This year’s commencement ceremony will mark the first in-person commencement since COVID-19 emerged in early 2020. We are honored to introduce this year’s speakers and we can’t wait to celebrate this year with the classes of 2020, 2021, and 2022!
Amber Masoni
Amber Masoni will be graduating with an M.S. in Agriculture, Food, and Environment this spring. Hailing from California, she has a B.S. in Food Science and Technology from UC Davis, and has been driven by the mission to help change the food industry since the ripe age of 15.
Prior to attending Friedman, Amber focused her career on the middle of the supply chain, working in quality control and supply chain planning for a cannery and working in organic certification for food processors and handlers.
Last summer, Amber was a research assistant for the ClimateWorks Foundation, where her and her team looked at how a “protein transition” to more plant-based food options will impact a variety of stakeholders. She also participated in Future Food Institute’s Food and Climate Shaper Digital Boot Camp, where her team won first place in a 48-hour hackathon. During her time at Friedman, she has loved being a student representative on the Ellie Block Career Center Executive Committee, working as a teaching assistant for the newly introduced Climate Change: Risk and Adaptation in Food Systems and Beyond course, volunteering as a mentor to a student in the Boston Public School district, and representing Tufts at COP26 in Glasgow last fall.
After graduating, Amber plans to make food supply chains more resilient, ultimately hoping to work in sustainability consulting for food and agriculture businesses. At work or at home, you can always catch Amber with a cup of coffee in her hand, a smile on her face, and an ear ready to listen.
Ambassador Ertharin Cousin
Ertharin Cousin currently serves as the CEO and Managing Director of Food Systems for the Future, a nutrition impact investment fund; a Distinguished Fellow at the Chicago Council on Global Affairs; a Bosch Academy, Robert Weizsäcker Fellow; and as a Visiting Scholar at the Stanford University, Center on Food Security and Environment.
From 2012 until 2017, Cousin led the United Nations World Food Programme (WFP). As Executive Director, Cousin guided the 14,000-member WFP team feeding more than 80 million people each year; while, she identified and championed longer-term, more sustainable solutions for global food insecurity and hunger.
In 2009, Cousin was nominated and confirmed as the US Ambassador to the UN Agencies for Food and Agriculture in Rome. Prior to her global hunger work, Cousin helped lead the U.S. domestic fight to end hunger including service as the Executive Vice President and Chief Operating Officer of America’s Second Harvest – now Feeding America.
Cousin is currently a member of the Bayer AG Supervisory Board, the Mondelez International Board of Directors, the Royal DSM Sustainability Board, and a Trustee of the African agriculture thinktank Academia2063.
Cousin is a graduate of the University of Illinois at Chicago; the University of Georgia Law School and the University of Chicago Executive Management Program-Finance for Non-Financial Executives. She has been listed numerous times on the Forbes 100 Most Powerful Women List, as the Fortune Most Powerful Woman in Food and Drink, on Time’s 100 Most Influential People list, and as one of the 500 Most Powerful People on the Planet by Foreign Policy magazine.
Congratulations class of 2022!
https://nutrition.tufts.edu/news/commencement-2022-amber-masoni-and-ambassador-ertharin-cousin
