Rebecca Chesney works with organizations to redesign the food system. She leads IDEO's Circular Economy of Food CoLab, which leverages collaboration towards better solutions for people, the planet, and businesses. In this role Rebecca connects human-centered design with foresight, systems thinking, and network building to catalyze a more regenerative future of food.

Before joining IDEO in 2018, Rebecca was a Research Director with the Food Futures Lab at Institute for the Future (IFTF), where she led foresight consulting projects for organizations such as Nestlé, Tetra Pak, and Meat and Livestock Australia to identify opportunities for market growth and food system resilience. She was featured in The New York Times, Wired, Marketplace Tech, CNN, and Canadian Grocer, and she was a featured speaker at conferences around the world. A researcher and teacher at heart, Rebecca also led ethnographic research and foresight training workshops with farmers, students, entrepreneurs, and industry leaders.

Rebecca has also been a financial management policy analyst with The World Bank and a research assistant at University College Dublin. She was one of ten accountancy graduates selected from across the United States for the Financial Accounting Standards Board's 2007 fellowship, and that same year was awarded Texas A&M University's Earl Rudder Memorial Outstanding Student among 11,000 graduates.

Rebecca has lived and worked across the globe, from China to Palestine to Lesotho. She holds degrees in accounting and finance from Texas A&M University and an MA in the Anthropology of Food from SOAS, University of London.