Board

Minu Hemmati, PhD, Board Chair

Independent Advisor

Dr. Minu Hemmati is a clinical psychologist with a doctorate in organisational and environmental psychology. She was a Senior Lecturer at the University of Saarbrücken, Germany, 1992-1998. Since 1998, she has been working as an indepen-dent advisor and programme coordinator with NGOs; governments; international agencies; women’s networks; research institutions; and corporations. Dr. Hemmati’s work is focusing on two areas: firstly, multi-stakeholder change processes where her work includes designing, facilitating and coaching change initiatives that use dialogue and cross-sector partnerships among stakeholders; social inclusion and conflict resolution; leadership development; training in dialogue and change processes; research and advocacy on political participation; and corporate stakeholder engagement. Secondly, she does research and advocacy on gender and sustainable development issues, with a recent focus on climate change. Dr. Hemmati has wide experience with multi-stakeholder processes at all levels; in-ternational policy making on sustainable development and related issues; as well as project implementation and evaluation in the field, particularly in Africa. Dr. Hemmati has a personal web page at www.minuhemmati.net. 

 

 

Emile Frison, PhD

Director General, Bioversity International

Dr. Emile Frison has been Director General of Bioversity International, one of the 15 Future Harvest Centers of the Consultative Group on International Agricultural Research, since 2003. Dr. Frison is a leading advocate of the importance of agriculture to biological diversity, and leads CGIAR-wide work in this area and in the CBD. Dr. Frison was previously Director of the International Network for the Improvement of Banana and Plantain (INIBAP), one of IPGRI's three programmes. In 1997, he launched the Global Programme for Musa Improvement (PROMUSA), which brought together researchers and growers with an interest in bananas and plantains. In 2002 he launched the Global Consortium on Musa Genomics. He is a Belgian national who has spent most of his career in international agricultural research, including 18 years of work related to plant genetic resources. Dr. Frison obtained an MSc in plant pathology from the Catholic University of Louvain and a PhD from the University of Gembloux in Belgium. He worked for six years in Africa and was Development Manager of an agrochemical company in Belgium for three years. In 1992, as Regional Director for Europe, he initiated a new phase of the European Cooperative Programme for Crop Genetic Resources Networks. In collaboration with FAO, he also launched the European Forest Genetic Resources Programme.

 

 

Barbara Rose, Treasurer

Executive Director, Aid for Africa

Barbara Rose is the Executive Director of Aid to Africa, a unique nonprofit federation of select charities dedicated to addressing the needs of Sub Saharan Africa. Ms. Rose was the founding Executive Director of Future Harvest, a nonprofit organization dedicated to building awareness of the importance of science for food production, the environment, and the world's poor. During her tenure at Future Harvest, Ms. Rose developed an outreach strategy that used the voices of world leaders, the messages of respected scholarly institutions, and the power of the internet to raise awareness around the world of the importance of food production and the role of agricultural science in meeting the needs of the developing world. Prior to that, Ms. Rose directed the Communications Department of the International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI), an organization focused on improving food and nutrition through better policies for food production and distribution. Ms. Rose has worked as an independent consultant for nonprofits, with a primary emphasis on assisting her clients in communicating their programs to the general public. She received an MBA from Columbia University, a MA in Journalism with a focus on African studies from the University of Maryland, and a BA from Hood College.

David King

Head of International Relations, Société des Agriculteurs de France

Currently the Head of International Relations for the Société des Agriculteurs de France (French Agricultural Society), David King is the former Secretary General of the International Federation of Agricultural Producers (IFAP) - a worldwide farmers’ network of 112 national organisations. At IFAP David was responsible for preparing the organization's policy positions to make sure that the voices of farm families are heard internationally. He has participated on behalf of world farmers in major UN Conferences, including the Earth Summit in Rio in 1992, the World Summit on Sustainable Development in Johannesburg in 2002, and the UN Conference on Climate Change in Copenhagen in 2009.  His committee activities include: membership of the Advisory Committee of the Sustainable Agriculture Initiative; membership of the Board of Directors of AgriCord; founder member of the International Agri-Food Network. He also served as Chair of the Committee for the Promotion and Advancement of Cooperatives (a joint UN-civil society body), as member of the World Bank Task Force on Commodity Risk Management, and a Council Member of the International Land Coalition.  David King has degrees in agricultural economics from the University of London, U.K., and the University of Guelph, Canada.

