Nancy Roman

President and ceo, Partnership for healthier america

Nancy Roman is President and CEO of
Partnership for Healthier America, which works with companies and other organizations to improve the food supply and facilitate exercise and movement.  Built on the White House Let’s Move campaign, the organization has partnered with 220 companies, universities and nonprofits to achieve outcomes that increase health
and reduce obesity and the diabetes and heart disease that are often associated with it.

Previously, Ms. Roman served as President and CEO of the Capital Area Food Bank (CAFB), the Washington, D.C. region’s largest organization working to solve hunger and its companion problems: chronic undernutrition, and diet related health issues like heart disease, and obesity. CAFB annually provides food and nutrition resources to 540,000 people – 12 percent of the region’s total population – through 444 partner nonprofits in the District, Northern Virginia, and Maryland. Under Roman’s
leadership, the food bank became a national voice for embedding health and wellness in hunger relief work. During her tenure, the CAFB dramatically increased the health of its food inventory by working with its corporate retail partners; pioneered new delivery models for fruits, vegetables, and nutrition resources; and advocated for access to affordable groceries in low income areas through both existing and innovative models.

Prior to joining CAFB in January 2013, Ms. Roman was on the leadership team of the United Nation’s World Food Programme, the world’s largest humanitarian agency, feeding 100 million people in 75 countries. Based in Rome, she oversaw public policy, private partnerships, fundraising, and communications, supervising a global staff of more than 100, with responsibility for operations in more than 75 countries. She led a fundraising team that quadrupled funds raised from the private sector for hunger to $150 million annually. She led the organization’s move into social media, making it one of the UN powerhouses in social media. She oversaw communications, led the design of the organizations award winning website www.wfp.org, and crafted organization positions on public policy issues ranging from climate change to agricultural development. She also chaired the WFP’s Investment Committee, which had more than $1 billion under management.

Before coming to WFP, Roman served as Vice President of the Council on Foreign Relations in Washington, D.C. where she established the Council’s congressional program designed to integrate ideas generated in the think tank environment with policy decisions. She authored “Both Sides of the Aisle: A Call for Bipartisan Foreign Policy,” a Council Special Report published in 2005 that analyzed political polarization in Washington and proposed steps to build bridges between the parties and foster
a more productive dialogue in foreign policy.

Before that, Roman served as president of the G7 Group, a strategic consulting firm that advised Wall Street on how political, legislative, central banking and regulatory developments affected institutional investments. The firm’s more than 120 clients – investment banks, hedge funds and asset management companies – were based in the financial communities of New York, London and Tokyo.

Roman also spent 10 years as a journalist covering politics, congress, foreign policy and economics. She came to Washington in 1988 as press secretary and foreign affairs adviser for the late U.S. Rep. Clay Shaw, Jr. (R-FL), a senior member of the House Ways and Means Committee.

Roman currently serves on the board of trustees of Global Communities, an international NGO that works on hunger, health, micro-finance and lending to support lives and livelihoods, and of the Future Caucus, which organizes nonpartisan communities to find common ground on the issues facing millennials and future generations.

She holds a Master of Arts degree in International Economics and American Foreign Policy from the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies and a Bachelor of Arts degree in Journalism and French from Baylor University. Roman is married to Steven Cohen and has two children, Daniel and Taylor Beth.

Rep. Sara Jacobs

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