Central College will welcome humanitarian and 2023 World Food Prize Laureate Heidi Kuhn to campus at 11 am on Tuesday in the Van Emmerick Studio in the Maytag Student Center.

Kuhn, the founder and CEO of Roots of Peace, is a peace activist who has spent more than 25 years restoring agriculture in former conflict zones. Her farmer-focused development model revitalizes farmland, food security, livelihoods, and resilience after devastating conflict. Kuhn founded the nonprofit Roots of Peace in 1997 to replace the remnants of war with farmland. The organization also trains farmers in modern agricultural practices, from planting and harvesting to marketing through international exports.

Kuhn grew her business model for peace across the world with the support of governments, international organizations and the private sector. To date, the work of Roots of Peace has impacted more than 1 million farmers and members of farming families, spanning 10 countries.

A fifth-generation Californian, Kuhn attended the University of California, Berkeley, majoring in political economics.

During the early 1990s, she owned her own television news organization, NewsLink International, reporting for CNN and other news organizations in Alaska on the Exxon Valdez oil spill and the melting of the “ice curtain” between the United States and the Soviet Union. 

The World Food Prize is an international award that recognizes and rewards individuals who address food security by improving quality, quantity or availability of food in the world. Central College has been a proud partner in this mission, hosting the lecture for years in conjunction with the World Food Prize Conference in Des Moines.

Central’s World Food Prize Lecture will be recorded and available on the Central Dutch Network.