Kat is a systems thinker and award-winning communicator with five years of experience driving food systems transformation, from the farm to the boardroom. She works across philanthropy, research, grassroots, and policy spaces to change how we grow and eat food for the better of people and the planet.
About
Kat Morgan is a food systems professional, currently pursuing a PhD in the Department of Environmental Studies at New York University, while balancing work as a part-time program associate with the Rockefeller Foundation Food Team.
She brings tenacity and creativity to her career dedicated to shaping food systems that improve human and planetary health.
Her Southern roots mean she'll never meet a stranger. Inspired by her grandmother's story of growing up on a farm in Alabama during the Great Depression, she has always felt connected to her family's land, where food comes from, and how it grows.
At the Rockefeller Foundation, she led a multi-year publication, coordinating an international team of 20 researchers and synthesizing more than 400 studies. At Columbia University, she managed research collaborations spanning the U.S. and Tunisia. She's an award-winning podcast host (Oh Crop!, 26 episodes, ranked in the top 8% of shows on Spotify), a New York Times guest essay co-author with Mark Bittman, and a policy report author with a growing list of peer-reviewed publications.
Her academic publications, mixed-media projects, op-eds, and online writing have led to speaking engagements including FAO's World Soil Day at United Nations Headquarters, where she spoke as a youth representative, and Food Tank's NYC Climate Week Summit, as well as numerous audio interviews. Her work has been recognized through the NYU Food Impact Fellowship and a Food Security Leadership Council Associate Fellowship.
Her meandering educational path, from cultural anthropology (BA, Emory University) to environmental health sciences (MPH, Columbia University), along with a U.S. Department of State Critical Language Scholarship to study Swahili, equips Kat with a unique set of skills to interrogate what food systems are and how we can make them more sustainable and equitable. She jokingly calls herself the "bean queen," writing a dissertation that's a treatise on how beans can help save the planet and our health.
Selected Honors & Awards
-
MacCracken Fellowship, New York University (2025–2030)
-
Food Impact Fellowship, New York University (2026–2027)
-
Plant Humanities Summer Program, Harvard–Dumbarton Oaks (2026)
-
Associate Fellow, Food Security Leadership Council (2025–2026)
-
Critical Language Scholarship (Swahili), U.S. Department of State (2024)
-
First Prize, Health Messaging for Justice Competition, Columbia University (2023), for Oh Crop!
Contact
I'm always looking for new and exciting opportunities.