Elise H. Golan is the Director for Sustainable Development for USDA. In this role, she provides leadership in planning, coordinating, and analyzing the Department’s various policies, programs and activities that impact and relate to sustainable agricultural, natural resource, and community development including food security.

Prior to this position, Elise served as the Associate Director of the Food Economics Division at the Economic Research Service, USDA. She received her Ph.D. in agricultural economics from the University of California at Berkeley and completed a post-doctorate fellowship focusing on environmental economics at the University of Haifa, Israel. Before joining USDA, Elise did consulting work for, among others, the World Bank, the International Labour Organization, and the California Department of Finance. She served as a senior staff economist on the President’s Council of Economic Advisers from 1998-99.

Dr. Golan’s research has spanned a wide range of sustainability issues, including land tenure and sustainable land management in the Sahel and West Africa; rice-straw burning and sustainable land management in California; regional and U.S. food-system modeling; food labeling and market development; food access, affordability, and security; and the distributional consequences of food policy.