Nina F. Ichikawa is the Executive Director for the Berkeley Food Institute, joining BFI in 2015 as its inaugural Policy Director. She previously served in the office of U.S. Senator Inouye and with the US Department of Agriculture. In 2011, she was named a Food and Community Fellow by the Institute for Agriculture and Trade Policy. She was the founding Food and Agriculture editor for Hyphen magazine, and her writings have been published widely. She earned a BA in Interdisciplinary Studies/Food Policy from UC Berkeley and an MA in International Relations/Food Policy from Meiji Gakuin University in Tokyo. She volunteers for the California Farmer Justice Collaborative, the Center for Urban Education on Sustainable Agriculture, and Japanese American Women Alumnae of UC Berkeley.