Board of Directors

As Senior Vice President for Innovation at the Rockefeller Foundation, Zia oversees the foundation’s approach to developing solutions that can have transformative impact on people’s lives. He partners with various initiative teams to incorporate innovation into their strategies. He also leads programmatic work to develop new tools, fields, and movements to improve the social impact of innovations, particularly those related to data and technology. He advises a number of partners and grantees on strategy and leadership. His prior roles at the Foundation included leading strategy, the program portfolio, and monitoring and evaluation.

Prior to joining the Foundation, Zia was a management consultant advising leaders in technology, mobility, and private equity sectors. He spent most of his career at Katzenbach Partners where he founded the San Francisco office and led the West Coast practice. He worked with Jon Katzenbach on research related to leadership, strategy, and organizational performance, leading to their book Leading Outside the Line.

Zia has served on the World Economic Forum Advisory Council for Social Innovation and the U.S. National Advisory Board for Impact Investing. He is also on the Board of Directors for Atlas AI and chairs the Board for DataKind. Zia holds a B.S. from Cornell University and M.S. and Ph.D. from Stanford University.

As a founding partner of the Stone Barns Center for Food and Agriculture and co-owner of Blue Hill, David Barber brings decades of experience in testing, scaling, and championing regenerative agrifood solutions to define a new future of food, from farmer to household. David is a guiding voice in the movement to reform American agrifood economics and has dedicated his career to reshaping the role of finance in the food economy. He continues to engage capital as a tool to serve soil health, biodiversity, and ultimately reverse the damage that extractive economics have caused the planet.

David is an investor in the food and hospitality space through Almanac, a venture fund founded in 2015, which provides alternative capital to a small portfolio of change makers. David serves on the boards of Luke’s Lobster, MAD, and Caramoor Center for the Arts. He is also an advisor to S2G Ventures and Acre Investments, and serves as a member of the Board of Trustees for Connecticut College, the Jacob Burns Film Center, and the Collegiate School in New York City. He received a B.A. in Economics from Connecticut College and a M.B.A. from Harvard Business School.

Dr. Cynthia Rosenzweig is a Senior Research Scientist at the NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies and the co-located Columbia University Climate School’s Center for Climate Systems Research. At NASA GISS, she heads the Climate Impacts Group whose mission is to investigate the interactions of climate on systems and sectors important to human well-being, including agriculture, cities, and conservation. Dr. Rosenzweig is the co-founder and member of the Executive Committee of the Agricultural Model Intercomparison and Improvement Project (AgMIP), a globally integrated transdisciplinary study of climate change and the food system at regional, national and global scales. In 2019, Dr. Rosenzweig was Coordinating Lead Author of the Food Security Chapter for the IPCC Special Report on Climate Change and Land. She is Co-Director of the Urban Climate Change Research Network (UCCRN) and Co-Editor of the First and Second UCCRN Assessment Reports on Climate Change and Cities (ARC3). In 2022, she received the World Food Prize, considered as the “Nobel Prize for Food and Agriculture.”

Dawn Smalls is a strategic advisor and multi-disciplinary leader with experience across law, government, politics and philanthropy. In 2021, she was named to the inaugural edition of “Northeast Trailblazers” by The American Lawyer and recognized by Crain’s New York Business as one of their “Notable Women in Law.” In 2020 she was featured as a “Power Player” in government and politics by City & State New York and The Amsterdam News.

In her private practice, Dawn litigates high stakes matters, and has successfully secured two temporary restraining orders, one against the Trump Campaign in 2016 and another in 2021 against the City of New York on behalf of the Coalition for the Homeless. She has fought for undocumented immigrants, victims of financial crime and voters facing intimidation. As a commissioner of the New York State Joint Commission on Public Ethics, she provided oversight to the state agency tasked with ensuring that elected officials and lobbyists comply with ethics and lobbying laws and regulations. Previously Ms. Smalls served as the Secretary of the New York City Bar’s Ethics Committee.

Her knowledge of the intersection of law and politics comes from serving in the Clinton Administration as assistant to the White House Chief of Staff and as liaison on policy and budget issues for the District of Columbia, then as executive secretary of the Department of Health and Human Services in the Obama Administration. In the 2008 election cycle, Dawn served as a regional political director for the Hillary Clinton for President Campaign, covering six states, and as the New York political director for then-Senator Barack Obama in the general election.

Dawn is a recognized civic leader. She also serves on the board of the Roosevelt Institute, a national progressive think tank and campus network that serves as the nonprofit partner to the Franklin D. Roosevelt Presidential Library and Museum in Hyde Park, NY. She previously served on the national Board of the American Constitution Society, the nation’s leading progressive legal organization, with over 200 student and lawyer chapters in almost every state and on most law school campuses.

