Christina Ingersoll

Christina Ingersoll
MIT Sloan School of Management
100 Main St.
Cambridge, MA 02142 USA
Tel: (1) 617-417-8167
Email: Christina_Ingersoll@hks.harvard.edu
Group affiliation: Research Fellow

Christina Ingersoll is a Research Fellow in the Sustainability Science Program. She is also research coordinator for the Sustainability Initiative at Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s Sloan School of Management and a research analyst at the University of California at Davis’ Agricultural Sustainability Institute where she is leading a corporate sustainability engagement analysis as part of a large scale project on sustainable agricultural raw material sourcing in partnership with the Mars Corporation. Her research focuses on sustainable agriculture, with special attention to climate-agriculture interactions. She is contributing to collaborative work with the Initiative on Innovation and Access to Technologies for Sustainable Development led by William Clark. She has worked with Jerry Nelson at the International Food Policy Research Institute in the Environment and Production Technology Group where she contributed as a co-author on the publication Food security, farming, and climate change to 2050: Scenarios, results, policy options, and with Robert Paarlberg on an impact evaluation project, also for IFPRI. She has also been a quantitative specialist and co-developer of a life-cycle assessment tool for farm-level GHG emissions quantification with the Sustainable Food Lab’s Cool Farming Options Program.

Christina received a Master of Business Administration from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s Sloan School of Management (2010) and is one of the first recipients of the Certificate in Sustainability for Business and Society. At MIT, Christina was a leader in the MIT Energy Club, and co-director of the Academic Working Group of the MIT Food and Agriculture Collaborative. She received a Bachelor of Science in Biology and Environmental Science, with honors, from Carleton College where she was a Wingspread Fellow and director of the student farm and farm club. Her faculty host is William Clark.

Corporate sustainability engagement and private sector policy
As part of a multi-perspective investigation into sustainable agricultural materials sourcing, this research investigates the role of private sector actors in creating sustainable systems for agricultural production and distribution. Corporations create their own sourcing policies and strategies – unilaterally or as a part of coalitions which range from large multi-stakeholder groups to bilateral partnerships. These policies have their own trajectory, power, and impact outside of or in addition to governmental policies. An in-depth investigation into sustainability communications, commitments, and alliances among corporations in the food and agriculture value chain tests a hypothesis that private sector policy setting – especially when set within the context of a multi-stakeholder coalition – can indeed result in agricultural production and distribution systems that reduce negative environmental impact, increase well-being for people in the value chain, and maintain economic viability for individuals and corporations in the chain.

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