Chris Barrett is an agricultural and development economist at Cornell University. He is the Stephen B. and Janice G. Ashley Professor of Applied Economics and Management, and an International Professor of Agriculture at the Charles H. Dyson School of Applied Economics and Management, as well as a Professor in the Jeb E. Brooks School of Public Policy, a Senior Faculty Fellow of the Cornell Atkinson Center for Sustainability, and a Faculty Fellow at the Cornell Institute for Food Systems. He is co-editor-in-chief of the journal Food Policy, edits the Palgrave Macmillan book series Agricultural Economics and Food Policy, co-edited the Elsevier Handbook of Agricultural Economics, volumes 5 and 6, and was previously editor of the American Journal of Agricultural Economics. He is an elected Member of the National Academy of Sciences, and an elected Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, the Agricultural and Applied Economics Association, and the African Association of Agricultural Economists. He has won numerous university, national and international awards for teaching, research and policy outreach and public service. His more than 375 publications have been cited more than 54,000 times, placing him among the top five scholars globally in the agricultural economics, development economics, food security, poverty, and resource economics fields, according to Google Scholar, and well within the top 1 percent of all economists worldwide according to RePEc/IDEAS. Perhaps his most impactful work concerns poverty traps, food security and food assistance policy, agri-food value chains, socio-technical change and agri-food systems transformation, resilience and risk management, and various food policy topics.  He has served as a principal investigator on more than $55 million in extramural research grants from various corporate, foundation, government agency and nongovernmental organization sponsors. He has supervised more than 100 graduate students and post-docs, many of whom now serve on faculty and staff at leading universities and research institutes worldwide. He has held senior leadership roles at Cornell, including as the Deputy Dean and Dean of Academic Affairs of the SC Johnson College of Business, and as the David J. Nolan Director of the Dyson School of Applied Economics and Management, as well as externally as President of the Association of Christian Economists, and Chair of the International Section of the Agricultural and Applied Economics Association, as well as on a variety of boards and panels. He was previously on faculty at Utah State University and has been a visiting faculty member at Harvard, Melbourne, Monash, Notre Dame, Stanford, and UC-San Diego.

Ivan Poltavets is a Senior Strategy Manager in Telecom Policy and Regulatory Affairs at TELUS Communications. With a career spanning over 15 years in government relations and executive communications, Ivan has cultivated a wealth of expertise across various industries including telecommunications, satellite, and energy. Prior to TELUS, he was the Managing Partner of Stober, Poltavets & Associates and represented FIPRA in Ukraine. He also served as a Director for Economic Studies at Yalta European Strategy, a premier business and policy forum in Ukraine. LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/poltavets/

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Kathryn Hughes, Director of Government Relations at TELUS Health, is a seasoned public affairs professional with over 25 years of experience in industries such as digital health, virtual care, and enterprise software. Since joining TELUS Health in 2015, she has engaged with various governmental bodies to enhance healthcare accessibility across Canada. Kathryn serves on the TECHNATION Health Board and Advocacy Committee, and the TELUS Ottawa Community Board. She is also a mentor at Ottawa University's Telfer Executive MBA program and a faculty member for the 2022 and 2023 Vernissage Health Dialogue Series. Her expertise encompasses issues management, corporate transactions, stakeholder relations, and executive coaching.