Ellen Gustafson is a sustainable food system activist and social entrepreneur. She is the Founder and Executive Director of the 30 Project, a new way to connect global hunger and obesity and envision long-term food system change.

She is also the Co-Founder of FEED Projects, LLC, a charitable company that creates good products that help FEED the world, and Co-Founder and former Executive Director of FEED’s non-profit partner, the FEED Foundation. Under Ellen’s leadership FEED provided over 65 million school meals to children around the world. (See CBS Evening News piece about FEED.)

Previously, Ellen was a US Spokesperson for the UN World Food Program, a terrorism research reporter in the ABC News Investigative Unit and a research associate for the Military Fellows at the Council on Foreign Relation. She has a BA in International Politics from Columbia University and is currently pursuing a Master’s Degree in Food Studies at New York University.  

She has been featured as one of Fortune Magazine’s 2009 Most Powerful Women Entrepreneurs, Inc Magazine’s 2010 30 Under 30, and has spoken at the Fortune Most Powerful Women’s Conference, the ISFIT International Student Festival, guest lectured at Harvard Business School, NYU, London School of Economics, Columbia University, Lehigh University and the US Naval Academy and given a TED talk.

She serves on the Columbia University Alumni Board of Directors and the founding Board of Directors for Bronx Success Academy 1, a charter school within the Success Charter Network.