Giving Compass' Take:

• Tambra Raye Stevenson is the founder and CEO of WANDA: Women Advancing Nutrition, Dietetics, and Agriculture. She is teaching young women how to build a better food system through advocacy, innovation, and education.

• Why is it important that Stevenson focus on the role of women to lead change in the food system?

• Read about how women farmers are changing the agricultural landscape.

Tambra Raye Stevenson is the founder and CEO of WANDA: Women Advancing Nutrition, Dietetics, and Agriculture, an organization inspiring a new generation of women and girls to become ‘food sheroes’ in Africa and Diaspora.

As a mom and nutritionist, Stevenson inspires girls like her daughter Ruby to become healthy eaters, readers, and leaders with Where’s WANDA?, a bilingual book series introducing Little WANDA, a girl character, who travels across Africa finding the foods to heal her community with the help of female farmers.

Food Tank sat down with Stevenson to talk about her work in the nutrition world, agriculture, and the food system at large.

FT: How are you helping to build a better food system?

TS:  I am helping to build a better food system by training more women to understand the power of nutrition in transforming themselves and their communities. That means teaching skills in education, advocacy, and innovation. We don’t simply want them to have healthy cooking skills, we want to take it to the next level and give them the skills to be healthy food entrepreneurs and advocates for better food policy.

FT: What’s the most pressing issue in food and agriculture that you’d like to see solved?

TS: Image makeover. I believe that if a young girl can’t visually see a food sheroe to look up to, how can she aspire to be something greater?

FT: What is one small change every person can make in their daily lives to make a big difference?

TS: First, support I Am WANDA!  Then, get involved in your community. Last year, we kicked off a Sisterhood Supper Series to help build relationships at the local level by bringing women together to celebrate their culture and cuisine through conversation.

Read the rest of the interview about transforming the nutrition world by Mckenna Hayes at Food Tank.