Dr. Ruby Lathon serves as the Nutrition Policy Manager for the Physician’s Committee for Responsible Medicine (PCRM) and leads its Healthy School Lunch Campaign. Dr. Lathon is leading the initiative to improve child nutrition and prevent chronic disease through the inclusion of more plant-based options in the National School Lunch Program. As part of the Healthy School Lunch Campaign, PCRM is calling on Congress to fight childhood obesity and support measures to include more vegetables, fruits, vegetarian meal options, and healthful nondairy beverages in the National School Lunch and Breakfast Programs.

Dr. Lathon motivates and inspires with her own powerful story of overcoming thyroid cancer through a plant-based diet. After learning how to care for the body naturally, Dr. Lathon left behind a career as an award-winning engineer and began teaching the benefits of plant-based nutrition. Dr. Lathon has over fifteen years experience in business development, artificial intelligence research and development, modeling and simulation optimization strategies. Before joining PCRM, Dr. Lathon served as Vice President of an engineering and management consulting firm. Prior to that, Dr. Lathon was a Senior Engineer at Sandia National Laboratories, a national security research laboratory and also served as a Research Fellow at NASA Marshall Space Flight Center.

She received a Ph.D. in Industrial and Systems Engineering, from the University of Alabama in Huntsville, and a B.S. in Computer Science. Dr. Lathon was inducted into the Girl Scouts of Chaparral Council, Hall of Fame: Women in Science, Technology, & Engineering and has received several awards and honors, including the National Society of Black Engineers’ “Technologist of the Year Award” and was awarded an assistantship from the National Science Foundation.

Dr. Lathon is dedicated to taking on the challenge of educating others about the life and earth saving benefits of vegan nutrition and shedding light on the conclusive relationships between diet, disease and climate change.