Tara Shyam is a cross-sector partnerships and programme management specialist in international development, focusing on food systems, across agriculture and public health nutrition. Her clients include the UN World Food Programme (WFP), for whom she is designing a cross-sector engagement strategy in Cambodia. She has also analysed food security and nutrition policies and processes in the Asia-Pacific for WFP and developed a learning document to capture the lessons from these multistakeholder processes. She is working with Johns Hopkins University on an analysis of public-private partnerships for nutrition and is developing a food fortification policy brief for the Global Alliance for Improved Nutrition. In her portfolio, she also provides strategic health partnership advice to public and private sector clients. Past clients include the International Food Policy Research Institute, Development Initiatives, and the Aga Khan Development Network among others.
Tara has previously held various institutional positions including founding Manager of the annual Global Nutrition Report; Nutrition Programme Convenor at the Institute of Development Studies; Partnership Development Manager at the International Rice Research Institute; project assistant at the Asia-Europe Foundation; and corporate and non-profit client manager at Google.
Tara is a political science and international relations graduate from The Australian National University and has a Master’s Degree in multistakeholder collaboration for development from the Singapore Management University.