Roy Steiner, PhD, is the Senior Vice President for the Food Initiative at The Rockefeller Foundation, where he leads a team focused on creating access to nourishing food for millions of people in the U.S. and around the world, and supporting scientific advances in dietary quality and regenerative food systems.
Roy comes to The Rockefeller Foundation from the Omidyar Network, where he served as Director of the Intellectual Capital team since 2015, focused on helping Omidyar achieve its strategic objectives at all levels including in the agriculture space. He dedicated nearly a decade of his career to leadership positions at the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, where he was a founding member of the Agricultural Development initiative. His work for Gates was central to the creation of Ethiopia’s Agricultural Transformation Agency, or ATA, which helps accelerate the growth and transformation of Ethiopia’s agriculture sector, the Human Centered Design Toolkit and dozens of other partnerships that are critical to the fight against food insecurity around the world.
Before the Gates Foundation, Roy spent eight years in Africa where he was founder and CEO of Cyberplex Africa, one of the largest web development and knowledge management companies in southern Africa. Early in his career, he was an original founder and managing director of Africa Online, which pioneered the delivery of Internet service in Zimbabwe. Additionally, he was a founding member of CH2MHill’s Strategies Group and has consulted for McKinsey & Company in the areas of technology innovation, growth strategies and international development.
Roy holds a PhD and a Master of Science in agricultural and biological engineering with minors in economics and international development from Cornell University, as well as two bachelor degrees in mechanical engineering and biology from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
Authored Content
Jul 11 2022 Statements Statement on Federal Support of School Meals by Roy Steiner, Senior Vice President for The Rockefeller Foundation’s Food Initiative On behalf of The Rockefeller Foundation, I applaud recent federal actions to help ensure America’s children have enough to eat this coming school year. The Congressional passage of the Keep Kids Fed Act and the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s (USDA) decision to strengthen child nutrition programs total nearly $4 billion in funding and extend many […]
Oct 20 2021 Perspective Our Food System Is at a Critical Juncture: How Do We Build a Better Food Future? This World Food Day came at a critical inflection point for our food systems. There is broad recognition that the way we eat now is failing to protect our health and the health of the planet. Despite enough food being produced annually to feed the world, 811 million people still go hungry and 3 billion […]
Oct 16 2020 Video Making Good Food More Sustainable: Exploring the intersection between agriculture and energy As the world battles the Covid-19 pandemic and its impact on food security, climate change continues to present a major and long-lasting crisis for our food systems. At the same time, the food and agriculture sectors are some of the major contributors to climate change, accounting for 70 percent of global freshwater use and nearly […]59:07
Sep 23 2020 Perspective Imagining Bold Food Futures to Achieve SDG 2: Zero Hunger
Apr 03 2020 Perspective Five Covid-19 Reflections from a Food System Perspective—and How We Could Take Action As confirmed cases of Covid-19 increased throughout the world, the immediate instinct of many people was to ensure that they had enough food. The images of empty grocery store shelves and closed restaurants are stark and important reminders of how much we depend on our food system and how central food is in our lives. […]