Heather Zornetzer is the Development Associate for Organic Seed Alliance. She supports fundraising and donor engagement strategies across the organization.
Heather has 20 years of experience in participatory research, program coordination, fundraising, grants management, and impact evaluation in international agricultural development (MS from UC Davis) and rural community health (MPH, UC Berkeley). She was a program director with the Sustainable Sciences Institute in Nicaragua for nearly a decade, where she helped to strengthen networks for public health research capacity across and between the Americas, Africa, and Asia. Following a move to France with her family in 2018, Heather pivoted towards food systems research and supported a range of sustainable and healthy diets projects around the world with the CGIAR Alliance of Bioversity International-CIAT and the social enterprise, Glocolearning. She has learned Spanish and French along the way and gained a deep appreciation for exploring cultures through food. Now based in the Pacific Northwest, Heather loves to hike and cook with her husband and three kids, problem-solve in the garden, and get to the wild Oregon coast as often as possible.
Selected Publications
- Mason-D’Croz, D., C. Kugler, R. Remans, P. Thornton, J. Vervoort, H. Zornetzer, H. van Meijl and M. Herrero. “Rigorous anticipatory governance is needed for responsible food system transformation.” Nature Food. Manuscript accepted September 2025.
- Remans, R. and H. Zornetzer, D. Mason-D’Croz, C. Kugler, P. Thornton, C. Pedersen, F. Cattaneo, D. Samantaray, L. Nyamongo, I. Brouwer, D. Bosch, T. Haile Bekele, Y. Ivanova, J.Mockshell, B. Sainepo, M. Misiko, and M. Herrero. “Backcasting supports cross-sectoral collaboration and social-technical innovation bundling: case studies in agri-food systems.” Frontiers in Sustainable Food Systems, 8. August 2024.
- Thornton, P., D. Mason-D’Croz, C. Kugler, H. Zornetzer, R. Remans, and M. Herrero. “Enabling food system innovation: accelerators for change.” Global Food Security, Vol. 40:100738, March 2024.
