Ms. Latha Swamy (Listen)

Biographical information

Latha Swamy joined the City of New Haven as Director of Food System Policy in September 2018. In this role, Latha works to support and help manifest community-led efforts that envision and create an environmentally sustainable and socially just food system. To create this enabling environment for New Haven residents, Latha works on policy on the institutional, local, state, and federal levels. She is also an active leader in international processes that relate to urban food policy.

Outside of this role, Latha also serves as the Senior Advisor to the Chair of the Rockefeller Foundation Economic Council on Planetary Health, Dr. Ernesto Zedillo (former President of Mexico), at the Yale Center for the Study of Globalization. Her work broadly examines the relationship between environmental degradation and human health. Internationally, she has worked in Haiti, India, Nepal, and Indonesia to address the impacts of global environmental change at the intersection of health and agricultural systems.

She currently serves as the United Nations Ambassador for Women’s Environment and Development Organization (WEDO), chairs the Junior Board of EcoHealth Alliance (EHA), and sits on both the Working Lands Alliance (WLA) Steering Committee and Senator Chris Murphy’s Land Conservation Council, among others. She also trained in urban farming and food justice practices at Just Food NYC’s Farm School. She holds a Master’s of Environmental Management from Yale University, prior to which she pursued an M.D. and a Ph.D. in systems neuroscience at Albert Einstein College of Medicine.