Liz Willetts
Policy Director
In 2021, she designed and led a landmark global policy guide Health in the Global Environmental Agenda published by the International Institute for Sustainable Development (IISD). In 2022, she authored and led five interagency policy briefs on climate change for the World Health Organization and authored a regional policy guide on Operationalizing the Environment-Health Nexus for the UN Economic and Social Commission for Asia and the Pacific (ESCAP). As a long-standing member of IISD’s policy reporting team, she spent 15 years tracking intergovernmental negotiations across a range of multilateral environmental agreements, including on climate change (UNFCCC), biodiversity (CBD, IPBES, ITPGRFA), food security (UN Committee on World Food Security), chemicals and waste pollution (Basel and Rotterdam conventions), water (UN-Water, Budapest Water Summit), and sustainable development (CSD, HLPF). She has published several policy articles on planetary health issues in The Lancet.
Liz also has served long-term roles in community medicine, on a remote island in Micronesia, at a bilingual Spanish clinic in Harvard–Brigham & Women’s Hospital system, and in an Indigenous hospital in Central America. In 2001, she was the inaugural Nutrition Coordinator for the Netter Center for Community Partnerships where she designed nutrition and food education programs in Philadelphia public schools.
Policy Director
Liz is an internationally recognized expert in interdisciplinary policy analysis and communications with 20+ years’ experience mobilizing knowledge and engagement on biodiversity, climate change, pollution, food systems, and community health for marginalized populations.
In 2021, she designed and led a landmark global policy guide Health in the Global Environmental Agenda published by the International Institute for Sustainable Development (IISD). In 2022, she authored and led five interagency policy briefs on climate change for the World Health Organization and authored a regional policy guide on Operationalizing the Environment-Health Nexus for the UN Economic and Social Commission for Asia and the Pacific (ESCAP). As a long-standing member of IISD’s policy reporting team, she spent 15 years tracking intergovernmental negotiations across a range of multilateral environmental agreements, including on climate change (UNFCCC), biodiversity (CBD, IPBES, ITPGRFA), food security (UN Committee on World Food Security), chemicals and waste pollution (Basel and Rotterdam conventions), water (UN-Water, Budapest Water Summit), and sustainable development (CSD, HLPF). She has published several policy articles on planetary health issues in The Lancet.
Liz also has served long-term roles in community medicine, on a remote island in Micronesia, at a bilingual Spanish clinic in Harvard–Brigham & Women’s Hospital system, and in an Indigenous hospital in Central America. In 2001, she was the inaugural Nutrition Coordinator for the Netter Center for Community Partnerships where she designed nutrition and food education programs in Philadelphia public schools.
Liz has degrees in biology (University of Pennsylvania), environmental economics and policy (Duke University), and medicine (Emory University). She was appointed Visiting Scholar in the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health in 2023.