2020 Young Leaders Institute: Food Security

About the Speakers

Sarah Crulcich is a Registered Dietitian and the Health Promotion Coordinator at the Houston Food Bank. She oversees grants and programming that influence the environment in which limited resource communities access food. She also spearheads the food bank’s nutrition policy initiative, designs menus for home delivery services, and trains healthcare workers across Geater Houston to screen and address food insecurity. Sarah is passionate about designing and delivering services to be equitable. She and her co-workers hold each other accountable when pressure points are identified. 

 Before the food bank Sarah was an Archer Graduate Fellow in Washington, D.C. where she worked with the Academy of Nutrition Dietetics. Her portfolio consisted of Child Nutrition Reauthorization, SNAP regulations, and health disparities. She completed her dietetic internship and received her Master of Public Health in Health Promotion and Health Education from the University of Texas Health Science Center at Houston. Prior to graduate school, Sarah received a Bachelor of Science in Behavioral Neuroscience Psychology and Post-Baccalaureate in Dietetics from Purdue University.   

Sonia Garza-Monarchi is a leading expert in the specialized world of protocol and diplomacy. She started her company Garza Protocol Associates in 2004after working 16 years with the City of Houston’s protocol office in various positions and serving as the chief of protocol for ten years. She helped coordinate over 2000 visits, events, and meetings, from Queen Elizabeth II to His Holiness the Dalai Lama, President Putin, and the Economic Summit. Ms. Garza-Monarchi has advised hundreds of government officials and corporate leaders on matters of protocol, diplomacy and cross-cultural issues.

Her small business specializes in creating customized solutions for her clients including several Fortune 500 corporations. Project highlights include: coordinating the visit of a chief of state and the ceremonial opening of a consulate in two weeks’ time; overseeing the protocol aspects of a gala dinner for 300 business leaders, ministers of energy and ambassadors in Barcelona; training medical professionals on cross-cultural issues to make them more effective when dealing with international patients and spearheading Houston’s Latin Grammy host committee.

Ms. Garza-Monarchi believes that better understanding of people’s cultures leads to better business and a better world. With her help Garza Protocol’s clients apply key protocol, diplomatic, and cross-cultural skills that lead to long-term success in today’s global economy. She serves asa trustee on the board of the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston and is on the advisory board of the Asia Society Texas Center.

Saher Hasnain is the Research and Community of Practice Coordinator for the Foresight4Food Initiative based at the University of Oxford’s Environmental Change Institute. With the Foresight4Food Initiative, she is focused on developing a mechanism to better understand and synthesize key trends and possible futures in global food systems and to support informed and strategic decision making between food systems stakeholders. 

Formally trained as an environmental scientist, she has conducted research on food systems and environmental health in urban areas. For her doctoral research at Oxford, she examined the influence of factors like energy system disruption, urban design, and regional and global food system transformation on food environments in urban Pakistan. She has also been involved with the Interdisciplinary Food Systems Teaching and Learning programme (IFSTAL), where she collaborated with colleagues from the IFSTAL consortium to help equip students with the critical interdisciplinary systems thinking needed to re-orient food systems. 

Saher has previously worked on exploring environmental health issues through photovoice and mapping at the University of Pennsylvania, and the development of national energy management cultures at Bahria University, Pakistan. 

Caitlin Welsh is the director of the Global Food Security Program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS), where she provides insights and policy solutions to global food security challenges. She brings over a decade of U.S. government experience to this role. She served most recently in the National Security Council and National Economic Council as director of global economic engagement, where she coordinated U.S. policy in the G7 and G20 across multiple summits. Prior to the White House, Ms. Welsh spent over seven years in the Department of State’s Office of Global Food Security, including as acting director, offering guidance to the secretary of state on global food security and its relationship to urbanization, climate change, and conflict. As a presidential management fellow, Ms. Welsh oversaw a portfolio of agriculture-related grants at the U.S. African Development Foundation. Ms. Welsh also lived and worked in Morocco’s breadbasket region as a Peace Corps volunteer, witnessing the complex causes and effects of food insecurity and working to improve lives through education. Ms. Welsh received her B.A. from the University of Virginia and M.P.A. from Columbia University’s School of International Public Affairs. She hails from Erie, Pennsylvania, and speaks Arabic and French.