Muriel Calo

Biography

Muriel Calo is Action Against Hunger’s Food Security & Livelihoods Advisor. With her background and training in food policy and agriculture, Ms. Calo has a decade of domestic and international experience working on food security issues in vulnerable settings.

Since joining Action Against Hunger in 2006, Ms. Calo has served the agency as both fieldworker and research consultant. Ms. Calo began working with ACF in northwest Pakistan in the wake of the 2005 earthquake where she helped administer food security projects that provided earthquake survivors with food, shelter and livelihood support. Ms. Calo returned to Pakistan in 2010 as ACF’s technical lead on a multisectoral needs assessment conducted in Pakistan’s conflict areas, before taking her current position in New York. Her work in Pakistan was followed by an assignment in the Democratic Republic of the Congo where she oversaw support to repatriated refugees, internally displaced persons, and vulnerable host communities following the country’s civil war. In this capacity, she managed a livelihoods program that provided support to agricultural recovery activities, agroforestry, seed multiplication, and development of income generating activities.

Between assignments with Action Against Hunger, Ms. Calo held a range of field and research positions with organizations such as Save the Children, Oxfam America, the Feinstein International Center, the Global Development and Environment Institute, and the Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs, among others, while producing studies and technical guidelines like ACF’s manual for Food Security & Livelihoods Assessments. With Save the Children, Ms. Calo served in the Cyclone Nargis emergency response in Myanmar, supporting the recovery of affected communities in the country’s delta region with cash programs. As a consultant for Save the Children and the Feinstein International Center, Muriel contributed to a pastoral nutrition research project; as a research associate for the Stockholm Environment Institute, she contributed to research on the economic impact of climate change in the US; as a food systems analyst for Associates for International Resources and Development, she produced a study on small-scale grain fortification; and as a researcher for the Global Development and Environment Institute, she worked on agricultural and trade policy issues affecting small farmers.

Ms. Calo holds a Masters in Food Policy and Applied Nutrition from the Tufts University Friedman School of Nutrition Science and Policy, and a Bachelors in Plant Sciences from Cornell University.