Caitlin Kownacki is a Registered Dietitian, Public Health and Evaluation professional serving as the Senior Program Lead of Evaluation for the Division of Family and Consumer Sciences at University of Illinois Extension. She has experience in community and clinical nutrition practice working on research and practice-based teams to identify linkages between food security, community health systems, and health outcomes, while also managing and overseeing multiple data collection and reporting systems to gather meaningful information for data informed decision-making and to support stakeholder impact reporting.

Caitlin earned her Bachelors of Science in Nutrition and Dietetics from Northern Illinois University and Masters of Science in Clinical Nutrition from Rosalind Franklin University of Medicine and Science. Research interests include nutrition and population health, food and nutrition security, community food systems, multi-level community health interventions, food apartheid, and policy, system, and environmental impacts on health equity for marginalized groups.