Roy Steiner

Roy Steiner

Senior Vice President, Food Initiative, The Rockefeller Foundation

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 the 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.

View More Speakers

Mariam Akiror

Imelda Awino

Shawn K. Baker

Dr. Heber M. Brown, III

Sean Callahan

Sarah Charles

Mwandwe Chileshe

Rev. Eugene Cho

Isobel Coleman

Oscar Cordon

Cathryn L. Dhanatya

Bill Drayton

Juan Echanove

Jan Sebastian Friedrich-Rust

Jerry Greenfield

Amy Guterman

Lawrence Haddad

Jessica Hood

Ashwini Kakkar

Joe Kawly

Raj Kumar

Asma Lateef

Daniel Maxwell

Sara Menker

Nicolas Metro

Kate Musimwa

Nhlanhla Ndlovu

Yusuf Omar

Charles Owubah

Greg Perlstein

Suzanne Rexing

Terri Sarch

Meera Shekar

Kathy Spahn

Gloria D. Steele

Roy Steiner

Marshall Stowell

Gokul Sundar

Marielle Amani Thete

Blythe Thomas

Noam Unger

Kate Warren

Teresa Welsh

Gobezayehu Getachew Yilma

Stephanie Zeitz

Take The Next Step

Watch the Sessions

Watch the compelling speeches and panel discussions of our 2-day summit.

Sign Up for Updates

Stay connected with us as we advance the movement against hunger and plan future events.

Covid Protocol

Action Against Hunger understands the power of bringing people together in person and the importance of doing so safely. We encourage you to stay home if you are not feeling well or have symptoms of any kind so we can keep everyone healthy as we convene. While masking is optional at the REACH, we will have a limited supply of K95 masks and COVID tests available onsite.

On each day of the event, we request at check-in:

Proof of a day-of negative Covid self-test (via photo)

Note: Please self-test prior to your arrival at The REACH at the Kennedy Center, not onsite.

Our team is closely monitoring the evolving global health recommendations and will update attendees with the most up-to-date protocols as we near the event. For additional information, The REACH at the Kennedy Center's health and safety protocols can be found here.