Elle Winsted

Director of Global Development

Elle is as much at home in a village in Southern Africa as she is in the mountains of Colorado, where she grew up. Her global travels as a teenager led her on a solo venture to Africa which sparked her interest in foreign affairs. Since then, she has spent the last thirteen years working and living in various global contexts to learn innovative communication and business strategies for development. She is highly successful at navigating complex communication dynamics across cultural lines to find effective and culturally appropriate solutions. By working with and living amongst local communities mainly in Asia and Africa, she has harnessed skills such as stakeholder engagement, project management, youth programming and urban and peri-urban development strategies through effective cross-cultural communication techniques. Elle is very passionate about co-creating systemic solutions with people around the world to increase the quality of their lives and bridging the gap between traditional development techniques and the Human-centered development approach.

Currently, Elle leads strategic partnerships and stakeholder engagement at The World Food Bank to create and build relationships and strategies that scale and deepen the ecosystem impact of the World Food Bank. She has previously worked with iDE (International Development Enterprises), IMED+KTGroup and Project C.U.R.E. alongside volunteering in Tanzania and South Africa and teaching English in Thailand. She also works with The Abundant Village in South Africa to preserve indigenous knowledge systems while blending in modern technologies in high poverty communities and human-wildlife conflict zones. She helps Abundant Village strategize to create alternative livelihoods and systems for local people and communities to become more resourced and self-sufficient.

Elle obtained her master’s degree in Social Development from the University of Cape Town and is currently on the Board of Directors for The Breath of Earth Foundation which builds and leverages relationships that connect green technologies and human investment for improving lives, helping communities thrive, and ensuring a sustainable planet.

In her free time, she enjoys engaging in further learning around regenerative agriculture and South African languages while continuing to travel the world.