Global Lead, Nutrition
World Bank
Meera Shekar is Global Lead for nutrition with the World Bank and Program Manager for the Power of Nutrition TF. She has led the repositioning of the nutrition agenda that led to the new global Scaling-up Nutrition (SUN) initiative, and was a key thought leader on the Catalytic Financing Facility for Nutrition that evolved in to the Power of Nutrition. Meera serves as the elected chair for the SUN executive committee and has been one of the principals for the aid-architecture for nutrition, and the G8 and G20 agenda-setting process for food security and nutrition over the last several years. She leads the costing and financing analyses, the first ever global Investment Framework for Nutrition and is the author of the World Bank’s first analytics on the Health and Economic consequences of obesity. She has also worked on the demographic dividend and population and development issues.
Meera has lived and worked across the globe and has extensive policy and operational experience in Asia, Africa, Latin America. Before joining the World Bank in 2003, she led UNICEF’s Health, Nutrition and Water Sanitation and ECD teams in Tanzania, the Philippines and Ethiopia. Meera has a PhD in international nutrition, epidemiology and population studies from Cornell University and is a Commissioner on the Lancet Commission on Obesity co-led by the University of Auckland & GW University; co-author of the 2008 Lancet Undernutrition Series; Member of the Expert Advisory Group for UNICEF’s State of the World’s Children report; Member External advisory board at DNS (2012-18), Cornell University; Adjunct Professor Tufts University (2012-15); She is an Advisory panel member for Essential Living Standards index, Legatum Institute, UK; and a member of advisory group at the Cost of Obesity Group (CoAG), Gates Ventures (Exemplars in Global Health) and several others. She has authored several publications.
Wednesday, November 11, 2020
9:00 AM – 9:50 AM EST
