Food production accounts for over a quarter of greenhouse gas emissions while agriculture uses over half of the planet’s habitable land and 70% of freshwater. Our food system is devastating our environment. Planet Pod talks to two organisations who are tackling this problem in very different ways. Sofia Condes is the Investor Outreach Manager at FAIRR, a collaborative investor network that aims to harness the power of capital markets to drive transition in the food system. Lana Zivanovic is the CSO at InnovoPro, who have developed an extraction process to concentrate protein from chickpeas to be used as an alternative to animal protein. This is the second podcast in our series Spilling the Beans; produced in partnership with The Sustainable Foods Conference.
Our guests:
Sofía joined the FAIRR Initiative in April 2021 as Investor Outreach Manager. She leads FAIRR’s investor outreach efforts in francophone and hispanophone countries and supports outreach activities globally. She also coordinates FAIRR’s involvement in the multi-stakeholder initiative ‘Investor Action on AMR’. Previously, she led the Innovative Finance Programme of the Global Alliance for Improved Nutrition (GAIN). She also worked as a Strategy Specialist at the World Economic Forum (WEF) and as an Analyst for J.P. Morgan.
Sofía holds a BA in International Relations and Economics from the University of Geneva, a Masters in International Development and Economics from the Graduate Institute in Geneva (IHEID) and a Masters in Public Health and Health Economics from the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine (LSHTM). She also holds a CFA certificate in ESG investment. She has worked on projects and initiatives in Europe, Latin America and Africa and is passionate about the role of finance in improving food systems and global health.
Lana Zivanovic is the CSO at InnovoPro and brings 20 years of experience leading the development of alternative proteins, from discovery to finished products. Her university research programs were funded by the USDA, USEPA, USDOD and NASA.
Lana holds an M.Sc. in Biotechnology and a Ph.D in Food Biochemistry.