Christine R Gould is an award-winning food systems’ innovation leader and entrepreneur with two decades of experience leading creative and collaborative change throughout the agriculture and food sectors.
She is the Founder of Thought For Food®, the world’s leading next-gen innovation community that spans 180+ countries; has incubated and accelerated 100+ science-and-technology-based startups which have gone on to raise over $300mm in venture capital; and has worked extensively on groundbreaking open innovation programs with Fortune 500 companies like Danone, DSM, Cargill, Google, DHL, Syngenta, among many others. She is now building her new venture (in stealth) which unlocks pathways for the urgent scaling of the world’s most promising solutions to nourish the planet and reverse climate change.
In her previous roles, Christine led external affairs, public policy, and corporate affairs functions for leading multinationals, scale-ups, think tanks, and industry associations. One of the highlights of her career was her work to design and establish the world’s first open-licensing platform for patented vegetable traits while working at Syngenta in Switzerland, which eventually led to a shift in the sharing and use of beneficial intellectual property assets across the entire plant breeding industry. She created the TFF Digital Labs, ™ a first of its kind digital learning and collaboration platform available to entrepreneurs in all parts of the world, which hosted more than 700 expert and peer-developed content pieces as well as the Food Systems Game Changers Lab in collaboration with with EAT, IDEO, Forum for the Future, and The Rockefeller Foundation.
Christine was appointed to the Advisory Committee for the United Nations Food Systems Summit and was selected for the prestigious Acumen/Rockefeller Food Systems Fellowship. She is an IMAGINE Leader, Swiss Digital Shaper, and Demeter Award recipient for Excellence in Agribusiness. Her work has been featured in MIT Tech Review, BBC, The Economist, and Forbes.
Christine is the author of “The Change-Makers Guide to Feeding the Planet” (Amazon #1 Bestseller in multiple categories), the producer of 2 docu-films about next-gen agrifood and climate solutions and has spearheaded global events on five continents that have earned awards for innovation, sustainability, and impact from UNEP and Fast Company.
She holds an MPA in Science & Technology Policy from Columbia University in New York, where she received a merit-based fellowship, and a BA from the School of Public Affairs at American University in Washington, DC, where she studied Security & Defense Economics.