Peggy Tsai Yih

About Peggy Tsai Yih

Peggy Tsai Yih is the managing director of the Center on Global Food and Agriculture at the Chicago Council on Global Affairs. She joined the Council in 2020. Previously, she served in various capacities at the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine in Washington, DC for more than 14 years.

As a senior program officer with the Board on Agriculture and Natural Resources at the National Academies, Peggy worked with the nation’s foremost experts to provide research, analysis, and policy advice on complex challenges in food and agriculture. In this role, she led an advisory panel that identified emerging technologies and developed an innovative strategy to advance food and agricultural research for the next decade. The strategy was incorporated into the 2018 Farm Bill, formed the basis for the 2020 USDA Agriculture Innovation Agenda, and led to the creation of the Agriculture Advanced Research and Development Authority. Her portfolio of work also includes issues such as sustainable development in international agriculture, food systems, biotechnology, biosecurity, food security, food safety, animal health, public health and nutrition, worker safety and health, renewable fuels, climate change, natural resource management, conservation, and agricultural education.

Peggy has a MA in Science, Technology, and Public Policy from George Washington University, Elliott School of International Affairs and a BS in Microbiology and Molecular Genetics; Secondary Major in Political Science (International Relations concentration) from the University of California, Los Angeles.