Jess Halliday is Chief Executive of RUAF CIC and coordinator of the RUAF Global Partnership. She leads RUAF’s involvement in the CGIAR Resilient Cities Initiative, the RUAF-FAO City Region Food Systems Initiative, and the Urban Futures programme (funded by the Botnar Foundation). Jess also co-edits Urban Agriculture Magazine. Her main areas of expertise are urban and city region food systems governance, food environments, gender and inclusion, and multi-stakeholder processes. Jess draws on her academic background for the development of methodologies and tools for urban and city region food systems, having received her PhD in Food Policy from the Centre for Food Policy, City University London, in 2015. Prior to joining RUAF in 2018, Jess completed short contracts with the International Panel of Experts on Sustainable Food Systems (IPES-Food) and CIRAD. From 2002 to 2011 she worked as a journalist specialising in the food sector, across online, print, and broadcast media. 

Brian Cook is an expert in the study of food systems and consumer food behaviour. As Senior Researcher at the University of Oxford, he led a research programme testing behavioural strategies to promote healthier and more sustainable diets. Before joining Oxford, he was a Senior Health Researcher for the City of Toronto for over a decade where he led the development of the City of Toronto Food Strategy. He has years of experience as a consultant, preparing literature reviews, technical reports and evidence briefs for the FAO, the Global Alliance for Improved Nutrition, the European Commission, the World Business Council for Sustainable Development, and others.

Joy Carey is an Executive Director of RUAF CIC and an independent Sustainable Food Systems Planning consultant, mentor and coach, focused on cities. She has worked in sustainable food and farming with the UK and international organic and local food sectors since 1990. Since 2009, her work has centred on urban and city-region food policy and strategy, including developing complementary monitoring and impact-measurement frameworks with RUAF, FAO and the Milan Urban Food Policy Pact (MUFPP), as well as in her home city of Bristol, UK. She authored Who Feeds Bristol (2011), the city’s baseline food system audit; coordinated the MUFPP indicators pilot with Nairobi, Quito and Antananarivo (2019); authored the MUFPP Practical Handbook for Monitoring City Food Strategies (2021); and contributed to aligning the Barcelona Challenge with the MUFPP monitoring framework (2024/25). Joy is also a founding director of Bristol Food Network, a small not-for-profit organization coordinating Bristol’s collaborative food system change effort, currently structured as the Bristol Good Food 2030 Partnership.