Emily Broad Leib ’08, cofounder and director of Harvard Law School’s Food Law and Policy Clinic, has been named Assistant Clinical Professor of Law at HLS.
Broad Leib has worked at the Center for Health Law and Policy Innovation, of which the Food Law and Policy Clinic is a part, since 2010. She founded the Food Law and Policy Clinic in 2011, and in 2013 was appointed Deputy Director of the Center for Health Law and Policy Innovation.
“In a few short years, she has helped build the Food Law and Policy Clinic into the nation’s most innovative and influential clinic addressing complex problems surrounding the production, distribution, and safety of food and related issues of health and equity,” said Martha Minow, Dean of Harvard Law School. “Emily’s passion, imagination, and strategic analysis have inspired students and faculty around the country. We are so delighted she is joining Harvard Law School’s clinical faculty.”
Broad Leib is recognized as a national leader in Food Law and Policy. She teaches courses on the topic and focuses her scholarship and practice on finding solutions to today’s biggest food system issues, aiming to increase access to healthy foods, prevent diet-related disease, and reduce barriers to market entry for small-scale and sustainable food producers. She has published scholarly articles in the Wisconsin Law Review, the Harvard Law & Policy Review, and the Journal of Food Law & Policy, as well as in the Routledge International Handbook of Food Studies.
In February, Broad Leib was awarded a research grant in the inaugural year of Harvard President Drew Faust’s Climate Change Solutions Fund. Broad Leib’s project, “Reducing Food Waste as a Key to Addressing Climate Change,” was one of seven chosen from around the university to confront the challenge of climate change by leveraging the clinic’s food law and policy expertise to identify systemic solutions that can reduce food waste, which is a major driver of climate change. Broad Leib’s groundbreaking work on food waste has been covered in such media outlets as CNN, The Today Show, MSNBC, TIME Magazine, Politico, and the Washington Post.
“I am filled with gratitude and enthusiasm about joining the Harvard Law School faculty. It has been an honor to work at such a supportive institution and help foster Harvard Law School’s emergence as a leader in the field of food law and policy,” Broad Leib said. “I am grateful for the opportunity to continue to grow this burgeoning field and to work with such innovative, passionate, and committed students and faculty to forge a more just, healthy, and sustainable food system.”
Prior to joining the Center, Broad Leib spent two years in Clarksdale, Mississippi, as the Joint Harvard Law School/Mississippi State University Delta Fellow. There, she directed the Delta Directions Consortium, a group of university and foundation leaders who collaborate to improve public health and foster economic development in the Delta region. In that role, she worked with community members and outside partners, and with support from more than 60 HLS students, to design and implement programmatic and policy interventions on a range of critical health and economic issues in the region. Broad Leib received her J.D. from Harvard Law School, cum laude, and her B.A. from Columbia University.