RURAL TRANSFORMATION AND ZERO HUNGER

Ashwani K. Muthoo, a national of India, has extensive experience in international cooperation, agriculture and rural development, management and development evaluation. He currently holds the position of Director of the Global Engagement and Multilateral Relations Division in IFAD.  Prior to his current position, he was Deputy Director of the Independent Office of Evaluation of IFAD (IOE). Mr Muthoo has experience of working in more than 50 developing countries in all regions, and is fluent in English, Hindi, Italian and Portuguese, and understands French and Spanish.

Carmine Paolo De Salvo is a Rural Development Specialist at the Inter-American Development Bank, where at the moment he works on policy and investment loans in the agricultural sector in Haiti, Jamaica, Colombia, and other Latin America and Caribbean countries. In addition, Paolo leads the AGRIMONITOR initiative, which aims to monitor agricultural public policies in Latin America and the Caribbean, using the Producer Support Estimate methodology. Before joining the IDB, Paolo worked in the Agriculture and Rural Development Division of the World Bank and as an ODI Fellow Economist at the Ministry of Finance and Economic Affairs in Zanzibar, Tanzania. Paolo, Italian, studied at the University of Bologna and holds a Master’s Degree in Economics from the London School of Economics. At the moment, Paolo lives in Port-au-Prince, Haiti.

Dr. Chandra Madramootoo holds the James McGill Professorship in Water and Food Security at McGill University, Montreal, Canada. He is also a Visiting Professor of Civil and Environmental Engineering at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), and a Visiting Scholar at MIT’s World Water and Food Systems Lab. His work is focused on the development of innovation and entrepreneurship platforms, which scale up technologies in water, agriculture and food security, thereby generating wealth and new economic opportunities in various geographical and financial settings.  

VP Sustainable Agriculture & Responsible Sourcing. Christine drives PepsiCo’s strategic vision to deliver transformation andinnovation through sustainable and responsible sourcing solutions. She leads the sustainable sourcing and agricultural teams to deliver against relevant PepsiCo Performance with Purpose 2025 goals. Prior to PepsiCo, Christine worked at Tyson Foods,where she held various roles, most recently Vice President of Sustainable Food Production.  Her responsibilities included natural resource conservation programs, responsible sourcing and farm animal well-being, as well as leading the company’s sustainability programs across multiple platforms.

Konrad Brits is the founder and CEO of Falcon Coffees, a UK based green coffee trading company with offices in the US, Peru, Ethiopia and Rwanda. Konrad has spent 25 years in the green coffee industry, starting his career in Africa where he built export operations in Zimbabwe, Angola and the Democratic Republic of Congo. Konrad has been instrumental in deploying Falcon’s Collaborative Supply Chain business model across coffee origins in Latin America and Africa, facilitating transparent trade relationships between roasters and farmers. Falcon has also partnered with the Gates Foundation in Ethiopia and Ben Affleck’s East Congo Initiative, using coffee as the vehicle to drive socio-economic change in the lives of smallholder farmers in those origins.

Manuel Ossa is the Operations Lead of the WFP Innovation Accelerator, which aims to tackle hunger through innovation and an entrepreneurial and exponential approach. Manuel began his career as a management consultant at BCG to then become an entrepreneur. He is the founder of Trinus, one of the leading telecommunication companies in Latin America. At WFP he has worked with smallholder farmers, supply chain and emergency response, and leveraged cutting edge technologies such as AI and blockchain

Vice President, NewLeaf SymbioticsMaureen leads the communication and engagement strategy for NewLeaf Symbiotics, an agricultural technology company delivering sustainable agriculture solutions to growers through the use of beneficial plant microbes. She joined NewLeaf after 25 years with Monsanto Company in a variety of roles from procurement & supply chain management, manufacturing, corporate communications, and strategy development. Maureen holds a Bachelors degree in Manufacturing and Supply Chain Management, a Masters of Business Administration from Tulane University and certificates from Duke University and University of Cambridge Prince of Wales Business & Sustainability.

Mr Mohammad Anisur Rahman joined BRAC in October 2016 as Director of Dairy and Food Enterprises. He leads BRAC’s social enterprises in the field of livestock, agriculture and food security. Prior to joining BRAC, he was working as Chief Operating Officer of the largest agro-processor in Bangladesh. He has also worked for reputed local and global organisations like Rahimafrooz, AC Nielsen and United Nations Mission in Georgia (UNOMIG). He has more than fifteen years of work experience as business development strategic leader.

William Asiko joined The Rockefeller Foundation in 2019 as the Managing Director for The Africa Regional Office. In this role, William oversees all Africa regional operations for the Foundation from the Nairobi office. Many of the Foundation’s core programs, from health to food, have been instrumental in bettering the lives of communities across sub-Saharan Africa. William was previously Executive Director of Grow Africa, an innovative agricultural development partnership between the World Economic Forum, the African Union and NEPAD that works to accelerate private sector investment into African agriculture. Under his leadership, Grow Africa ran over 40 programs across 12 countries in Africa with an ambitious growth plan to take the Grow Africa model across all countries in Africa.