Purnima Menon is the Senior Director for Food and Nutrition, where she oversees three units within IFPRI/CGIAR: Nutrition, Diets, and Health (NDH), Poverty, Gender, and Inclusion (PGI), and Markets, Trade, and Institutions (MTI) and is based in New Delhi, India. In her work in India, Dr. Menon directs POSHAN (Partnerships and Opportunities to Strengthen and Harmonize Actions for Nutrition in India), an initiative to support more use of evidence for nutrition in India. She conducts implementation research on scaling up maternal and child nutrition interventions, including on evaluating large-scale behavior change communications programs in nutrition and health. Dr. Menon has research experience in India, Bangladesh, Ethiopia, Haiti, Viet Nam, and Nepal, has published extensively, and invests deeply in research translation in her engagements with policy communities.

In addition to her research, Dr. Menon co-convenes a global nutrition policy course with the Institute for Development Studies in the United Kingdom and has designed and taught many adaptations of this course in India as well. She serves on several national and global advisory groups, including the State of the World's Children, the Global Nutrition Report, and the Countdown to 2030.

Dr. Menon has a PhD in International Nutrition from Cornell University and an MSc in Nutrition from the University of Delhi. She speaks many languages and has lived both in India and the United States. She lives in India with her husband, Jitendra Balakrishnan, and their daughter.

Dr. Menon’s publications are available on Google Scholar, and she engages on social media via her Twitter handle @PMenonIFPRI.

Languages spoken: Bengali, French, Haitian Creole, Hindi, Malayalam, Tamil