 

 

Jeffrey A. McNeely

A.D. White Professor at Large, Cornell University

Mr. Jeffrey McNeely worked in Asia for twelve years following his training in anthropology at the University of California at Los Angeles. He spent two years as a Peace Corps volunteer in southern Thailand, five years at the Association for Conservation of Wildlife in Bangkok, and two years studying the relationship between people and nature on the Tibetan border in the Himalayas of eastern Nepal. He spent three years in Indonesia as World Wildlife Fund-IUCN (World Conservation Union) representative, establishing IUCN’s first country program and running some thirty-five conservation projects in that country. He joined IUCN proper in 1980, designing conservation programs, advising governments and conservation organizations on conservation policy and practice, and producing a variety of technical and popular publications. As Secretary-General of the IV World Congress on National Parks and Protected Areas (Caracas 1992), Mr. McNeely helped develop new concepts for relating people to protected areas. Formerly Director of IUCN’s Biodiversity Programme and then Chief Scientist, he has contributed to all of the major global biodiversity initiatives. He has advised over fifty governments on their biodiversity strategies and action plans and was a founder of the Global Biodiversity Forum. He has published numerous papers and over forty books, including Soul of the Tiger; Mammals of Thailand; Economics and Biological Diversity; Conserving the World’s Biological Diversity; Partnerships for Conservation; Protecting Nature: Regional Reviews of Protected Areas; National Parks Conservation and Development; and The Great Reshuffling: Human Dimensions of Invasive Alien Species.

 

 

Ibrahim Thiaw

Director, UNEP

A Mauritanian national, Ibrahim currently serves as Director of the Division of Environmental Policy Implementation (DEPI) at the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP).  Since his early career with the Ministry of Rural Development of Mauritania, and then at the IUCN as Regional Director for West Africa and Acting Director-General, he has successfully developed and implemented large-scale environmental programmes and initiatives in Africa.  Ibrahim holds an advanced university degree in Forestry and Forest Product Techniques. 

 

Sara J. Scherr, PhD 

President and CEO, EcoAgriculture Partners

Dr. Sara J. Scherr is an agricultural and natural resource economist specializing in land and forest management policy in tropical developing countries. Founder of EcoAgriculture Partners, she now serves as its President and CEO. From 2001-2005, she also served as Director of Ecosystem Services for Forest Trends, an NGO that promotes forest conservation through improved markets for forest products and ecosystem services. She is a member of the United Nations Millennium Project Task Force on Hunger, and a member of the Board of Directors of the World Agroforestry Centre in Nairobi, Kenya. Dr. Scherr's previous positions include: Adjunct Professor at the University of Maryland, College Park, USA; Co-Leader of the CGIAR Gender Program; Senior Research Fellow at the International Food Policy Research Institute in Washington, D.C.; and Principal Researcher at the World Agroforestry Centre. She was previously a Fulbright Scholar (1976) and a Rockefeller Social Science Fellow (1985-87). Dr. Scherr received her BA in Economics at Wellesley College in Massachusetts, and her MSc and PhD in International Economics and Development at Cornell University in New York. Dr. Scherr has published 26 articles in refereed journals, 2 annotated bibliographies, 9 monographs, more than 50 book chapters, and 11 books, including Ecoagriculture: Strategies to Feed the World and Save Wild Biodiversity (with Jeff McNeely),  A New Agenda for Forest Conservation and Poverty Reduction: Making Markets Work for Low-Income Producers (with Andy White and David Kaimowitz), and Farming with Nature (with Jeff McNeely).