Roy Steiner, PhD, is the senior vice president for the Food Initiative at The Rockefeller Foundation, where he leads a team focused on creating a more nourishing, regenerative, and equitable food system.
Roy comes to The Rockefeller Foundation from the Omidyar Network, where he served as director of the Intellectual Capital team, focused on helping Omidyar achieve its strategic objectives at all levels. He dedicated nearly a decade of his career to leadership positions at the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, where he was a founding member of the Agricultural Development initiative and was instrumental in working to develop the Alliance for a Green Revolution in Africa, the creation of Ethiopia’s Agricultural Transformation Agency, and dozens of other partnerships that addressed food insecurity.
Before the Gates Foundation, Roy was founder and chief executive of Cyberplex Africa, one of the largest web development and knowledge management companies in southern Africa. Early in his career, he was a founder and managing director of Africa Online, which spearheaded the delivery of Internet service in Zimbabwe. Roy holds a doctorate and a master of Science in agricultural and biological engineering with minors in economics and international development from Cornell University, as well as two degrees in mechanical engineering and biology from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.