Dr. Kavita Sethuraman has more than 20 years of experience working on maternal and child health and nutrition (MCHN), food security, and gender in community‐based nutrition programs, policy‐level analysis, program design and management, technical assistance, nutrition advocacy and capacity building in sub‐Saharan Africa, Asia and the South Pacific. She led the Food and Nutrition Technical Assistance (FANTA‐III) project’s MCHN team at FHI 360. During her time there, she led the process of developing food security desk reviews and gender integration for the Office of Food for Peace, now the Bureau for Humanitarian Assistance. She also led the process of revising PROFILES, a tool for nutrition advocacy, for public use, including creating a user‐interface, new models, and developing a nutrition advocacy planning process to support the use of the estimates.

Before joining FHI 360, Kavita spent 6 years working at International Center for Research on Women, undertaking research on the linkages between nutrition and gender in South Asia and West Africa. She conducted primary research in South India, looking at the association between women’s empowerment and child growth. Her technical expertise includes maternal and child health and nutrition, food security, qualitative and quantitative mixed method research, gender analysis, nutrition advocacy, social behavior change, and capacity building. Kavita has a PhD in nutrition from the Institute for Global Health, University College London, UK, and a master’s in nutrition from the Friedman School of Nutrition Science and Policy at Tufts University in Boston.