Kent Fuchs

President, University of Florida

Dr. Fuchs became the 12th President of the University of Florida (UF) in January 2015. Under President Fuchs leadership, the university has developed shared goals for the decade ahead. UFs overarching aspiration is to be a premier comprehensive research university that the state, nation and world look to for leadership. Previous to the UF presidency, Fuchs was provost of Cornell University, where he also served as Cornells Joseph Silbert Dean of Engineering. He joined Cornell from Purdue University, where he headed the School of Electrical and Computer Engineering and was the Michael J. and Katherine R. Birck Distinguished Professor. He started his academic career at the University of Illinois where he was a professor in the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering and the Coordinated Science Laboratory. He is a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS), the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE), and the Association for Computing Machinery (ACM), and has received numerous awards for teaching and research. Fuchs earned his doctorate in electrical and computer engineering from the University of Illinois, and a Master of Divinity degree from Trinity Evangelical Divinity School. He also holds a Bachelor of Science degree in engineering from Duke University. Dr. Fuchs has set UF on a path to joining the top-five public research universities and becoming the nation’s number one university for comprehensive excellence. UF is working toward those goals through the creation of 500 new faculty positions, the addition of advanced and beautiful university facilities and an ongoing $3 billion fundraising campaign.

Jack Payne

Senior Vice President, Agriculture and Natural Resources, UF/IFAS

Dr. Jack Payne has served as the University of Florida’s senior vice president for agriculture and natural resources and led the UF Institute of Food and Agricultural Sciences since 2010. He has kept the organization strong in the face of lean state budgets and is coming off a year in which UF/IFAS earned more than $166 million in research grants and contracts as well as $47 million in private donations and pledges. He is a champion for agricultural research and has advocated to keep public funding and public attention focused on the need for science-based solutions to citrus greening and other threats to Florida agriculture and natural resources. His idea to start ISFS to make UF an international leader in food security issues is one of the UF Preeminence campaign’s most prominent initiatives. Dr. Payne is passionate about the research, teaching, and Extension missions of land-grant universities and insists that land-grants will have to play a central role in meeting many of the grand challenges of our times.

James L. Anderson

Program Facilitator & Moderator

Director, Institute for Sustainable Food Systems & Professor, Food and Resource Economics, UF/IFAS

Dr. Anderson is Professor of Food and Resource Economics and Director of the Institute for Sustainable Food Systems at the University of Florida. James Anderson has published numerous articles on natural resource management, fisheries and aquaculture economics, markets and international trade. Recent work has focused on the development of new fisheries performance indicators, modeling fisheries and aquaculture sectors, seafood and food security, and evaluating how the growth of aquaculture and reforms in fisheries management are changing the global seafood sector in both developed and developing nations. Prior to joining UF, James Anderson was the advisor for Oceans, Fisheries and Aquaculture and leader of the Global Program on Fisheries and Aquaculture at The World Bank. He has served as the editor the international journal of Marine Resource Economics (1999-2010). He received his Ph.D. from University of California, Davis, M.S. from University of Arizona and B.S. from the College of William and Mary.

Louise Fresco

Keynote Speaker

President, Wageningen University & Research, Wageningen, Netherlands

‘A powerful thinker and globe-trotting advisor on sustainability, Louise Fresco says it's time to think of food as a topic of social and economic importance on par with oil - that responsible agriculture and food consumption are crucial to world stability.” (TED.com, 2009)

Since July 2014 Professor Louise O. Fresco is President of Wageningen University & Research, in The Netherlands. She combines a long academic career as professor in Wageningen and Amsterdam, with various visiting professorships, with an extensive involvement in policy and development. She is a member of the Dutch Royal Academy of Sciences and of four foreign Academies, as well as Distinguished Visiting Scholar at the Academy of Sciences of South Africa. She served for nearly ten years as Assistant-Director General at the Food and Agriculture Organisation of the UN, spent extensive periods in Africa, Asia and Latin America. She is also a member of the Trilateral Commission. In 2014 the EU Commission asked her to chair the Evaluation of the Seventh Framework Program for Research. She received two national prizes - Comenius and Groeneveld - for her work.

