Join us on October 4th to hear from alumni, industry leaders, founders, and CEOs who are shaping the future of food and agriculture in the face of the climate crisis. The program will feature three dynamic panels:
- Sustainability and the Global Food System: 10:30am-11:00am
- Greg Jaffe, Former Senior Advisor for Regulatory Affairs, Office of the Secretary at USDA
- Beth Hart, Chief Sustainability and Social Impact Officer, McDonald’s
- Juan Gabriel Aguiriano Nalda, Group Head of Sustainability, Kerry
- Ted McKinney, Chief Executive Officer, NASDA
- Agriculture, Technology, and Climate: 11:00am-11:30am
- Mary Snapp, Senior Fellow Corporate External & Legal Affairs, Microsoft
- Rhishi Pethe, Managing Partner, Founder Metal Dog Labs
- Anthony Howcroft, Executive Chairman, Founder, SWARM Engineering
- Shari Rogge Fiddler, President & CEO, Farm Foundation
- Climate Change and Adaptation in Small-Scale Agriculture: 11:30am-12:00pm
- Judith Batchelar OBE, Director, Food Matters International
- Alicia Harley, Senior Research Fellow, Sustainability Science Program, Harvard Kennedy School
- Yoav Levsky, CEO, Nibbana Group
Brunch will be served during the event, and the program will conclude with a networking session with the speakers—an opportunity to continue the conversation and build new connections.
Co-Sponsored by:
- PAPSAC – Private and Public Scientific, Academic and Consumer Food Policy Group
- Harvard Faculty of Arts and Sciences Mignone Center for Career Success
- Office of Career and Professional Development Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health
Date: Saturday, October 4th
Time: 10:30am -1:00 pm
Location: Bell Hall, Belfer B-500, Harvard Kennedy School, 79 JFK St. Cambridge, MA
Gregory Jaffe, JD ’88, is a consultant on agriculture, food, environment and sustainability with 35 years of experience on national and international policy. He served as the Senior Advisor for Regulatory Affairs in the Office of the Secretary at USDA (2023-2025). In this role, Greg worked on a broad portfolio of issues that included bioeconomy, biotechnology, biofuels, pesticides, PFAS, food safety, and scientific research and development.
Before joining USDA, Greg worked for many years at the Center for Science in the Public Interest, where he managed their Biotechnology Project. Earlier in his career, Greg worked for seven years as a Trial Attorney for the US Department of Justice’s Environment and Natural Resources Division and for four years as Senior Counsel for the US Environmental Protection Agency’s Air Enforcement Division. He has a Bachelor of Arts in Biology and Government from Wesleyan University and a law degree from Harvard Law School.
Beth Hart is the Chief Sustainability & Social Impact Officer at McDonald’s, where she spearheads initiatives at the intersection of environmental stewardship, social responsibility, and business longevity. Her extensive experience — ranging from supply chain management and product development to marketing and procurement —uniquely equips her with the expertise to align people and planet work with business strategy, helping to better serve the communities McDonald’s sources from as well as those it operates in.
Beth’s career trajectory showcases a dynamic blend of industry leadership and strategic vision. Prior to her current role, she led McDonald’s UK&I Supply Chain and Brand Trust strategy, achieving record trust scores and world-class supply chain performance. Her experience at Sainsbury’s and Diageo further honed her abilities in category management, sustainable sourcing and innovative product development. With a clear focus on both sustainability and social impact, she champions the integration of people and planet into McDonald’s operations, underscoring the critical role businesses play in shaping a more sustainable and inclusive future.
Juan Aguiriano is a corporate sustainability pioneer with over 30 years’ experience leading businesses and working at C-suite level at some of the world’s biggest food, chemical and fibers companies to provide strategic guidance in helping develop and implement innovative strategies to transform businesses and operations towards triple-bottom line sustainability.
Currently leading the sustainability strategy at the Kerry Group, a world leader in Taste and Nutrition, Juan is focused on creating significant, positive impact on the environment and society, by driving businesses’ sustainability leadership.
Expert in corporate strategies for sustainability, risk management, business innovations and organizational change, as well as stakeholder engagement and communications, Juan has worked with executives in some of the world’s top 500 corporations, to transform the way they do business, and ensure they are incorporating societal and environmental criteria in their values, behaviors, strategies and business decision making. Juan is also focused on disruptive and emerging sustainable technology ventures investments, partnerships and collaborations which have the potential to transform existing markets, products and value chains in profitable and sustainable ways. Juan has a Bachelor’s degree in Economics and Social Sciences from the University of Geneva in Switzerland and a Master’s degree in Economics and Business from the University of Texas at Austin in the United States. He also has furthered his competences in strategy and sustainability in several executive leadership programs at IMD, Lausanne, Switzerland and IESE, Barcelona, Spain.
