Ayten Salahi, MS, RDN is a plant-forward Registered Dietitian and intersectional food policy champion on a mission to heal people and the planet through food. As the first-generation daughter of Turkish-Cypriot immigrants, Ayten learned at a young age to view food as a tool for healing, compassion, and unity, and she has committed her career to using food as a vehicle for change. She founded the Planetary Health Collective with the vision to empower and up-skill food and nutrition professionals everywhere to take high-impact action for human and planetary health, under the ethos that all individuals have unique skills that are urgently needed to counter the climate crisis today. She completed her Masters at the Tufts Friedman School of Nutrition Science and Policy, where she specialized in Nutrition Interventions: Design, Operation, and Management and her Dietetic Internship at Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH).

Internationally, Ayten has worked with the Tufts Food Aid Quality Review (FAQR) and USAID Office of Food for Peace to co-author a report on improving the efficiency and effectiveness of international nutrition assistance research, and domestically she has volunteered to build, scale, and advocate for medically-tailored meal (MTM) and therapeutic food pantry program(s). She is standing Chair of the Hunger and Environmental Nutrition (HEN) Dietetic Practice Group with the Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics (AND), co-founder of the Friedman Food Policy Action Council (FFPAC), and owner of a plant-centric GI nutrition practice, Aysa Nutrition. Connect today: hello@planetaryhealthcollective.org.