Professor Fresco serves as a non-executive director of Unilever, was a member of the supervisory Board of Rabobank and of the Socio-Economic Council, the highest advisory body in the Netherlands. She is a member of the Council of Advisors of the World Food Prize. She is also involved in many philanthropic and cultural foundations, serves as a board member of the Concertgebouw Orchestra, previously a member of the Erasmus Prize Foundation and member of the editorial board of the Dutch literary magazine De Gids.

CRISTINA ESPEJO

Head of HR & ESAP (Environmental, Social Action Plan), Atlantic Sapphire, Miami, FL

Cristina Espejo leads globally the Human Resources and Environmental, Social Action Plan for Atlantic Sapphire, one of the world’s first land-based salmon farming companies. She reports directly to the CEO and is a member of the Leadership Team. Cristina enables the scaling up of the operations by focusing mainly on (1) Maintaining and achieving a high-performance culture; (2) Detailing talent strategy and execution plan; (3) Implementing structure on areas as HR and ESAP.

Andy Jarvis

Director of the Decision and Policy Analysis, International Centre for Tropical Agriculture, (CIAT), Cali, Colombia

Dr. Jarvis is the Director of the Decision and Policy Analysis Area in the International Centre for Tropical Agriculture (CIAT) and is a Flagship Leader on the CGIAR Research Program for Climate Change, Agriculture and Food Security (CCAFS), based in Cali, Colombia. Dr. Jarvis has extensive experience with cutting-edge scientific research in developing countries to support the goals of alleviating poverty and protecting essential ecosystem services of importance to humanity. His research has focused on the use of spatial analysis and environmental modeling to address issues such as agricultural biodiversity conservation, adaptation to climate change, and maintenance of ecosystem services.

Sylvia Wulf

President/CEO, AquaBounty, Maynard, MA

Sylvia Wulf is the President & CEO of AquaBounty Technologies, a publicly traded aquaculture and seafood biotechnology company leading their growth and commercialization efforts globally. AquaBounty Technologies markets the first approved bioengineered animal for food, approved in both the US and Canada. She was previously the President of the Manufacturing Division and SVP of Merchandising for US Foods, a $23 billion broad line foodservice distributor, where she was responsible for the P&L of the $10 billion protein and produce categories and the $1 billion Manufacturing Division of U.S. Foods Meat, Seafood and Produce operations.

Wulf has a reputation as a proven leader and accomplished executive with over 25 years of P&L experience driving both growth and improved performance. Her diverse career encompasses executive level positions in General Management, Sales, Marketing and M&A in the Consumer Packaged Goods, Distribution, Agribusiness and Ingredient Technology industries. Her success in growing revenue and market share coupled with her strengths in strategy development, mergers & acquisitions and operations positively impacted respected brands such as US Foods, Tyson, Sara Lee and Bunge. Sylvia was named one of the most powerful women in Illinois by the National Diversity Council in 2016.

Gary Wishnatzki

Co-Founder, Harvest CROO Robotics/Owner, Wish Farms, Plant City, FL

Gary Wishnatzki is the 3rd generation owner of Plant City, Florida based Wish Farms, a berry grower/shipper and has over 45 years of experience in the produce industry. Most recently he co-founded a start-up robotic company, Harvest CROO Robotics. The mission is to solve the problem of labor shortages through automation. The first project is to build a robotic strawberry picker.

Over the last two decades, Wish Farms has had several innovations. They include inventing a patented traceability system, How’s My Picking™, developing a bloom count model to forecast strawberry production and becoming a leader in the Southeast region for processed strawberry production. Gary oversees the businesses under their core values: Quality, Integrity and Responsiveness.

