Dr. Lesley Mitchell is Forum for the Future’s Associate Director for Sustainable Nutrition. She leads Forum’s global work on food, with an expert team covering innovative topics including the future of protein and regenerative agriculture. Lesley directs the Feed Compass project, a global collaboration across the feed and food system to increase sustainability of animal feed.

Forum works in partnership with business, governments and civil society to accelerate the shift toward a sustainable future, addressing critical global challenges by catalysing change in key systems, from food to apparel, energy to shipping. We convene transformational collaborations to drive change, partner with businesses and build a global community of pioneers and change makers.

Previously Lesley directed an independent consultancy, Good Food Futures Ltd. Lesley worked across a range of international environments to promote large scale change toward sustainable food and farming, from the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organisation to international animal welfare NGOs and with meat and dairy farmers in Latin America, China and Europe. She helped shape UN policy recommendations on livestock, animal welfare and food security, and worked with major multi-stakeholder processes including the Global Roundtable for Sustainable Beef and Global Agenda for Sustainable Livestock.

Lesley began her career as an animal welfare scientist at Oxford University, working with industrial poultry producers to adapt animal environments to improve welfare outcomes. As Director of Research and Food Policy at Compassion in World Farming she created their food business engagement team and spearheaded new sustainability research. As Head of International Policy at World Animal Protection, Lesley developed extensive corporate and policy networks on sustainable agriculture.