Louise O. Fresco
Louise O. Fresco
Louise O. Fresco has been the President of the Wageningen University & Research Executive Board since 1 July 2014. Louise combines a long academic career as a professor at both Wageningen and Amsterdam with an extensive involvement in policy and development, with many programs in Africa, Asia and Latin America and teaching in Sweden, Belgium and the US. Louise O. Fresco is a member of eight Scientific Academies. Ten years of her career was spent as Assistant-Director General at the Food and Agriculture Organisation of the UN, as well spending extensive periods in Africa, Asia and Latin America. Next to being a member of the Trilateral Commission she is also a member of the Council of Advisors of the World Food Prize and a member of the Steering Committee of the High Level Panel of Experts on Food Security and Nutrition (HLPE). She served on the boards of companies like the Rabobank and Unilever, and also serves in various philanthropies. Her successful book, Hamburgers in Paradise, the stories behind the food we eat, was translated in several languages. In total she published thirteen books of fiction and non-fiction, while she also writes a bi-weekly column in NRC, the leading evening paper of The Netherlands. She presented a six part documentary on food and development for Dutch public television (to be found in translation on her website www.louiseofresco.com). You may have seen her TED talk in Palm Springs in 2009.