Matthew Johnston

Head, Global Vegetable Seeds and Flowers, Syngenta, Downers Grove, IL

Matthew Johnston leads Syngenta’s Global Vegetable Seed and Flower business from Downers Grove, IL, a suburb of Chicago. He is passionate about developing and promoting innovation in seeds that helps farmers overcome the challenges they face worldwide. Matthew’s early professional experience was in the family citrus business in South Florida and the past 25 years in the vegetable seed industry leading to various senior roles in sales, marketing and general management at leading companies in the industry. Prior to joining Syngenta in 2017 he was the CEO of HM.CLAUSE, a global vegetable seed company owned by Group Limagrain. Matthew holds a BS from University of Wyoming, earned his MBA from University of California Los Angeles (UCLA) and is a graduate of the Wedgeworth Leadership Institute at the University of Florida.

Pedro Sanchez

Professor, Soil and Water Sciences Department, UF/IFAS

Dr. Sanchez is Research Professor of Tropical Soils at the University of Florida Soil & Water Sciences Department, and core faculty of the Institute for Sustainable Food Systems. Prior to that he was Director of the Agriculture and Food Security Center and Senior Research Scholar at Columbia University’s Earth Institute. He served as Director General of the World Agroforestry Center (ICRAF) headquartered in Nairobi, Kenya from 1991-2001, as co-chair of the United Nations Millennium Project Hunger Task Force, and as director of the Millennium Villages Project. Sanchez is Professor Emeritus of Soil Science and Forestry at North Carolina State University where he served in the faculty from 1968-1991. He has lived in Cuba, the Philippines, Peru, Colombia and Kenya, and supervised research programs in over 25 countries of Latin America, Southeast Asia, and Africa. A native of Cuba, he received his BS, MS and PhD degrees at Cornell University.

Wendy-Lin Bartels

Moderator

Research Scientist, School of Forest Resources & Conservation, UF/IFAS

For the past 14 years Dr. Bartels has led studies and professional development opportunities related to community engagement, scientist-stakeholder networks, and inter-agency partnerships. She is especially interested in rural development, family farming, and the convening role universities can play to facilitate knowledge exchange among diverse stakeholder groups. Dr. Bartels has worked on several domestic and international climate-and-adaptation projects with multi-disciplinary teams of climate, crop, forestry, and hydrological modelers in their efforts to make research products more relevant to society.

Adegbola Adesogan

Director, Feed The Future Innovation Lab for Livestock Systems/Professor of Animal Sciences, UF/IFAS

Dr. Adesogan is a Professor of Animal Nutrition and Director and Principal Investigator of the Feed the Future Innovation Lab for Livestock Systems (LISL). His research interests include sustainable improvement of livestock production, using animal-source foods to improve human nutrition and health, improving the quality, conservation and utilization of forages to improve animal production and welfare; using feed additives to improve manipulate rumen digestion and enhance animal performance; using legumes to enhance the sustainability of animal production, and using plant nutraceuticals to improve animal health and performance.

Sarah Carte

Chair, Women’s Leadership Committee, Florida Farm Bureau

Sarah begins the fifth generation of farming in her family. She works at Dasher Farm, her father’s farming operation, processing small grains in their seed processing plant and growing hydroponic herbs and vegetables. Sarah has a bachelor’s degree in Agricultural Communications from the University of Florida.

Rob Horsch

Agricultural Research and Development Team Lead, FFAR/Gates Foundation, Retired, Seattle, WA

Dr. Rob Horsch recently retired from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation which he joined as a deputy director in November 2006 to develop and lead the science and technology initiative of the agricultural development program. He recruited and managed a team of program officers and other staff that made and managed a large and diverse portfolio of research and development grants aimed at improving the productivity of small holder farmers by improving the crops that poor farmers raise, and poor consumers eat. He currently serves on the Board of Directors of the Foundation for Food and Agricultural Research, and as an Advisor to the Global Commission on Adaptation and to the Global Farmer Network.

Rob is a leader in the effort to create agricultural technologies that help improve yields and incomes for farmers around the world. He joined Monsanto in 1981 and led the company's plant tissue culture and transformation efforts until 1995. In that capacity, he contributed to the development of the Bollgard, Yieldgard, and Roundup Ready traits in broad use today and directed an expanding research group to apply genetic transformation technology to many important crops, including potato, tomato, cotton, soybean, corn and wheat. From 1996 to 2005 he led the company's programs for International Development Partnerships with responsibility to help small-holder farmers in developing countries gain access to better agricultural products and technologies.

