Dr. LaKisha Odom joined the Foundation for Food & Agriculture Research (FFAR) in September 2016 as a scientific program director to pursue her commitment to promoting the use of innovative science and interdisciplinary thinking to tackle today’s complex challenges in food and agriculture. She is also committed to cultivating increased diversity in a new generation of food and agriculture scientists. Odom is on the board of directors for the Soil Health Institute, a non-profit organization that advances the science of soil health and the adoption of soil health management systems.
Odom developed her passion for the inter-sectional space of research and policy while working at the U.S. EPA in the Office of Research and Development and the Office of Solid Waste and Emergency Response’s Brownfield’s Redevelopment Program. In her academic career at Tuskegee University, she continued to seek out opportunities to work in interdisciplinary and collaborative science, as a CREATE-IGERT fellow and as a researcher at Teagasc Research facility in Carlow, Ireland. She then had the opportunity to combine her passion for interdisciplinary innovative research and policy when selected to serve as an early career intern for the Public Policy Board of the American Phytopathological Society. In 2013, Odom became an American Association for the Advancement of Science and Technology Policy Fellow at the U.S. Department of Agriculture Biotechnology Regulatory Service, where she managed a diverse portfolio which included working with the OECD Working Group for the Harmonization of Regulatory Oversight in Biotechnology.
Odom received her bachelor’s degree in environmental science from Tuskegee University, her master’s degree in environmental resource policy from The George Washington University and her doctorate in integrative biosciences from Tuskegee University.