Pierre Ferrari, the former President and CEO of Heifer International who fought passionately to end world hunger, has passed away at the age of 74.
Ferrari served as President and CEO of Heifer International, an organization that supports rural communities through sustainable farming and training. In 2022, after 12 years in this role, he retired in Serenbe, Georgia.
“His impact on our organization—and the global movement to end hunger and poverty—was profound and enduring,” Heifer International shared in a statement following Ferrari’s passing.
Born in 1950 in what is now the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Ferrari credited his upbringing as part of his motivation to end global poverty. When civil war broke out shortly after the nation was granted independence from Belgium, Ferrari and his family fled to Brussels. He was in the fourth grade.
“The first lesson from any kind of experience like my family had is a sense of impermanence and vulnerability,” he said. “It’s a sense that anything can change so rapidly. It’s astonishing how quickly things can change. So you have to be adaptable. You have to be resilient.”
Prior to his work with Heifer International, Ferrari worked for Coca-Cola USA. After about 20 years in the beverage industry, Ferrari shifted his attention toward social issues. “I enjoyed my work for Coca-Cola,” he said. “But there was a nagging question that kept surfacing. Throughout my life, there has always been a mental conversation about the spiritual dimension of human existence. I’m not really talking about religion, but more of, ‘Where am I on the planet?’”
In 1995, Ferrari left Coca-Cola to work for CARE, a global humanitarian and development nonprofit, where he set up the first CARE program in the United States. He left CARE in 1998, going on to pursue a variety of venture capital and nonprofit opportunities including serving as Chair of the board at Ben & Jerry’s, teaching sustainable marketing at Bainbridge Graduate Institute, and founding the community development venture capital fund Hot Fudge.
As Ferrari approached his 60th birthday, he came to the realization that he wanted to pursue a single issue in his work. That same year, his family asked friends to donate yaks through Heifer International in lieu of birthday presents. The position he would hold at the organization opened up shortly after this.
In his 12 years at Heifer International, Ferrari worked to make the organization more efficient by scaling up existing projects to work with more families, rather than starting new smaller projects. He also prioritized modernizing the organization’s systems and diversifying funding sources.
After retirement, Heifer International launched the Pierre Ferrari Regenerative Agricultural Accelerator in his honor. “Heifer’s strategy of sustainable solutions to poverty and hunger owes a considerable debt to Pierre Ferrari,” the organization’s annual report read. “In the spirit of Pierre’s commitment, we believe these investments will have an impact on future generations, driven by our community partners’ work.”
Ferrari continued to champion food systems change until he died, and was dedicated to bottom-up, locally driven solutions. “The Neo-colonial approach of a big—of a white man—in Washington, D.C., knowing what to do in a particular community, that has ended or is ending and just doesn’t work,” he said. He wrote about opportunities for policy change following the COVID-19 pandemic and about farmer and worker standards in the meat industry.
“Pierre had a kind spirit and an unwavering commitment to making sure farmers all over the world were supported and respected,” says Food Tank president Danielle Nierenberg. “He will be missed.”
He is survived by his wife, Kim Ferrari, his sons, Peter and Oliver Ferrari, and stepdaughters Olivia and Elsa Stallings.
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Photo by Heifer International
