Lucy Jodlowska is the executive director of the Wallace Center at Winrock International, a nonprofit focused on advancing solutions to strengthen communities through resilient farming and food systems in the United States. She is also an adjunct professor at John’s Hopkins University’s Advanced Academic Programs, teaching courses on social enterprise and financial management. Prior to transitioning her focus to domestic initiatives, Lucy worked internationally in Africa and Latin America in developing, launching, and building social enterprises – from a cacao farm in Nicaragua to a poultry operation in Zambia, to consultancies on revenue diversification and infrastructure projects in Peru, Uganda, and El Salvador, Lucy is passionate about merging business models with social and environmental objectives. A native of Kraków, Poland, Lucy immigrated to the US with her mother at the age of 9, growing up in rough neighborhoods of Chicago’s west side and moving frequently. What was a tough starting point, with few resources and no community, became a formative experience that shaped many of Lucy’s decisions and future work. Today she speaks fluent Polish, Spanish, and English, can get by in French, and is starting to learn Chinese. In a side life she moonlights as a photographer and loves to travel to cold destinations. Lucy got her BA in Political Science and Spanish from University of Illinois at Chicago and an MPA and MBA from the Middlebury Institute of International Studies.
