CBDL

Carmen Burbano de Lara

Name: Paris Peace Forum 2025
Start: 2025-10-29T09:30:00+01:00
End: 2025-10-30T18:00:00+01:00

School Meals Accelerator

Director of School Meals Accelerator, World Food Programme

Description

Carmen Burbano de LaraDirector of School Meals AcceleratorDuring her 21 years of experience in international development, Carmen Burbano de Larahas focused on supporting more than 100 governments to tackle the interrelated issues ofmalnutrition, poor health and learning. She is interested in policies that support humancapital, economic development and food system transformation and in advancing moreeffective models of development cooperation.Ms. Burbano de Lara is WFP’s world expert in school meals and she specializes indeveloping complex, global, multi-stakeholder initiatives. She conceived and directed theGlobal School Meals Coalition, an initiative of 109 countries and 140 partners consideredone of the most successful multilateral initiatives in recent times, leading to more than 80million additional children receiving meals in school in the last four years.She is the co-author of the most influential publications on school meals over the lastfifteen years, which have contributed to shifting the understanding of what was onceconsidered small-scale, donor-supported projects into a global public policy priority. Thepublications include “Rethinking School Feeding” (2009), and “Re-Imagining SchoolFeeding: A High Return Investment in Human Capital and Local Economics” (2018),published by the World Bank. She has authored WFP’s flagship publication “The State ofSchool Feeding Worldwide” (in its four editions 2013, 2020, 2022, and 2024) and conceivedand drafted WFP’s Global School Feeding Policies (2009, 2013 and 2024). Prior to assumingher current position in 2018, she held management positions for WFP in Peru, Rome,Colombia, Ethiopia, Kenya, Malawi and Tanzania; and provided temporary support toearthquake relief efforts in Haiti and Nepal. She has also worked in UNDP’s ExecutiveOffice.Carmen is Ecuadorian and holds a Master’s Degree in Public Administration from HarvardUniversity and Bachelor in Latin-American Studies and Comparative Literature from NewYork University.