agriculture for over four decades. In 1995 she founded the Edible Schoolyard Project, which advocates for a free regenerative organic school lunch for all children and a sustainable food curriculum in every public school. In 2015 she was awarded the National Humanities Medal by President Obama, proving that eating is a political act. Alice is the author of sixteen books including her most recent We Are What We Eat: A Slow Food Manifesto.

Doors open 30 minutes prior to the event. You are free to view the exhibition upon entry.