Margo Wootan, DSc

Margo Wootan, DSc, is the President of MXG Strategies and has been named one of the Most Innovative Women in Food and Drink by Fortune Magazine and recognized by Harvard School of Public Health for her leadership in public policy. Dr. Wootan led the successful effort to require trans fat labeling on packaged foods, which significantly contributed to an 80% decline in trans fat consumption in the U.S. She coordinated efforts of the National Alliance for Nutrition and Activity to support passage of the Healthy, Hunger-Free Kids Act, which included improving school meals and removing soda and unhealthy snacks from school vending machines, a la carte lines, school stores, and fundraisers. She led the effort to pass two dozen state and local policies and national legislation to require calorie labeling in fast-food and other chain restaurants. She worked on expanding nutrition and physical activity promotion and funding at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and passage of over a dozen state and local healthy restaurant kids’ meal policies. Dr. Wootan is quoted regularly in the nation’s major media and appeared in the movies Super Size Me, Fed Up, and Killer at Large. She has testified before Congress and state legislatures and been invited to speak by federal and state agencies including at the U.S. Department of Agriculture, the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering and Medicine, the National Nutrition Summit, and the Surgeon General’s Listening Session for the National Action Plan on Overweight and Obesity. Dr. Wootan received her B.S. in nutrition science from Cornell University and her doctorate in nutrition from Harvard University’s School of Public Health. She has published over 50 reports, articles, and scholarly papers in the areas of communications, social marketing, national nutrition programs, school food, retail marketing, food marketing to children, restaurant foods, labeling, and nutrition education.