Biography

Dr. Molly Anderson is the Partridge Chair in Food and Sustainable Agriculture Systems at the College of the Atlantic (COA) in Bar Harbor, ME. Dr. Anderson has focused her career on food systems, studying science and policy from the perspectives of farmers, consumers and citizen activists. She is especially interested in effective multi-stakeholder collaborations for sustainability, food security, food politics, food rights, food sovereignty and sustainability metrics. Before coming to COA, Molly consulted for domestic and international organizations on social justice, ecological integrity, strategic planning and food system metrics. Prior to that, she held two interim positions at Oxfam America 2002-2005 and a faculty position at Tufts University, where she taught, administered programs, built partnerships and conducted research for 14 years. She was the founding director of the Agriculture, Food and Environment Graduate Degree Program in the School of Nutrition Science & Policy at Tufts. She also directed Tufts Institute of the Environment for two years. She was a national Food & Society Policy Fellow 2002-2004 and a Senior Wallace Fellow at Winrock International. Molly serves on several advisory boards and committees related to sustainable agriculture and food systems. She is on the Standards Committee for the ANSI Sustainable Agriculture Standards initiative and various committees for the Maine Food Plan, Farm to Institution New England, and Food Solutions New England. She is also on the Editorial Board of the Journal of Hunger and Environmental Nutrition. She served as a Coordinating Lead Author on the International Assessment of Agricultural Knowledge, Science and Technology for Development. Molly earned a Ph.D. in Systems Ecology from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill (with emphases in agroecology and anthropology) and a M.S. in Range Science, a B.S. in Range Ecology and a Certificate in Latin American Studies from Colorado State University.