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Shenggen Fan has been Director General of the International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI) since 2009. Growing up in rural China in the 1960s and 1970s, Fan became deeply committed to reducing poverty and hunger. He is convinced that innovative, country-owned, country-led approaches are required to achieve ambitious development goals. Along those lines, he recently proposed a new “business-as-unusual” approach to ending hunger: (1) invest in two core pillars—agriculture and social protection, (2) bring in new players, (3) adopt a country-led, bottom-up approach, (4) design policies using evidence and experience, and (5) measure whether commitments have been fulfilled.

Fan joined IFPRI in 1995 as a research fellow, conducting extensive research on pro-poor development strategies in Africa, Asia, and the Middle East. He led IFPRI’s program on public investment before becoming the director of the Institute’s Development Strategy and Governance Division in 2005. He also received a PhD in applied economics from the University of Minnesota and bachelor’s and master’s degrees from Nanjing Agricultural University in China. Fan is a member of the World Economic Forum’s Global Agenda Council on Food Security, as well as an Executive Committee member of the International Association of Agricultural Economists.

Francis Chabari is a senior livestock expert with over 43 years of experience working with pastoralists and agro-pastoralists in livestock research and managing development programs. He is a regionally recognized expert on pastoral livestock issues and livestock products marketing and has spent his career addressing the constraints and challenges facing pastoralist communities in Kenya. He currently holds the position of Chief of Party of the USAID-funded Kenya Drylands Livestock Development program, a livestock value chain program focusing on enhancing household incomes and food security of the pastoralists of north eastern Kenya. Before joining CNFA, he worked for Tufts University as Chief of Party of the Pastoral Areas Coordination, Analysis and Policy Support (PACAPS) program of the Regional Enhanced Livelihoods in Pastoral Areas, a program funded by USAID-East Africa. He has also worked with the German Agency for International Cooperation (GIZ) and the Livestock Research Institute (ILRI). He started his career as an Agricultural Officer with the Government of Kenya. He holds a Masters in Agricultural Economics from the University of Nairobi and a Bachelors in Range Management from New Mexico State University.

An expert in livestock production with over 20 years work experience, Jurjen Draaijer currently works for CNFA as Livestock Team Leader in USAID funded Partnership for Economic Growth based in Hargeisa, Somaliland. He has been working in the livestock sector focusing on pastoralism and drought preparedness throughout the Horn of Africa for over six years. Before joining CNFA, he was working for the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations since 1998. He has extensive experience in a range of developing countries in Latin America, Near-East, Asia, and Africa, and has particular specializations in small scale dairy production, animal nutrition, pastoralism, and pastoral field schools. He is an accredited trainer in LEGS (livestock emergency guidelines and standards). He received his MSc from Wageningen University in the Netherlands.

John McPeak is currently an associate professor and vice chair in the Department of Public Administration and International Affairs in the Maxwell School of Syracuse University. He teaches microeconomics and development economics at the graduate level. He spent three years as a Peace Corps volunteer in Senegal. He received his master’s and PhD from the graduate program in agricultural economics at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, conducting field work in northern Kenya that served as the basis for his dissertation. After receiving his doctorate in 1999, he took a post-doctoral research associate position with Cornell University assigned to work in Kenya with the USAID / GL-CRSP funded Pastoral Risk Management Project. After three years of field work with this project he joined the faculty of Syracuse University in 2002. He has served as a consultant for DfID, UNDP, and the International Livestock Research Institute. He has continued to conduct research in Kenya, Ethiopia, Senegal, and Mali largely focused on livestock production, marketing, and livestock crop interactions, and recently published in collaboration with Peter Little and Cheryl Doss the book Risk and Social Change in an African Rural Economy: Livelihoods in Pastoralist Communities. McPeak is currently a co-PI for the Livestock-CC CRSP’s MLPI-2 project in Mali.

David J. Spielman joined the International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI) in 2004, and is currently a senior research fellow based in Washington, DC. His research agenda covers a range of topics including agricultural science, technology and innovation policy; seed systems and input markets; and community-driven rural development. Prior to this, he worked on agriculture and rural development issues for IFPRI in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, the World Bank in Washington, D.C., and the Aga Khan Development Network in the Pakistan. His work maintains a regional emphasis on East Africa and South Asia. Spielman received a Ph.D. in Economics from American University in 2003, an M.Sc. in Development Studies from the London School of Economics in 1993, and a B.A. in International Relations from Tufts University in 1992.

Nicholas joined IFPRI in 2010 as a postdoctoral fellow, and now serves as a research fellow. His current and previous research spans the areas of technology adoption, climate change adaptation, sustainable agriculture and natural resource use, drought and pest risk, imperfect markets and property rights, and food security. He received his Ph.D. in Agricultural and Resource Economics from the University of California-Davis in 2010, and also holds a B.S. in Biology from University of Wisconsin-Madison and M.S. in Agricultural Economics from Colorado State University. While completing his degree he concurrently worked on food security issues in the Middle East and North Africa region for the World Bank. He has done field work in India and Morocco.

Joan Whelan is the Knowledge Management Senior Specialist for the USAID/Food for Peace-funded TOPS Program, as well as chair of the Food Security and Nutrition (FSN) Network’s Knowledge Management Task Force. Through both mechanisms, she works to encourage cross-organizational collaboration and program learning. She and her team are currently planning a large East Africa knowledge sharing meeting to be held in Addis in June 2012, carrying out a review of organizational practices in knowledge sharing amongst food security implementers, and preparing to launch TOPS’ new food security web portal, fsnnetwork.org, which will feature an implementation focused library of tools, guides, manuals and other resources, Task Force workspaces, and periodic topic-specific discussion forums to encourage peer-to-peer dialogue between food security practitioners.

Andrea Bohn is the Project Manager for the Modernizing Extension and Advisory Services (MEAS) Project, funded by USAID. She is stationed at the University of Illinois. Her role with MEAS involves coordinating nine partner institutions, more than 110 potential faculty collaborators, and work in more than 20 countries. Previously, she worked on the Worldwide Extension Study, implemented by the International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI), in collaboration with FAO and IICA, with funding from USAID. From 2002 to 2010 she was an Assistant Dean in the College of Agricultural, Consumer and Environmental Sciences (ACES) at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. She managed all education abroad programs sponsored by ACES and promoted student participation in a broad portfolio of international learning experiences. Prior to that, she worked at the University of Hohenheim in her home country, Germany. She coordinated the prestigious “Modularization” project for implementing a modular course structure and introducing Bachelor and Master Programs in Agricultural Sciences.

Meaghan Murphy is a Food Security and Agriculture Program Manager at The QED Group. She currently manages knowledge and learning activities implemented through the Food Security/Ag Program of the Knowledge-Driven Microenterprise Development (KDMD) Project with USAID's Bureau for Food Security. Murphy is committed to leveraging technical good practice in food security and agriculture through innovative knowledge management and knowledge sharing activities. She is a food security specialist with nine years of international and domestic project design, management, and implementation experience. She has a MS from the Friedman School of Nutrition Science and Policy at Tufts University where she focused on Food Policy and Applied Nutrition. Her work experience includes countries in Latin America, Africa and Central Asia.