ECF Welcomes Ellyn Yakowenko as Associate Director, Policy and Research (Global Wasting)

The Eleanor Crook Foundation is thrilled to welcome Ellyn Yakowenko to our team. Ellyn joined in February 2024, and serves as our Associate Director, Policy and Research (Global Wasting).

We asked Ellyn to answer three questions as a way to introduce her to our wider community – and as you’ll see below, we have plenty of reason to be excited about having her on our team!

What are you most excited to work on in your new position at ECF?

In making the transition into philanthropy, I’m excited to have more space to be curious again. I’ve spent the majority of my career to-date building research projects and research teams within humanitarian-focused international NGOs, which has given me a solid understanding of how to work creatively within the operational and funding realities of the existing system. This experience has been both a benefit and a limitation – and just in my first few weeks at ECF, I’ve found it refreshing to be able to ask questions like “what if” and “for whom” in a way I haven’t for some time. I’m looking forward to leveraging this curiosity in conversations with new and existing grantees and funding partners, so that together, we identify and target investment opportunities with the highest potential to expand access to life-saving care for malnourished children across the world.

What’s something unique from your past experience that you’ll bring to your role at ECF??

In many ways, raising children has predominated my life over the past decade – both personally and professionally.

I have three lively little ones at home and at work, I’ve also had the pleasure of ‘raising’ three major project-based initiatives that have kept me on my toes: Research on Food Assistance for Nutritional Impact, Modelling Early Risk Indicators to Anticipate Malnutrition and the Delivery System for Scale. Each of these projects, as well as the remarkable colleagues I had the pleasure of collaborating with to implement them, taught me critical lessons about driving innovation and change in the nutrition sector. I carry these lessons with me into my new role at ECF, with the understanding that my relationship to the next generation of these groundbreaking projects is also shifting. Now on the donor side, I’ll be one level removed from direct implementation, but endeavoring more than ever before to be a proactive figure of support, strength and guidance (and hopefully a bit of fun) in their development.

I can’t wait to see what research and policy innovations we’ll bring to life in the coming years to scale improved solutions for child undernutrition.

What’s something interesting about you that we wouldn’t find on your resume??

I am obsessed with holidays. Up to this point, this obsession has revolved around the more typical holidays – i.e. the magic of Christmas that spreads over a full month of celebrations, with cookie baking, hot chocolate by the fireside, Christmas caroling and more. More recently though, I’ve started to pull some less-expected holidays into the rotation, to bring a bit more celebration into my daily life. This month, you’ll find me celebrating national picnic day with a charcuterie board and blanket by the beach in Jones Point Park.