The Savory Institute
Daniela Ibarra-Howell is the CEO & Co-Founder of The Savory Institute.
A native Argentinean, born and raised in Buenos Aires, Daniela is an agronomist by profession and holds a MS in Natural Resource Management and Economics. With over 25 years of international experience in ranching, Holistic Management, and collaborative ecosystem restoration programs, Daniela co founded with Allan Savory and other colleagues the Savory Institute in 2009, and became its CEO in 2011. Since then she has led her team in the design and implementation of a revolutionary entrepreneurial, self-sustaining global impact strategy for large-scale restoration of grasslands through Holistic Management to tackle global food and water security, and climate change issues.
She has served as an advisor to sustainability initiatives such as UN Global Compact, UN Rio+20 informal-informals, Solidaridad’s Farmers Support Program (FSP), Global Roundtable for Sustainable Beef (GRSB), Sustainable Food Lab, Sustainable Agriculture Network (SAN), and others.
She holds executive degrees in Advanced Negotiation and Conflict Resolution from University Notre Dame.
Before her involvement with the Savory Institute, Daniela co-founded Del Cerro LLC, a land management and consulting firm and served as its Director for seventeen years. During that time she co managed the family’s 9,000-acre ranch in western Colorado, increasing its productivity by 300%. In the off-season she and her husband led educational ranch tours around the world.
All along she worked closely with Allan Savory, teaching and consulting in many continents, having completed training in Holistic Management with Savory himself in 1996, when she became a certified educator.
Earlier in her career she served as a Resource Policy Analyst for the Argentine Ministry of Agriculture, the Under-secretariat Environmental Policy, and the National Commission for Desertification in Patagonia (CONADEPA); and served as a consultant to the Inter American Institute for Cooperation in Agriculture (IICA), and the UN on agricultural and land restoration policies.
An advocate of entrepreneurial approaches to tackle global problems, she is a co-founder and member of Holistic Holdings International Inc. and Grasslands LLC.
An avid traveler, Daniela enjoys exploring with her family the world’s cultures and countryside. Additionally she loves to follow her two daughters in their horse jumping, ballet, and gymnastics performances.
