Abinet Shiferaw

Ms. Abinet Shiferaw is a registered public health practitioner with a nursing background and extensive experience in public health, with a focus on nutrition and food security programming in Ethiopia. She offers specialized expertise in mainstreaming nutrition throughout agricultural, and market systems activities to promote market-based solutions to improve nutrition.

For RTI, she currently is the Nutrition Manager for Feed the Future Transforming Agriculture Activity in Ethiopia, under which she leads the development and integration of nutrition interventions within the agriculture sectors across the country. She has also contributed to business development efforts with a focus on increase access to healthy diets, particularly for women and children, by improving the competitiveness, inclusiveness, and resilience of the food and agriculture systems and identifying key nutrition-sensitive actions.

She held a similar role under the Feed the Future Value Chains Activity in Ethiopia, implemented by Fintrac. Her leadership of the nutrition-sensitive activities under this program led to the percentage of women consuming a diversified diet to increase from 32% to 72% in five years.

Ms. Shiferaw is a proven leader and has successful track record of collaboration with various stakeholders, including the Ministry of Health and Ministry of Agriculture in Ethiopia, and with the private sector, local leaders, and community influencers.

She has also worked with host community, Sudanese, and Somali refugees on the improvement of Community Management of Acute Malnutrition protocols and development of national guidelines; led nationwide nutrition and childhood development implementation; and supported writing and preparation of the national Nutrition Sensitive Agriculture Strategy for Ethiopia.

Ms. Shiferaw has completed coursework in Humanitarian Response and Post Conflict Reconstruction course at Brown University, in Management of Health Emergencies in Large Populations at Johns Hopkins University’s Bloomberg School of Public Health, and participated in a five-month blended learning leadership training at Harvard University.  She is fluent in Amharic and English.