Gisella S. Cruz-Garcia is leading the work on Local Food Plants for Nutrition. During the last 15 years she has been engaged in projects focusing on food and nutrition security, agrobiodiversity and ecosystem services. She has always prioritized the perspectives of local cultures and societies in Latin America, Asia and Africa, especially in terms of traditional knowledge, use, management, values and priorities associated to natural resources, in scenarios of deforestation and climate change. She has a PhD in Production Ecology and Resource Conservation from Wageningen University in the Netherlands. She is a former Research Scientist at the International Centre for Tropical Agriculture (CIAT, CGIAR).