Nteranya Sanginga

Director General, International Institute of Tropical Agriculture, Ibadan, Nigeria

Dr. Sanginga has more than 21 years of experience in agricultural research and development, particularly in applied microbial ecology, plant nutrition, and integrated natural resources management in Africa, Latin America, and Southeast Asia, having worked with the University of Zimbabwe, IITA, International Atomic Energy Agency in Austria, and Tropical Soil Biology and Fertility Institute of CIAT. He is a board member of the Scientific and Technical Advisory Panel, administered by UNEP; advises the Global Environment Facility on sustainable land management global issues; is a member of the editorial board of Applied Ecology Journal; and an occasional editor for Soil Biology and Biochemistry, Biology and Fertility of Soil, Plant and Soil, Nutrient Cycling in agroecosystems, Soil Science Society of American Journal, African Crop Science Journal, and Nigeria Journal of Soil Science. He is currently the Director General of the International Institute of Tropical Agriculture with Head Quarter in Nigeria.

Jean-François Soussana

Vice President for International Policy, French National Institute for Agricultural Research (INRA), Paris, France

Since April 2017, Dr. Soussana has been Vice-Chair of INRA for international affairs, after being Scientific Director for environment since 2010. Since 1998, he has served as a member of the Working Group II of IPCC and was Lead Author for the 3rd, 4th and 5th Assessment Reports and is now lead author for the Special Report on land and climate change. He coordinates national and European (EC FP5, FP7 and H2020) research projects on climate change and agriculture. Dr. Soussana has led the sectorial committee on ecosystems and sustainable development of the French research agency (ANR) and is member of the governing boards of the joint programing of research on agriculture, food security and climate change (FACCE JPI, 22 countries) and of the climate KIC (European Knowledge and Innovation Community).

Frank Asche

Professor, School of Forest Resources & Conservation, UF/IFAS

Dr. Asche is a natural resource economist in the School of Natural Resources and Environment at the University of Florida. has published widely on food production and markets, but also on energy and safety issues, in economics and general interest journals. Recent activities have focused on the use of ecolabels for seafood, seafood trade and food security, the role of innovation and productivity growth in increasing aquaculture production and regime shifts in seafood and energy prices. He is President of the International Association of Aquaculture Economics and Management, and associate editor for the journals Marine Resource Economics and Marine Policy.

J. Glenn Morris, Jr.

Moderator

Director, Emerging Pathogens Institute and Professor of Medicine (Infectious Diseases), UF/IFAS

Dr. Glenn Morris became the director of the Emerging Pathogen Institute in August 2007. He was recruited from the University of Maryland, Baltimore, where he was a professor and chairman of the department of epidemiology and preventive medicine in the university's school of medicine, as well as an interim dean of the school of public health. In addition to his position as EPI director, Dr. Morris is a professor of infectious diseases in the UF College of Medicine.

Morris has worked in public health and pathogen related fields for more than 30 years, and has had a continuing fascination with emerging pathogens. At EPI, Morris has helped to shape the creative vision behind a web of campus-wide projects to anticipate, understand and control the emergence of new, disease-causing microorganisms.

Ilaria Capua

Director, One Health Center of Excellence/Professor, Animal Sciences Department, UF/IFAS

Dr. Capua leads the One Health Center of Excellence, a UF center that aims to tackle international health challenges through interdisciplinarity. As the new director of One Health, Dr. Capua plans to expand the outlook of the center beyond the boundaries of biomedical disciplines. “The One Health concept in the biomedical disciplines is already up and running,” she said. “The veterinary, medical and agricultural communities are already working together, and this collaboration should be fostered and enhanced because there is much more to do.” However, she believes that the time is ripe to expand the One Health vision to other disciplines, and she intends to use her breadth of vision, acquired during her years serving as a member of Parliament, to facilitate a wider interaction between experts in diverse fields.

