Board of Trustees
The IFPRI Board of Trustees is responsible for setting policies and evaluating and monitoring management’s actions. As a member of CGIAR, the IFPRI Board of Trustees is comprised of two members of the CGIAR Integrated Partnership Board (IPB), one member of the IPB Audit, Finance, and Risk Committee (IPB-AFRC) and 3 IFPRI-specific members. Summaries of Board meetings held since 2022 can be found here.
IFPRI Board Chair, France
Ghana
USA
India
Zimbabwe
Germany
Kenya
Pascal Lamy
IFPRI Board Chair, France
Pascal Lamy holds leadership roles in a wide range of global and regional organizations, including most notably as the Vice-President of the Paris Peace Forum, President of the European branch of the Brunswick Group, and Coordinator of the Jacques Delors Institutes (Paris, Berlin, Brussels). Through his extensive engagements on complex policy matters at the global, regional, and national levels, Lamy maintains his strong focus on the nexus of sustainability, international trade, global governance, and poverty reduction amid growing challenges facing the world.
Lamy served two consecutive terms as Director General of the World Trade Organization (WTO) (2005–2013) and was Trade Commissioner of the European Commission (1999–2004). He is now chair of the European Starfish mission, the Danone mission committee, and the Aspen Africa-Europe meetings, among others. He co-chairs the Antarctica 2020 coalition and is a member of several boards of directors, including the Mo Ibrahim Foundation and the European Climate Foundation (ECF). Pascal is senior advisor to Trade Mark East Africa (TMEA) and the World Trade Board, member of the Advisory Board of Transparency International, the Oxford Martin School, the Back to Blue Initiative (The Economist), Covid Gap (Duke University), and the World Risk Report (WEF). Lamy is also a distinguished professor at the China Europe International Business School, Shanghai, and is a member of the Senior Advisory Council of the Beijing Forum.
Ernest Aryeetey
Ghana
Ernest Aryeetey is an Emeritus Professor of Development Economics at the Institute of Statistical, Social and Economic Research (ISSER), University of Ghana. Until July 2024, he was the Secretary-General of the African Research Universities Alliance (ARUA), a network of 20 of Africa’s flagship universities. He is a former Vice-Chancellor of University of Ghana and was also previously Director of ISSER. Ernest Aryeetey was the first Director of the Africa Growth Initiative of Brookings Institution, Washington D.C.
He has held academic appointments at the School of Oriental and African Studies (London), Yale University and Swarthmore College in the U.S. at various points in time. Ernest Aryeetey was a member of the Governing Council of the United Nations University (2016-2019) and was also previously Chair of the Advisory Board of the UNU-World Institute for Development Economics Research (Helsinki). He is currently the Board Chair of the African Economic Research Consortium. He was, until December 2021, the Board Chair of Stanbic Bank Ghana Limited. He holds honorary degrees from University of Sussex (UK), Lund University (Sweden), Stellenbosch University (South Africa), University of Ghana, Legon (Ghana), University of Health and Applied Sciences (Ghana), University of Glasgow (UK), and University of the Witwatersrand (South Africa).
One of Ernest Aryeetey’s strategic priorities as Vice-Chancellor at the University of Ghana was to develop the University into a research-intensive institution that supports structural transformation in Africa. As ARUA Secretary-General his major pre-occupation was to show that collaboration was key in making African universities more competitive globally while staying relevant to their communities.
Phyllis Caldwell
USA
Phyllis Caldwell is an independent financial services professional and corporate director. She served as the non-Executive Chairperson of Ocwen Financial Corporation, a mortgage banking company from 2016-2023 and served on the Ocwen Board of Directors until May 2024. She is currently Vice-Chair of the Chemonics International Board of Directors and serves on the boards of OneMain Holdings, JBG Smith Properties, and Oaktree Specialty Lending Corporation. She also served on the Board of CIFOR (Center for International Forestry Research) from 2013-2019 and was Audit Committee Chair from 2014-2019 and Vice Chair from 2017-2019. Ms. Caldwell has spent much of her career in banking and financial services primarily in the areas of housing and economic development.
