Leadership
FACT Alliance Executive Committee
Renee J. Robins
- Senior Advisor
- Abdul Latif Jameel Water and Food Systems Lab
Renee J. Robins was the founding executive director of the Abdul Latif Jameel Water and Food Systems Lab, and serves as senior advisor. Easing into retirement, she stepped down from her role as executive director at the start of the fall semester, 2025.
Starting in 2014, Renee worked closely with founding director John H. Lienhard V to establish J-WAFS at MIT, playing a key role in shaping its activities, priorities, and strategic direction. Her accomplishments include development of the annual seed grant program, the Grand Challenge grant program, and a number of smaller grant and student funding opportunities; cultivating new funding opportunities and implementing corporate and international partnerships; and mentorship of the student Water Club and Food and Agriculture Club. Over her 10+ years as executive director, the lab’s staff grew to six full-time professionals who oversaw the distribution of more than $26 million to support research and student activities at MIT.
Prior to J-WAFS, Renee worked on the conception, launch, and development of a number of large interdisciplinary, international, and partnership-based research and education collaborations at MIT and elsewhere. An MIT graduate, she joined the staff in 1998 and worked on programs including the Cambridge MIT Institute (Associate Director for Graduate Programs), the MIT Portugal Program (Director for Program Integration), the Mexico City Program (Program Coordinator), and the Program on Emerging Technologies (Program Manager). From 2000-2011, she also served as Director of Special Projects for the Technology and Policy Program, where she led the development of a number of academic initiatives, collaborations, and major events. Before joining J-WAFS as executive director, she managed a $15M research program at the Harvard Graduate School of Education as it scaled from implementation in one public school district to 59 schools in seven districts across North Carolina.
Outside of MIT, Renee’s experience includes program design and strategy consulting for Université Mohammed VI Polytechnique (UM6P) prior to its launch as a new university in Morocco; independent consulting work for the International Atomic Energy Agency in Vienna; and serving on the Board of Trustees for the International Honors Program (IHP)—a comparative multi-site study abroad program, now part of SIT/World Learning. For IHP, she conceived, initiated, and developed the “Cities in the 21st Century” program, which began in 1998 and is one of IHP’s most popular offerings with over 1000 alumni. She is herself an alumna of IHP, having studied comparative culture and anthropology in seven countries around the world, and also studied at the Sorbonne in Paris.
Renee’s holds two undergraduate degrees from MIT (biology and humanities/anthropology), and a master’s degree in public policy from Carnegie Mellon University.