Harvesting Open Data for Nutrition Security

Dr. Stanley Wood

Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation

Dr. Stanley Wood joined the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation in early 2013. Prior to this work, he was a senior research fellow at the International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI) in Washington, DC. He joined IFPRI in 1995 and until 1997 was outposted to the Centro Internacional de Agricultura Tropical (CIAT) in Cali, Colombia working on impact assessment studies for regional agricultural research. He later led IFPRI’s research on spatial analysis in a policy context. Dr. Wood was a co-principal investigator for HarvestChoice, a project funded by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation that generates knowledge products to help guide strategic investments in improving the productivity and profitability of cropping systems in sub-Saharan Africa and South Asia. Before joining IFPRI, Dr. Wood served as an independent consultant to multilateral and bilateral development organizations on natural resources, land use, and agricultural systems modeling, based in Libya, Italy and Indonesia. Dr. Wood earned his M.Sc. in water resources development from the University of Birmingham, and his M.Sc. in agricultural development as well as his Ph.D. in economics from the University of London.

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Mr. Casper Sitemba, Government of Kenya

Government of Kenya

Mr. Casper Sitemba is a Senior Director for Intergovernmental Relations at the Executive Office of the Deputy President in Kenya. He has served as the point of contact for the Government of Kenya to Global Open Data for Agriculture and Nutrition (GODAN) and is a member of the GODAN steering committee for the GODAN 2016 World Summit. Previously, he served as the Executive Director of the United Republican Party (URP), a member of the Jubilee Coalition, which won the 2013 Kenya General Elections. Mr. Sitemba was a member of the team tasked to strategize and mobilize young voters to support the ambitious Jubilee manifesto in the run up to the 2013 General Elections. Currently, his role involves coordinating public engagement initiatives championed by the Deputy President including managing large-scale high-level relationships between the Office of the Deputy President and ministries, departments and agencies, county governments, constitutional commissions, private sector, civil society organizations, as well as local and international development organizations. Mr. Sitemba has a Bachelor of Laws Degree from the University of Nairobi and is a Certified Public Accountant (CPA) from Strathmore University.Certified Public Accountant (CPA) from Strathmore University.

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Dr. Kathryn Russell

The ONE Campaign

Dr. Kathryn Russell joined The ONE Campaign as the Policy Director for Agriculture and Inclusive Growth in May 2014 and was the lead co-author of ONE’s 2015 Poverty is Sexist report. Prior to joining ONE, Dr. Russell served as the Chief of Staff and Senior Policy Adviser in the U.S. Secretary of State’s Office of Global Food Security, which leads food and nutrition security and agricultural development policy and negotiations for the Department and co-leads the Obama Administration’s flagship development program, Feed the Future, with USAID. Also at the State Department, under an American Association for the Advancement of Science fellowship, Dr. Russell served as a food security officer in the Bureau of International Organization Affairs, where she coordinated the U.S. Delegations to the World Summit on Food Security and the UN Committee on World Food Security and served as the bureau expert on emergency humanitarian food aid. Before that, Dr. Russell was a planetary geologist, part of the NASA Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter team and working at the Smithsonian Center for Earth and Planetary Studies, the International Space Science Institute in Switzerland, and at the University of Copenhagen’s Niels Bohr Center for Ice and Climate under an American-Scandinavian Fellowship. She holds a Ph.D. in Geological Sciences from Brown University and B.A. in Astronomy and Physics from Boston University.

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Ms. Liz Carolan

Open Data Institute (ODI)

Ms. Liz Carolan joined the Open Data Institute (ODI) in February 2014 and manages the ODI’s collaboration with the Open Data for Development (OD4D) Network. Ms. Carolan manages ODI’s work in global development, which includes designing support programmes for governments and open data initiatives across the world. In this role she has advised governments in over 25 countries, established the Open Data Leaders Network, and written on change management and open data for agriculture. She joined the ODI from the Institute for Government (IfG), where she developed and project managed learning programmes for politicians, public officials and those engaging with government. While at the IfG, she took a secondment to the Africa Governance Initiative, providing support to new cabinet leaders in Sierra Leone. In the earlier part of her career, Ms. Carolan managed a community initiative for migrants in Dublin, carried out research into political participation in the Balkans, and taught International Relations in Australia. She holds a B.A. from the University College Dublin and a MSc from the London School of Economics.

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Dr. Robin Lougee

IBM Research

Dr. Robin Lougee is the IBM Research Lead for Consumer Products & Agriculture. Dr. Lougee serves on the Advisory Committee for the World Agritech Investment Summit and chairs the 2016 Syngenta Crop Challenge Award in Analytics prize committee. She is an industrial research scientist with a strong track record of delivering innovation to IBM and its customers. Dr. Lougee pioneered the creation of COIN-OR, an open-source foundry for computational operations research, and led its growth to an independent non-profit that has served the scientific and business community for over 10 years. She was elected to the Board of INFORMS, the largest society in the world for professionals in the field of operations research, management science and analytics, Chair of the INFORMS Computing Society, and President of the Fora of Women in ORMS. She is an Associate Editor of Operations Research and of Surveys in Operations Research. Dr. Lougee earned a Ph.D. in Mathematical Sciences from Clemson University in 1993.

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Ms. Jamie Adams

U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA)

Ms. Jaime Adams is the Senior Advisor for International Affairs for the Chief Scientist of the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA). She has served in this capacity since 2011 and is responsible for strategic management the Chief Scientist priority activities related to USDA international science and research activities. She was one of the lead architects of, and is now the lead coordinator for U.S. Government (USG) participation in, the Global Open Data for Agriculture and Nutrition (GODAN) initiative. In the past, she has held roles as a senior roles in the USG including Chief of Staff to the Ambassador-level Coordinating Director at the U.S. Embassy in Kabul, Afghanistan (2010-2011), contributing to the management of U.S. civilian economic and development assistance programs in Afghanistan. Ms. Adams joined USDA in 2004 and has also served as the Chief of Staff of the USDA Foreign Agriculture Service (FAS) and budget and management positions within the Grain Inspection, Packers and Stockyards Administration (GIPSA). Ms. Adams holds a Masters of Science in Agricultural Economics and a Bachelor of Science in International, Resource and Consumer Economics from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.