Nina F. Ichikawa
Executive Director, Berkeley Food Institute , Berkeley Food Institute
Nina F. Ichikawa is the Executive Director at the Berkeley Food Institute, an interdisciplinary research hub at the University of California at Berkeley. She launched the Institute’s policy program, creating a model for students and faculty working on food systems at UC Berkeley to learn about and engage with local, state, and federal policy.
She previously served in the office of Senator Daniel K. Inouye and with the US Department of Agriculture’s “Know Your Farmer, Know Your Food” Initiative. In 2011, she was named a Food and Community Fellow by the Institute for Agriculture and Trade Policy. She was the founding Food and Agriculture editor for Hyphen magazine, and has contributed to New York Times, Civil Eats, Grist, Al Jazeera America, NBCNews.com, and Rafu Shimpo. Her writing was featured in Eating Asian America: A Food Studies Reader (NYU Press: 2013).
Following research on sustainable food systems in rural Japan and Mexico, Nina received a BA in Interdisciplinary Studies/Food Policy from UC Berkeley and a MA in International Relations/Food Policy from Meiji Gakuin University in Tokyo.