Ted McKinney serves as the Chief Executive Officer of NASDA, the National Association of State Departments of Agriculture, a position to which he was named in September 2021. NASDA is the Washington, DC based organization representing the State Commissioners, Secretaries and Directors of Agriculture to the US and the world.
Prior to NASDA, he was also the first U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) Under Secretary for Trade and Foreign Agricultural Affairs from 2017-2021. In that role, Under Secretary McKinney led the development and implementation of the Department’s trade policy, oversaw and facilitated foreign market access, and promoted opportunities for U.S. agriculture through various trade programs and high-level government negotiations. He also oversaw the U.S. Codex Alimentarius staff and functions.
After his USDA service, McKinney led foreign affairs and outreach on behalf of the US food and agriculture industry and its engagement with the United Nations Global Food Systems Summits.
In 2013, McKinney was appointed as Director of the Indiana State Department of Agriculture, a position he held until joining USDA in 2017, and that included food/agriculture economic development for the State of Indiana. His career also included 19 years with Dow AgroSciences, where over time he served in nearly all Government & Public Affairs roles, and 14 years with Elanco, at that time a subsidiary of Eli Lilly and Company, where he was Director of Global Corporate Affairs. From 1999-2001 he served as CEO of the Council for Biotechnology Information. His industry and civic involvement is vast, including service as founder and Co-Chair of the National FFA Convention Local Organizing Committee, membership on the Indiana State Fair Commission, and Purdue College of Agriculture Dean’s Advisory Council, and on several civic Boards.
McKinney grew up on a family grain and livestock farm in Tipton, Indiana where he sustains involvement, and was a 10-year 4-H member and an Indiana State FFA Officer. He graduated from Purdue University with a B.S. degree in Agricultural Economics in 1981, at which time he received the G.A. Ross Award as the outstanding University senior male graduate. In 2002, he was named a Purdue Agriculture Distinguished Alumnus and, in 2004, received an FFA Honorary American degree. He has also received the Sagamore of the Wabash Award from Indiana Governors. Ted is a lifelong and faith-filled believer and active in the Methodist Church. His passion is this faith and its application to producing food for the world. He and his wife, Julie, have three children and seven grandchildren, and reside in Alexandria, Virginia.
Mary Snapp brings her experience and perspective from over 35 years at Microsoft to lead strategic initiatives in the Office of the Vice Chair and President. She is a frequent speaker on issues related to Microsoft’s corporate and social responsibility as well as technology policy, including in relation to AI.
She formerly led Microsoft’s Global Philanthropies, investing the company’s technology, financial support, employee talent, and voice to partner with nonprofits and communities to create lasting positive impact. Prior to that, Mary was Deputy General Counsel leading legal support for Microsoft’s engineering organizations. Mary began her career at Microsoft as the first female lawyer.
In the last decade, Mary has focused much of her expertise on working in collaboration with leaders across rural America to ensure that everyone has access to technology and the skills to use it. Her passion for this work stems from being raised in a small midwestern town surrounded by wheat fields.
Mary has been an active board member for many nonprofit organizations, including the YWCA of Seattle, King, and Snohomish County, the Seattle Art Museum, the National 4-H Council, Washington STEM, Emerging Prairie, and Farm Foundation. She also serves on the University of Michigan’s President’s Advisory Group, and on the National FFA Foundation’s Corporate Sponsors’ Board.
Mary joined Microsoft in 1988 as its fourth attorney, and first female attorney. She grew up in Newton, Kansas, where she still has close family, and graduated from the University of Kansas School of Journalism before earning her law degree at the University of Michigan.
Rhishi Pethe is the Managing Partner for AgriFoodTech analysis and advisory firm Metal Dog Labs. He has more than 25+ years of technology experience working within the agriculture and food industries. Rhishi has had product and technology leadership roles at Alphabet X (the moonshot factory), The Climate Corporation (Bayer Crop Science), Amazon, startups (with exits) like HarvestMark and others. He is also the co-founder of the AgTech Alchemy community with more than 2500 members.
He has extensive experience in supply chain & logistics, product management, data and technology strategy, and artificial intelligence.
He is the creator of the weekly newsletter at the intersection of technology and food/agriculture called “Software is Feeding the World.
Anthony Howcroft has a career worth of experience in technology, in a mix of corporate and startup roles that cover software engineering, consultancy, sales and marketing. He is the founder and Exec Chairman of SWARM Engineering, who solve operational challenges using Agentic AI. SWARM’s primary market is agrifood with customers such as Cargill, Ardent Mills, Fruitist, General Mills, and Wilbur Ellis. SWARM has been at the leading edge of multi-agent systems for a decade, applying advanced technology to real-world problems. Anthony was previously the co-founder of DATAllegro, the data warehouse vendor acquired by Microsoft for $260M, and subsequently ran Microsoft’s Big Data team in EMEA for 5 years. He moved to America from England in 2014 and after a 2-year stint mentoring CEOs and CTOs at a California incubator, founded SWARM.
