Meeting the Moment: Alexandra Garcia, ESIA MIPP '14, of World Central Kitchen (Online)

Location

This event is open to all GW community members for virtual participation via Zoom. Details for joining the event by computer or phone will be sent the day before the event. Please be mindful of the Time Zone of the presentation (ET). 

Online registration for this event has now closed. To join the event once it begins, please join us on Zoom. For questions, please contact Elaine Garbe in Elliott School Alumni Programs at egarbe@gwu.edu.

Event Description

Join Elliott School Alumni Programs for a conversation with Alexandra Garcia, MIPP '14, who serves as the Chief Program Officer for World Central Kitchen. On a given day, Garcia may find herself directing efforts to promote clean cookstove use across the Caribbean and Latin America, working with local farms, chefs, and food industry workers to promote sustainable food supply chains, or organizing culinary trainings to build the self-sustaining capacity of local communities to feed themselves. During this event, Garcia will discuss her work overseeing long-term development projects that often follow the headline-grabbing emergency relief efforts of World Central Kitchen, the role of the organization at-large in a crowded development field, and her atypical path into her role. 

Founded in 2010 by Chef José Andrés, GW HON '14, World Central Kitchen is a non-profit organization that uses the power of food to heal communities and strengthen economies in times of crisis and beyond. World Central Kitchen harnesses the expertise of chefs to empower people to be part of the solution, with a focus on health, education, and jobs. The organization has drawn widespread praise for its responses to natural disasters such as Hurricane Maria in Puerto Rico in 2017, Hurricane Dorian in the Bahamas in 2019, and others. More recently, the organization has orchestrated a massive response to at the same time support struggling local restaurants and feed people in need across the US during the Covid-19 pandemic, as well as an operation to feed communities as they come out to make their voices heard during the 2020 election.

This event is the first in a series highlighting Elliott School alumni featured in the school's 2019-2020 State of the School report for their efforts to "Meet the Moment" in their own unique way.