Geeta Sethi is the Advisor and Global Lead for Food Systems at the World Bank. She is the lead architect of the World Bank’s Food System Transformation agenda, a food system that provides the triple bottom line—prosperity, sustainability, and healthy people. She also manages the World Bank’s program on Food Loss and Waste Reduction. Under her leadership, for the first time the World Bank issued a Food Loss and Waste Bond that brought in first time investors and raised over US$ 5 billion. The World Bank’s food loss and waste portfolio doubled from US$4 billion to over US$9 billion. She also led the Global Agriculture and Food Security Program and raised over US$1.5 billion in support of 35 low-income countries.
Geeta has more than 25 years of experience working as an economist on fragile, low, and middle-income countries. Her work has focused on issues of rural development, service delivery and intergovernmental fiscal policies around the world. She has delivered many lending programs to the World Bank Board and published books and articles in refereed journals on issues relating to food systems, rural labor markets, trade policy and fiscal decentralization. Previously, Geeta was the Chief of Staff to the Climate Change Vice President and Special Envoy, the Operations and Strategy Manger for Climate Change, and worked as the Program Manager for the Global Agriculture and Food Security Program. She has an MBA and PhD in Economics.
Geeta’s passion is her family, dogs and her garden.