Former Rainforest Alliance head, globally renowned nature-climate expert, and public health champion Nigel Sizer joins nonprofit GFI as CEO

WASHINGTON — The Good Food Institute (GFI) has today announced that Nigel Sizer will join the nonprofit organization as CEO on August 26, to help lead GFI’s strategic programming and operations in the U.S. and around the world, working closely with GFI teams in Asia Pacific, Brazil, Europe, Japan, India, and Israel.

Prior to joining GFI, Nigel served as president and CEO of global biodiversity nonprofit Rainforest Alliance and as global director, forests for World Resources Institute, where he helped launch and grow Global Forest Watch, the Global Restoration Initiative, and the Forest Legality Alliance. In the years following the COVID-19 outbreak, he founded Preventing Pandemic at the Source, leading a 20-organization coalition focused on championing policies focused on upstream pandemic prevention. His 15 years based in the Global South spanned roles at Rare, the United Nations Environment Programme, The Nature Conservancy, and other nonprofit boards centered on science- and social-driven interventions at the intersection of climate, biodiversity, and public health.

As GFI CEO, New York-based Sizer will be leading all aspects of operations and administration in close partnership with GFI president and founder Bruce Friedrich and the organization’s regional leads around the world. GFI’s global network spans science, policy, industry, and philanthropy to advance alternative proteins—meat made from plants, cultivated from animal cells, or fermentation-enabled—as an essential solution to meet the world’s climate, health, food security, and biodiversity goals.

As global demand for meat and seafood soars, farmers and others on the frontlines of food production are under ever-increasing pressure to produce more with less, including a dwindling supply of farmland and diminishing ocean fish stocks. Challenges continue to mount—from climate-driven drought and wildfires and deforestation-fueled loss of biodiversity to devastating bird flu and food insecurity for hundreds of millions of people. 

Diversifying protein production via a global shift toward alternative proteins can significantly reduce greenhouse gas emissions from agriculture, land and water use, and the widespread over-use of antibiotics in our animal-based food system. Governments around the world are increasingly writing alternative proteins into their national food security, climate, and bioeconomy plans, but not yet at the scale and pace needed.