Lisa Conti

Director of Strategic Initiatives and Chief Science Officer, Florida Department of Agriculture and Consumer Services

Dr. Lisa Conti, the Florida Department of Agriculture and Consumer Services’ first Chief Science Officer, is Director of Strategic Initiatives. She was previously Deputy Commissioner overseeing the divisions of Aquaculture, Plant Industry, Food Safety, Animal Industry and Agricultural Environmental Services. Prior appointments were with the Florida Department of Health, as Division Director of Environmental Health, Florida State Public Health Veterinarian and State HIV/AIDS Surveillance Coordinator.

She has authored or co-authored numerous journal articles on One Health, public health, HIV/AIDS surveillance, vector-borne and zoonotic disease topics. She is Coeditor with Dr. Peter Rabinowitz, of the book Human-Animal Medicine: Clinical Approaches to Zoonoses, Toxicants and Other Shared Health Risks and Coeditor of Confronting Emerging Zoonoses: The One Health Paradigm.

Dr. Conti earned her Doctor of Veterinary Medical degree from the University of Florida, Master of Public Health (Public Health Administration) from the University of South Florida and Bachelor of Science (Chemistry/Math) from the University of Miami. She is a Certified Public Manager through Florida State University, and Board Certified in Preventive Medicine through the American College of Veterinary Preventive Medicine.

Jessica Fanzo

Bloomberg Distinguished Associate Professor of Global Food & Agricultural Policy and Ethics, Johns Hopkins University

Dr. Jessica Fanzo, PhD is the Bloomberg Distinguished Associate Professor of Global Food and Agriculture Policy and Ethics at the Berman Institute of Bioethics, the Bloomberg School of Public Health, and the Nitze School of Advanced International Studies (SAIS) at the Johns Hopkins University in the USA. She also serves as the Director of Hopkins’ Global Food Policy and Ethics Program. From 2017 to 2019, Jessica served as the Co-Chair of the Global Nutrition Report and the UN High Level Panel of Experts on Food Systems and Nutrition. Before coming to Hopkins, she has also held positions at Columbia University, the Earth Institute, Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations, the World Food Programme, Bioversity International, and the Millennium Development Goal Centre at the World Agroforestry Center in Kenya. Jessica has a PhD in nutrition from the University of Arizona.

Barbara Kowalcyk

Assistant Professor, Department of Food Science and Technology, Ohio State University

Dr. Barbara Kowalcyk is faculty at The Ohio State University in the Department of Food Science and Technology with courtesy appointments in the College of Public Health and OSU’s Translational Data Analytics Institute. She has a Doctorate in Environmental Health with a focus in Epidemiology and Biostatistics from the University of Cincinnati, and is a recognized expert in food safety and has broad experience and training in epidemiology, public health informatics, risk science, regulatory decision making, and public policy. For over 15 years, Dr. Kowalcyk’s efforts have focused on advancing a more systems-based approach to food safety that promotes evidence-based decision making from farm to fork to physician and considers the broader connectedness of human, animal, and environmental health. She has served on many national committees, including two National Academy of Sciences committees and her current appointment to the U.S. Food and Drug Administration’s (FDA’s) Science Board. Her research interests include linking public health information with data from across the food system to enhance the understanding of foodborne disease epidemiology, supporting the development of evidence-informed policies and practices that prevent foodborne illness, and changing behaviors around food safety across the food system.

Jaap Wagenaar

Professor, Clinical Infectiology, Utrecht University, Utrecht, The Netherlands/Wageningen University and Research, Wageningen, The Netherlands

Dr. Wagenaar is professor of Clinical Infectiology, his research looks at how micro-organisms move from animals to humans. He also researches the growing resistance of bacteria against antibiotics. Dr. Wagenaar looks for ways to stay one step ahead of these disease incarnations. He is currently coordinator of a large EU-project on antimicrobial resistance (EFFORT). He is a member of the WHO-AGISAR-group (Advisory Group on Integrated Surveillance of Antimicrobial Resistance) and WHO-Global Foodborne Infections Network, a global capacity building network. He is director of the WHO Collaborating Center for Campylobacter and of the OIE-reference laboratory for Campylobacteriosis, and is acting frequently as expert for WHO, FAO and OIE.