Adrian Miller is a food writer, attorney and certified barbecue judge who lives in Denver, CO. Adrian received an A.B. in International Relations from Stanford University in 1991, and a J.D. from the Georgetown University Law Center in 1995. He is currently the executive director of the Colorado Council of Churches and, as such, is the first African American and the first layperson to hold that position. Miller previously served as a special assistant to President Bill Clinton with his Initiative for One America—the first free-standing office in the White House to address issues of racial, religious and ethnic reconciliation. Miller also served as a senior policy analyst for Colorado governor Bill Ritter Jr. He has also been a board member of the Southern Foodways Alliance. Miller’s first book, Soul Food: The Surprising Story of an American Cuisine, One Plate at a Time won the James Beard Foundation Award for Scholarship and Reference in 2014. His second book, The President’s Kitchen Cabinet: The Story of the African Americans Who Have Fed Our First Families, From the Washingtons to the Obamas was published on President’s Day, 2017. It was a finalist for a 2018 NAACP Image Award for “Outstanding Literary Work—Non-Fiction,” and the 2018 Colorado Book Award for History

In 2018, Adrian was awarded the Ruth Fertel “Keeper of the Flame Award” by the Southern Foodways Alliance in recognition of his work on African American foodways. In 2019, Adrian received the Judge Henry N. and Helen T. Graven award from Wartburg College in Waverly, Iowa, for being “an outstanding layperson whose life is nurtured and guided by a strong sense of Christian calling and who is making a significant contribution to community, church, and our society.” In June 2019, Adrian lectured in the Masters of Gastronomy program at the Università di Scienze Gastronomiche (nicknamed “Slow Food University”) in Pollenzo, Italy. Adrian’s third book, Black Smoke: African Americans and the United States of Barbecue was published in Spring 2021.

Susan Rockefeller is a conservationist, author, and filmmaker. Her award-winning films have aired on HBO, PBS, and the Discovery Channel. She is the CEO and founder of Protect What is Precious. She is on the board of Oceana as well as chairwoman of Oceana’s Ocean Council, a board member of the We Are Family Foundation, and a member of the Natural Resources Defense Council’s Global Leadership Council. Susan received her B.A. from Hampshire College and M.A. from New York University.

Diane Holland is Global Chief Financial Officer at Wunderman Thompson, a creative, data, and technology agency built to inspire growth for clients. As Global Chief Financial Officer, Diane leads the agency’s financial and operational management and was a key member of the leadership team that oversaw the successful merger of Wunderman and J. Walter Thompson to launch Wunderman Thompson in 2019. She is responsible for driving growth globally through M&A and commercial excellence for one of WPP’s largest agencies with more than 20,000 employees across 95 countries.

Diane has built her 20+ year career by passionately supporting people and creativity while also delivering strong strategic leadership for clients and colleagues. She excels in tackling business disruption to drive optimal performance.

Prior to her current role, she served as Global Chief Financial Officer of Wunderman, where she led the agency’s financial planning, mergers, acquisitions, and strategic partnerships. Prior to that, she was the Global Chief Financial Officer of POSSIBLE, where she was instrumental in WPP’s integration of multiple digital agencies to launch POSSIBLE as one unified, global digital agency in 2011. Before POSSIBLE, Diane served as the Chief Financial Officer of digital firm Schematic and played a critical role in managing Schematic’s acquisition by WPP in 2007.

Previously, Diane was Director of Finance at Fox Television Stations in Los Angeles and served as an Internal Auditor and Financial Analyst at EMI Group, in New York and London respectively.

Diane is on the board of WPP AUNZ, publicly listed on the Australian stock exchange (ASK: WPP) and is a member of the Risk & Audit Committee. She is also on the board of KK Create, a Los Angeles based start-up bringing together music, creative and brands. She previously served on the board of Step Up, a non-profit organization that mentors teen girls from under-resourced communities, for the past 10 years.

Diane’s career has allowed her to support her deep passion for the arts when she isn’t cooking, practicing yoga or sailing with her husband and their dog Hawkins.

Chair
Tarrytown, NY
Founder and Chair, The Synergos Institute

In 1986 Peggy Dulany founded the Synergos Institute, a global nonprofit organization that brings people together to solve complex problems of poverty and create opportunities for individuals and their communities to thrive. In 2001, she co-founded Synergos’ Global Philanthropists Circle with her father, David Rockefeller, to support philanthropic families in using this approach. In addition to serving as chair of Synergos, Peggy has sat on over thirty nonprofit and corporate boards, including the Rockefeller Brothers Fund and the Africa-America Institute. During her career, Peggy has also led a public high school program for dropouts and consulted with the United Nations, the Ford Foundation and the National Endowment for the Arts. She runs two socially responsible businesses: a grassfed beef and guest ranch in Montana and an ecotourism operation in Namibia. Peggy is an honors graduate of Radcliffe College and holds a doctorate in education from Harvard University.

Dr. Kathleen Merrigan is the first executive director of the Swette Center for Sustainable Food Systems at Arizona State University. She also holds the position of the Kelly and Brian Swette Professor of Practice in Sustainable Food Systems with appointments in the School of Sustainability, College of Health Solutions and School of Public Affairs.

Previously, Kathleen was the executive director of sustainability at George Washington University, where she led the GW Sustainability Collaborative and GW Food Institute. From 2009-2013, Kathleen served as the deputy secretary and COO of the U.S. Department of Agriculture, where she led the Know Your Farmer, Know Your Food Initiative to support local food systems, was a key architect of First Lady Michelle Obama’s “Let’s Move!” campaign, and was the first woman to chair the Ministerial Conference of the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations.

Kathleen holds a Ph.D. in environmental planning and policy from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, a MPA from the University of Texas, and a B.A. from Williams College. She serves as co-chair of AGree, board director of Food Corps and Marrone Bio Innovations, and steering committee member of the Council of Environmental Deans and Directors of the National Council for Science and the Environment. In 2010, Time magazine named Kathleen among the 100 most influential people in the world.