Dr. Wanida Lewis is the CEO and Co-founder of non-profit Crescendo Foods, Ghana’s first shared commercial kitchen space and culinary hub in Accra, Ghana. Dr. Lewis has over ten years’ experience leading programs, strategic partnerships, and economic evaluation initiatives throughout the African continent. Previously, she was
a Senior Economic Program Advisor in the US Department of State’s Office of Global Women’s Issues. During her first stint living in Accra in 2018, she founded Young, Gifted, & Brown, LLC, a pipeline program supporting young Ghanaian women and entrepreneurs in STEM. In 2018, she was named by New America as one of thirty-five "Black American National Security, and Foreign Policy Next Generation Leaders". In 2019, Young Professionals in Foreign Policy named her the "Gender Issues in Foreign Policy” Fellow. Dr. Wanida E. Lewis Food Science Fellowship Award Endowment was established in 2013 to provide fellowship funding for underrepresented graduate students in the Department of Food, Bioprocessing and Nutrition Sciences at North Carolina State University. She has a BSc in Chemistry, MSc in Analytical Chemistry, and a PhD in Food Science.