Senthold Asseng

Professor, Agricultural & Biological Engineering, UF/IFAS

Dr. Asseng is a professor with the Department of Agricultural and Biological Engineering at the University of Florida. He works on systems analysis to understand, compare and improve the productivity and sustainability of atmosphere-crop-soil systems changing over time, space and scales. He is a co-Leader of AgMIP-Wheat, an international team of wheat modelers and experimentalists as part of the Agricultural Model Intercomparison and Improvement Project, and the Principal Investigator of the South East Climate Consortium (SECC). He is the elected Chair of the Expert Working Group Wheat Plant and Crop Modeling of the international Wheat Initiative, and author of more than 150 refereed scientific articles.

Cheryl Palm

Research Professor, Agricultural and Biological Engineering and Core Faculty Member of Institute for Sustainable Food Systems, UF/IFAS

Dr. Palm is a professor with the Department of Agricultural and Biological Engineering at the University of Florida. Her research focuses on tropical land use, especially soil nutrient dynamics in farming systems of Africa, including options for soil and land rehabilitation. Her most recent work investigates the tradeoffs and synergies among agricultural intensification strategies, the environment, and rural livelihoods. She is Deputy Director of Vital Signs Africa, a project developing and implementing integrated monitoring systems in agricultural landscapes. Prior to joining UF, Dr. Palm was a Senior Research Scientist and Director of Research in the AgCenter at Columbia University.

Gunnar Knapp

Professor Emeritus, Economics & Director, Institute for Social and Economic Research, University of Alaska, Anchorage, AK

Gunnar Knapp is Professor Emeritus of Economics at the Institute of Social and Economic Research (ISER) at the University of Alaska Anchorage (USA), where he worked for 35 years after receiving his Ph.D. in Economics from Yale University in 1981. Prior to his retirement in 2016, Dr. Knapp served three years as Director of ISER.

Dr. Knapp has been studying fisheries management, fisheries markets, and the world seafood industry for more than thirty years. Focusing his research initially on Alaska salmon markets and the implications of salmon aquaculture for wild fisheries, he broadened his research over time to the study of global seafood markets and the global seafood industry. During the 1990s he began the Salmon Market Information Service for the Alaska Seafood Marketing Institute. He has written numerous articles and reports on a wide range of topics including salmon markets, trends in limited entry permit ownership, effects of halibut and crab IFQs, implications of climate change for fisheries, and economic impacts of fisheries and aquaculture. He helped found the North American Association of Fisheries Economists (NAAFE) in 2001. He has visited and given presentations for seafood industry organizations across Alaska and in many seafood producing and consuming countries.

Dr. Knapp is currently writing a book about The Economics of Fish, which is intended as an introduction to the insights provided by economics about fisheries, aquaculture and the seafood industry.

Susan S. Jackson

President, International Seafood Sustainability Foundation, McLean, VA

Susan S. Jackson, President and member of the Board of Directors of the International Seafood Sustainability Foundation (ISSF), has led the organization from its inception in 2008, having facilitated both its legal formation and its substantial growth. Under Jackson’s leadership, ISSF has grown from a small association of eight global tuna processors into the world’s premier organization uniting industry leaders, the environmental community and leading scientists in the creation, advocacy and adoption of science-based best practices that advance the long-term sustainability of global tuna fisheries. Today, the organization boasts 25 participating companies, representing approximately 75 percent of annual canned tuna production.

Jackson’s deep knowledge, energy and passion for pursuing collaborative approaches to issues of sustainability led her to become a presenter at the 2015 TEDx at the University of Notre Dame, where she spoke about Creating Collaboration from Contentiousness.

Jim Harper

Jim W. Harper is the communications manager for the Feed the Future Innovation Lab for Livestock Systems based at the University of Florida and supporting research in Africa and Asia. He earned an M.A. in mass communication from UF in 1996 and an M.S. in environmental studies from Florida International University in 2014. He worked on fish habitat for NOAA, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, and created the Our Florida Reefs program for Florida. He spent 10 years as an environmental journalist in Miami, published more than 300 articles, and founded the climate change activist group 350 South Florida.

