Janice Giddens

Janice Giddens is a registered dietitian, and at the National Dairy Council, she leads collaborations with thought leaders to promote awareness of the link between agriculture, sustainable food systems, and health. 

She intimately understands the role that agriculture plays in nourishing people, the planet, and communities from her work on farms and with farmers in the United States, Ecuador, Mozambique, and Rwanda. Recently, she was awarded the first international nutrition fellowship from the Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics, which took her to Rwanda to develop programming that targeted smallholder farmers, pregnant women, and children within their critical first 1,000 days of life. She’s worked with refugee farmers to secure land and resources needed to grow culturally-appropriate foods and started farmer's markets to improve livelihoods and food access. As the nutrition manager at a food bank, she designed and implemented their inaugural nutrition programming, including the rollout of a system that assessed nutritional adequacy of 70 million pounds of food annually and community-based programming.

Giddens received a dual BS in dietetics and consumer foods and a certificate in international agriculture from the University of Georgia. She obtained her MS in human nutrition and completed her dietetic internship at Mississippi State University.