In 2007, he was awarded the Giorgio Ruffolo Research Fellowship in Sustainability Science from Harvard University. Gustavo Gordillo de Anda is the former assistant director general of the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) of the United Nations and regional representative for Latin America and the Caribbean and has been viceminister of agriculture in Mexico. Frank van Laerhoven is an assistant professor of environmental social sciences at Utrecht University in the Netherlands. He previously worked for the FAO in Senegal and Chile.