“We are thrilled to have a thought leader like Jason Clay join our Board of Trustees,” said Gunhild A. Stordalen, Founder and President of EAT. “He is an impact-oriented expert who gets things done on a global scale, and a visionary agenda setter in the sustainability movement. From his role at WWF and civil society at large, he brings unique experience in engaging with business and food producers to tackle complex challenges, which will be an essential asset to further scale up EAT’s efforts to transform the global food systems.”
Clay has a long and fertile history of engaging with the food industry. At WWF-US, he leads the work on agriculture, aquaculture, business and industry, finance, fisheries, and forests. He works with private sector companies to improve their supply chain management, particularly with regard to ingredient sourcing and carbon and water neutrality. His favorite flavor of ice cream is Ben & Jerry’s Rainforest Crunch, which he helped create —with sustainably harvested ingredients—after meeting “Ben” at a fundraiser featuring the Grateful Dead. He has been involved in the development of more than 200 products, with combined sales of $100 million.
Prior to joining WWF in 1999, Clay ran a family farm, taught at Harvard and Yale, worked at the U.S. Department of Agriculture and spent more than 25 years working with human rights and environmental organizations. Clay is National Geographic’s first-ever Food and Sustainability Fellow and the author of 15 books, more than 300 articles and 700 invited presentations, amongst them a popular TED talk on big food brand’s role in saving biodiversity. Clay studied at Harvard University and the London School of Economics before receiving a PhD in anthropology and international agriculture from Cornell University.
About EAT Board of Trustees
EAT is governed and managed by a Board of Trustees, consisting of eight members. Each Core Partner (Stordalen Foundation, Stockholm Resilience Center and Wellcome Trust) is entitled to appoint two members to the Board. Additionally, there are two independent members, selected by EAT’s Core Partners. Dr. Clay will be one of Wellcome Trust’s representatives to the Board.
See Clay’s keynote at the EAT Asia-Pacific Food Forum 2017 in Jakarta here: