Officers and Members of the Boards of Directors of the International Food Security Treaty Association and the International Food Security Treaty Campaign
Board members and officers serve strictly in their personal capacity, not as representatives of other organizations for which they work. Unless otherwise indicated, members belong to the boards of both the IFST Campaign and the IFST Association.
BOARD MEMBERS
Jean Bakole (Association Only)
Regional Director, Nigeria Regional Office Hub, United Nations Industrial Development Organization
Marc Cohen, Ph.D.
Senior Researcher, Oxfam America
Sam F. Halabi
Professor, Georgetown University School of Health and Director, Center for Transformational Health Law, O’Neill Institute for National and Global Health Law, Georgetown University Law Center.
Hannah Laufer-Rottman (Association Only)
Founder/Executive Director of Palms for Life Fund; Former staff member, United Nations World Food Programme
Robert S. Lawrence, M.D.
Center for a Livable Future Professor Emeritus, Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health; Co-founder and Past President of Physicians for Human Rights
Siwa Msangi, Ph.D. (Campaign Only)
Economist, Senior Research Fellow, International Food Policy Research Institute
Mark Oberle, M.D. Secretary-Treasurer
Professor Emeritus, Departments of Health Services, Epidemiology, and Global Health & Former Assoc. Dean, University of Washington School of Public Health
Sanjay K. Rai
Founding Director, AIM – India (non-profit working on food security and nutrition in hundreds of villages in Uttar Pradesh, India); Former National Coordinator FIAN-India (non-profit promoting the right to adequate nutrition); Co-Coordinator IFSTC-India, Lucknow, India
David Rottman (Association Only)
Past President, C.G. Jung Foundation; Past Senior Vice-President of J.P. Morgan/Chase Bank; Founder, Career Counselors Consortium
Zadok Sacks, M.D.
Founding Co-Director, EqualHealth (non-profit supporting training and development of health professionals in Haiti); Staff Physician, Ventura County Medical Center, Ventura, California
Suman Suman
Former Vice-President, FIAN-India (non-profit promoting the right to adequate nutrition); Founding director of the organisation “The Child Trust,” Currently National Convener of FIAN India, Co-Coordinator IFSTC-India, Delhi, India
John Teton
Author and filmmaker John Teton is the founding director of the International Food Security Treaty Association, for which he delivered the keynote address at the 2023 World Food Day event produced at the Harvard School of Public Health.
Mr. Teton developed the IFST Principles in the early 1990s while conducting anti-hunger research for a social action program and the novel Upsurge. He led a delegation of IFST advocates at the NGO Forum associated with the 1996 World Food Summit in Rome and in 1998 served as principal coordinator of the Conference on Consensus Strategy on the Right to Food in Santa Barbara, California, with anti-hunger experts from five continents. He has appeared as a guest lecturer on the IFST at many major universities including Yale and Harvard, as well as at Congressional briefings and in an accompaniment to the United Nations annual food security conference in Rome in 2015. His writings include articles on the IFST published in the Harvard International Review (“On the Origin of a Hunger-Free Species”) and the Yale Journal of International Affairs (“The Armless Hand”), and the novels Upsurge (in the notes for which the IFST first emerged), The Book of Geezer, ELEVATION, Appearing Live at The Final Test and Doctor Sonnet’s Fantastic. His animated short film about the IFST, Thunder Head Clearing, received the Best Direction in Animation award at the 2018 Global India International Film Festival.
OFFICERS
Mark Oberle, M.D. Secretary-Treasurer (credentials, see above)
John Teton, President and Chair (credentials, see above)