The Forum for the Future of Agriculture Advisory Council
The Forum for the Future of Agriculture has established an Advisory Council to support it in the achievement of its mission to help build a more resilient, sustainable, climate smart and nature positive food and agriculture system. The formation of the Advisory Council was announced in February 2024.
The Council is comprised of leading stakeholders with a broad range of expertise and experience on sustainability issues in the agri-food system. In particular, they will provide an independent, external expertise for the Forum’s Chairman and leadership to draw on in developing the overall strategy, maintaining existing and building new partnerships as well as helping to represent and amplify our work.
Members of the Advisory Council will serve an initial two-year term, in a personal capacity. The current members are:
Tassos Haniotis – Senior Guest Research Scholar at the International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis and former Director at the European Commission.
Geneviève Pons – Director General and Vice-President, Europe Jacques Delors
Ann Tutwiler – Chair of the Global Alliance for Improved Nutrition and former Director-General of Bioversity International
Mark Titterington – Co-founder of the Forum for the Future of Agriculture and Director-General, SpiritsEUROPE
Advisory Council Members biographies
Tassos Haniotis was a long-serving senior official in the European Commission serving, most recently, as Director for Strategy, Simplification and Policy Analysis in the DG for Agriculture and Rural development. In addition to several other senior leadership roles in DG AGRI, Tassos notably served as Deputy Head of Cabinet for the former European Commissioner for Agriculture Franz Fischler, and as Agricultural Counsellor in the European Commission’s Delegation in the US.
Tassos, a recent Fellow of the European Association of Agricultural Economists, holds Ph.D. and M.S. degrees in Agricultural Economics from the University of Georgia in the U.S., and a B.A. in Economics from the Athens University of Economics and Business in his native Greece. He was also a visiting Fellow at the Centre for European Agricultural Studies, Wye College, University of London, focusing on EU-US agricultural trade relations in the Uruguay Round of GATT negotiations before joining the European Commission.
Since his retirement from the European Commission, Mr. Haniotis has been a Senior Guest Research Scholar at the International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis.
Geneviève Pons is the Director-General and Vice-President, Europe Jacques Delors. Ms. Pons previously served in the Cabinet of Mr. Jacques Delors during his last mandates as President of the European Commission (EC) (1991-1995) focusing on climate and the environment. She is an Honorary Director of the European Commission where she held several management positions before becoming Director of the ILO’s Legal Service in 2013, and Director of the WWF’s European Office in 2015. From November 2017, she has headed Europe Jacques Delors, the latest in the family of think tanks carrying on Jacques Delors’ European vision. She is a graduate from Sciences Po Paris, the Sorbonne, and ENA.
Geneviève Pons is considered by Politico as one of the most influential women in Brussels, notably in the field of environment. She is a member of the EU Mission: Restore our Ocean and Waters, chaired by Pascal Lamy. She is co-chair with Pascal Lamy of the Antarctica2020 coalition, which aims to protect vast marine areas around Antarctica. She is also a Knight of the Legion of Honour.
Ann Tutwiler is the Chair of the Global Alliance for Improved Nutrition and a member of the board of CABI. In addition, she is a Senior Fellow at Meridian Institute and Chair of the Advisory Council for the Food and Agriculture Benchmark at the World Benchmarking Alliance. Previously, Ann chaired the Water, Land and Ecosystems Research Program of the CGIAR as well as the Access to Seeds Foundation Supervisory Board.
Ann is also a former Director General of Bioversity International and served as Deputy Director General of the Food and Agriculture Organization in Rome, Italy. She was also an adviser to the U.S. Secretary for Agriculture, Tom Vilsack, where she worked to develop and implement Feed the Future, during the Obama Administration.
Mark Titterington is a Co-founder and a former Director of the Forum for the Future of Agriculture. Mark joined SpiritsEUROPE as their Director-General in September 2025, having enjoyed a long career in the agri-food sector, principally at Syngenta where he held several senior leadership and executive level positions in corporate affairs and business sustainability in the EAME region and globally. After leaving Syngenta in 2017, Mark became the CEO of EngineeringUK before joining Indigo Ag, where he held a variety of different roles before becoming Head of Corporate Affairs and a Member of the Executive Team in 2024. He is also a Senior Fellow at the Transatlantic Policy Network.