As a prize-winning author of both fiction and non-fiction, Anthony is also a storyteller – writing speculative fiction, ethical parables, and exploring the intersection of innovation, imagination, and technology. With a Creative Writing Diploma from the University of Oxford, Anthony has lectured on the use of narrative in business, and brings structure, empathy, and curiosity to organizations he works with. He lives in Cape Cod and is a keen runner and classical guitarist.
Shari Rogge-Fidler, MBA’ 90, is president and CEO of Farm Foundation, a 90-year-old “think tank/do tank” based in Chicago. Farm Foundation helped fund Professor Goldberg’s original joint research with J.H. Davis that coined the term, “agribusiness”.
Shari had the opportunity to be a student of Professor Ray Goldberg’s during her Harvard MBA program, as well as completing what is believed to be the first climate change paper at HBS as a second-year independent research project under Professor Goldberg’s supervision. Shari and her father, Dwaine Rogge, were “bookends” in Professor Goldberg’s MBA teaching career at HBS. Shari is passionate about the impact Ray had on her life and our agrifood sector and has had the honor of serving for five years on the Goldberg Charitable Corporation’s Committee to raise funds for Harvard’s newly endowed Goldberg Global Food System Chair.
Shari has a unique perspective, developed through her experience as a fifth-generation farm owner and operator, entrepreneur in the organic branded food industry, founder of an agribusiness consulting firm and CEO of a group of companies serving 1,000 farmers. Shari has lived and worked abroad, including London in financial services and across Europe with the Boston Consulting Group. Shari has served on several corporate boards, including Farm Credit Mid-America and Coastal Pet. She currently serves as a trustee for The Nature Conservancy, on the Soil Health Institute Board, the Illinois Agrifood Alliance Board, and advisory boards, including Lewis & Clark Agrifood Fund and the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis.
Shari has a B.Sc. in Business Administration from the University of Kansas and an MBA from the Harvard Business School.
Judith Batchelar is a Biochemist, nutritionist, has Honorary Doctorates from Harper Adams University, and Jharkhand Rai University, is a Fellow of the Institute of Food Science and Technology (IFST), the Royal Society of Arts and Manufactures (RSA) a liveryman at The Worshipful Company of Butchers, and Associate at the Royal Agricultural Societies of England.
Today Judith is Honorary President of the British Nutrition Foundation, Chair of the UK Centre for Ecology and Hydrology, Co-Chair of the Eco Working Group that is part of Defra’s Food Data Transparency Partnership, Chair of MicroSalt, and a Non-Executive Director of Monaghan Mushrooms and Daemon. Judith is a Trustee of The Royal Botanic Gardens Kew, The Food Foundation, and an ambassador for the Woodland Trust and Farm Africa.
Alicia Harley, PhD’ 18, is a senior research fellow in the Sustainability Science Program at Harvard Kennedy School. She received her PhD in Public Policy from Harvard University in 2018.
Her research looks at the capacities necessary for the pursuit of sustainable development. This work stems from the premise that the complex adaptive dynamics of nature-society systems are inherently unpredictable and subject to deep uncertainty. She focuses on a set of six strategic capacities that enable collaborative efforts to foster sustainable development in the face of deeply uncertain futures. These capacities are: 1) the capacity to promote equity; 2) the capacity to measure progress; 3) the capacity to adapt to shocks and surprises; 4) the capacity to transform development pathways; 5) the capacity to govern cooperatively; and 6) the capacity to link knowledge with action.
Dr. Harley’s empirical research on the capacity to promoting equity in agricultural innovation systems in South Asia looks at the complex dynamics of technology and institutional design and how the socio-technical characteristics of innovation systems can be re-oriented to ensure the poorest and most vulnerable farmers benefit from agricultural technology. Related projects include a multi-village study of the drivers of technology access by small farmers in Bihar, India; a cross-state comparison of drip irrigation policy in India, and a cross-national comparison of solar irrigation policy in Bangladesh, India, Nepal and Pakistan.
Yoav Levsky was born and raised in a Kibbutz in Israel and has a wide international background having lived in Israel, Sweden, China and Canada. He served more than 10 years with TetraLaval group and more than 10 years with Merck animal health.
Yoav has a strong focus on ag tech, having founded and served in several tech companies. He is the founder of the Goldberg project which became Vyla, a company owned by some of the largest food and ag tech companies like Nestle, Land O Lakes, Merck, Lely and more.
