Ekin Birol is the Director, Impact and Strategy, at HarvestPlus. She is an accomplished research leader and senior manager with 15 years of post-doctorate experience in identifying evidence gaps, designing research portfolios, projects and programmes, fundraising and donor engagement, and implementing research projects with policy and programmatic implications in the fields of nutrition, agriculture, food and environment.

She has over 20 years of international experience working effectively with universities, research centres, donors, CSOs and public and private sectors in countries of all regions. In 2010, after three years as a research fellow with the Markets, Trade and Institutions Division of the International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI), Birol joined HarvestPlus in her current position.

Birol holds a PhD, MPhil, MSc and BSc (Honours) from the Department of Economics at University College London. She was a postdoctoral research fellow at the University of Cambridge. In 2010 and 2014, Birol received special awards in recognition of her outstanding accomplishments as an IFPRI/HarvestPlus employee. She has published two edited volumes, over 40 peer-reviewed journal articles and over 30 chapters in edited volumes.