Dickson Despommier

Professor Emeritus, Environmental Health Science, Columbia University & Author of The Vertical Farm: Feeding the World in the 21st

Dickson Despommier is Emeritus Professor of Public Health and Microbiology. He earned his Ph.D. degree in microbiology from the University of Notre Dame, and for 28 years conducted laboratory-based biomedical research with NIH-sponsored support at Columbia University. He has always been interested in the environment and the damages caused by our encroachment into natural systems (mostly destruction of hardwood forests to make room for agriculture).

At present, he is engaged in a project whose mission is to produce significant amounts of food crops in tall buildings and situated in densely populated urban centers (see: www.verticalfarm.com and The Vertical Farm: feeding the world in the 21st century, Thomas Dunne Books/St. Martin’s Press, New York, 2010; paperback, Picadore Pubs. 2011). This initiative has grown in acceptance over the last five years to the point of stimulating planners and developers around the world to incorporate them into their visions for the future city. There are now many hundreds of vertical farms located throughout in Europe, Korea, Japan, China, Singapore, Panama, Canada, and the United States.

Rafael Flor

Senior Program Officer, Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation’s Agricultural Development Team

Rafael Flor is a Senior Program Officer in the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation’s Agricultural Development team. He has 20 years of progressive work experience in international development. He has held positions with the Rockefeller Foundation, the Earth Institute at Columbia University, Armajaro Trading (now Ecom Trading), the MDG Centre | West & Central Africa, the United Nations Development Programme, and Escuela Agricola Panamericana, Zamorano. Mr. Flor has served as a member of the World Food Programme’s Working Group on Productive Safety Nets, the United Nations Millennium Project Task Force on Hunger, Peer Reviewer of the 2006 Environmental Performance Index, and the Danish Think Tank on Prevention of Food Loss and Waste’s Advisory Panel. He holds a Master’s degree in Public Administration from the School of International and Public Affairs (SIPA) at Columbia University, and a Bachelor’s degree in Agricultural Engineering from Escuela Agrícola Panamerica, Zamorano.

John Connelly

President, National Fisheries Institute

John Connelly is President of the National Fisheries Institute, America’s leading trade association advocating for the full seafood supply chain. NFI manages the seafood industry’s public policy, communications, and reputation initiatives. He has served on the Boards of the International Seafood Sustainability Foundation, Marine Stewardship Council, International Coalition of Fisheries Associations, ALLFISH Board (a public-private partnership with the World Bank), Marine Fisheries Advisory Council, Seafood Industry Research Fund, and the Alliance for a Stronger FDA. In addition, Connelly was a U.S. Naval Officer aboard ship and in shore Reserve assignments and retired as a Navy Captain, with specializations in political-military affairs. He has been a guest lecturer on public policy, ethics, supply chain, and fisheries management at Georgetown University, George Washington University, College of the Holy Cross, and National University of Ireland Galway.

Martin Smith

George M. Woodwell Distinguished Professor of Environmental Economics, Nicholas School of the Environment, Duke University

Martin D. Smith is the George M. Woodwell Distinguished Professor of Environmental Economics in the Nicholas School of the Environment at Duke University where he teaches a course called “Should I eat fish? Economics, Ecology, and Human Health.” He earned a PhD at University of California, Davis and a BA at Stanford University. Smith studies the economics of the oceans and has published research on fisheries and aquaculture, ecosystem-based management, genetically modified foods, the global seafood trade, and coastal climate change adaptation. He has served on the Scientific and Statistical Committee of the Mid-Atlantic Fishery Management Council, as Editor-in-Chief of the journal Marine Resource Economics, and as a member of the Ocean Studies Board of the U.S. National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine. He has published over 100 scholarly articles, book chapters, and reviews, including works in The American Economic Review, Nature, Science, and Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. Smith has made appearances on NPR and BBC Radio to discuss seafood issues and has received national and international awards, including an Aldo Leopold Leadership Fellowship. His research has been funded by the National Science Foundation and National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.