Sarah Smith

Institute for the Future

Sarah is a Research Director with IFTF's Food Futures Lab. She works with many of the world’s largest food, health, and CPG companies to challenge their assumptions and identify emerging trends and discontinuities that will transform the global marketplace and global food system. She is a frequent public speaker, facilitates food innovation workshops, and equips a vast network of global food changemakers with the foresight necessary to start making better futures today.  As a designer, Sarah helps people imagine new stories about the future of food by creating artifacts from the future, which provoke public imagination about what kind of futures we really want to live (and therefore, eat).  She has been featured in National Geographic's The Plate, The Washington Post, Vice Munchies, Business Insider, and many other food industry publications. She draws from her experience in a range of disciplines—international studies, graphic design, creative writing, and the food service industry—to explore how emerging technologies and social practices will change the way people and communities seek and create well-being. Sarah holds a BA in International Studies and Visual Communication from Loyola University Chicago.