Wanida Lewis, Ph.D. is the CEO and Founder of Crescendo Foods, West Africa’s first shared kitchen co-working hub located in Accra, Ghana. Trained as a food scientist, Dr. Lewis’ career focus is to create outreach programs that will enhance women’s participation in agriculture through developing economic empowerment opportunities. She completed her Bachelor of Science degree in Chemistry at Saint Augustine’s University, a Master’s degree in Analytical Chemistry from North Carolina Central University and a doctoral degree in Food Science from North Carolina State University. Wanida is a recipient of the National Science Foundation’s Historically Black Colleges and Universities Undergraduate Program (NSF HBCU-UP), North Carolina Louis Stokes Alliance Minority Participate (NC-LSAMP) Bridge to Doctorate Fellowship, DSM Nutritional Young Minority Investigator Award, the American Peanut Research and Education Society’s (APRES) George Washington Carver Award, German Marshall Fund of the United States Marshall Memorial Fellowship and the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) Science and Technology Policy Fellowship. Upon completion of her doctoral degree in 2013, the Dr. Wanida E. Lewis Food Science Fellowship Program Endowment was announced in her honor at North Carolina State University for her groundbreaking doctoral research in peanut science and her dedication to mentoring students of color in the sciences. She is the first and only black woman to have an endowment in the Department of Food Science, Nutrition and Bioprocessing Sciences.

Prior to joining the Department of State, Wanida worked as an R&D scientist at General Mills, Inc. in Minneapolis, Minnesota where she received the “Young Innovator” Award. Dr. Lewis resides in Washington, DC where she completed her fellowship as a American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) Science and Technology Policy Fellow working in the Economic and Business Affairs Bureau (EB), Office of Agricultural Policy at the Department of State. In EB, she contributed to the policy making process by advocating for science-based decisions to create efficient and effective agricultural policies.

During her fellowship, Dr. Lewis collaborated with Embassies Accra, Addis Ababa and Pretoria to develop outreach workshops connecting African women in agriculture. Dr. Lewis served a three-month tour as an Embassy Science Fellow at Embassy Accra where she worked on environmental policy and continued her work developing capacity building programs for women in STEM and agriculture in Ghana and Togo. While in Accra, again on her own initiative, collaborating within and outside the Embassy, Dr. Lewis conceived of a program that would capture the imagination of the youth. She founded and launched Young, Gifted, & Brown, LLC a pipeline program targeted for young women and entrepreneurs in STEM. Young, Gifted, & Brown fosters the spirit of entrepreneurship for local youth across the diaspora to stimulate the local economy and increase global prosperity. In 2018, Dr. Lewis was named as one of the thirty five “Black American National Security and Foreign Policy Next Generation Leaders” for NewAmerica.org. She was named the 2019 Gender Issues in Foreign Policy Fellow for the Young Professionals in Foreign Policy Organization. Dr. Lewis continued her work in women’s empowerment programming as the Senior Economic Evaluation Program Advisor for the Secretary’s Office of Global Women’s Issues at the Department of State until 2020.