(Washington, DC) - Mayor Bowser today announced the appointment of Ona Balkus as Food Policy Director within the Office of Planning. The Food Policy Director, along with the Food Policy Council, were launched by Mayor Bowser in 2015 to improve food access, equity, and economy for all in the District.

“We committed to an aggressive path to make DC the sustainability capital of the world,” said Mayor Bowser. “With the appointment of Ona Balkus as Food Policy Director, I am confident that DC will have a great champion in our effort to ensure residents have healthy and accessible food across all eight wards.”

Ms. Balkus comes to the Bowser Administration having previously served District residents as the Legislative Counsel for the DC Council’s Committee on Transportation and the Environment since August 2016. Her portfolio included food and nutrition policy, parks and recreation, clean water, and public works. During her tenure, Balkus drafted several significant pieces of food-related legislation, including the Healthy Students Amendment Act of 2017, the Save Good Food Act of 2017, the Women, Infants, and Children Program Expansion Act of 2018, and the Healthy Parks Act of 2018.

Previously, Ms. Balkus was a Senior Clinical Fellow at the Harvard Law School Food Law and Policy Clinic, where she provided legal and policy guidance to food policy councils from across the country working to improve their communities’ food systems. She received her JD/MPH from Harvard Law School and Harvard School of Public Health in 2013.

Prior to law school, Ms. Balkus served as an AmeriCorps Vista volunteer at Capital Area Food Bank in DC, where she led cooking-based nutrition classes for low-income families and youth. She later worked as a grassroots organizer and nutrition policy coordinator at the Center for Science in the Public Interest in DC, where she advocated for menu labeling legislation and school foods reform, and co-wrote the “Report Card on Food-Marketing Policies: An Analysis of Food and Entertainment Company Policies regarding Food and Beverage Marketing to Children”, published in March 2010.

As the Food Policy Director, Ms. Balkus will further Mayor Bowser’s Sustainable DC plan, which defines the District’s goals for food policy. In the Sustainable DC Plan, Mayor Bowser committed to increasing the amount of land in the District under agricultural use; ensuring that District residents live within a quarter mile of a grocery store, community garden, farmers’ market, or a health corner store; and strengthening the local food economy around the District.