Ms. Caldwell was Chief of the Homeownership Preservation Office at the U.S. Department of the Treasury from November 2009 to December 2011, responsible for oversight of the U.S. housing market stabilization, economic recovery, and foreclosure prevention initiatives established through the Troubled Asset Relief Program. From December 2007 to November 2009, Ms. Caldwell was the President and Chief Executive Officer of the Washington Area Women’s Foundation. Prior to such time, Ms. Caldwell spent twenty years in banking including eleven years at Bank of America where she held various leadership roles including President of Community Development Banking.
Ms. Caldwell received her Master of Business Administration from the Robert H. Smith School of Business at the University of Maryland, College Park and holds a Bachelor of Arts in Sociology, also from the University of Maryland. She served on the Robert H. Smith School’s Dean’s Advisory Board from 2013-2019 and was an Executive-in-Residence at the Smith School until May 2024.
Ramesh Chand*
India
Ramesh Chand is the Member of National Institution for Transforming India, NITI Aayog, the apex think-tank of Government of India, and Chairman of the Institute of Economic Growth, New Delhi. He is also member of the Policy Advisory Council (PAC) of the Australian Center for International Agricultural Research (ACIAR). In the past, he was Member of the Fifteenth Finance Commission of Government of India, Member of Board of Trustees of International Maize and Wheat Improvement Center (CIMMYT), Mexico and Member of Global Future Council on the Future of Food Security and Agriculture, World Economic Forum for 2016-18 term. Prof. Chand has a Ph.D. in Agricultural Economics from Indian Agricultural Research Institute (IARI), New Delhi, India. He has been actively involved in policy research and formulation in the areas of agriculture and allied sectors, food security, nutrition, science policy, impact analysis, food systems etc. and has worked in senior academic positions at National Institute of Agricultural Economics and Policy Research, New Delhi, Institute of Economic Growth and Punjab Agricultural University. He was Visiting Professor at University of Wollongong, NSW Australia and at Institute of Developing Economies, Chiba Shi, Japan. He has also been Consultant with international organizations such as FAO, UNDP, ESCAP, UNCTAD, Commonwealth and World Bank. Prof. Chand has authored seven books and published more than 100 research papers in reputed national and international journals in the areas of agriculture growth and development, demand and supply, food policy, farmers’ issues, agricultural markets and trade. In recognition of his contributions, Prof. Ramesh Chand has received several national and international awards.
Rachel Chikwamba*
Zimbabwe
Rachel Chikwamba is the Group Executive for Advanced Chemistry and Life Sciences at the Council for Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR), a premier African research and technology organization. With a PhD in Genetics, Chikwamba rose through the research and innovation ranks to the position of Chief Scientist and went on to become an executive responsible for key portfolios, including organizational strategic partnerships and business development. In recent roles, she has been the lead executive in the development of the CSIR’s current organizational strategy, as well as the commercialization strategy, culminating in the launch of the CSIR’s standalone company, mandated to commercialize research outputs across the organization’s many disciplinary focus areas. In her current and other roles, Chikwamba has been responsible for leading businesses with different focus areas, but a common mandate and vision. In her current role, she leads a portfolio of research, development and innovation that encompasses agriculture and food, chemicals, materials, pharmaceuticals, health and related sectors, working collaboratively with local and global partners. She has mobilized resources from competitive sources national private and public partnerships, development banks, foundations, international public funders such as the European Commission framework, among others. Chikwamba has served on advisory and governance boards of organizations in agriculture and health, including ACCESS, ICRISAT-IN, ACIAR, Wits Health Consortium, the South Africa Medical Research Council, among others. She also serves on the high-level African Panel on Emerging Technologies (APET), advising the African Union Member States on harnessing established and emerging technologies for Africa’s economic development.
Susanne Frueh*
Germany
Susanne Frueh is a recognized leader in system-wide and agency-specific organizational effectiveness, risk management, fiduciary standards and change management of large international institutions. This is due largely to her having spent most of her almost 40-year professional career in 8 different parts of the United Nations System. Her work experience covers the three main oversight functions (evaluation, internal audit, and investigation), project management, sustainable development, humanitarian assistance, food aid and climate change adaptation. While at the World Food Programme she oversaw the evaluations of numerous food aid and food security assistance projects and helped shape the results based management in the organisation.. In her last two positions she was directing internal audit, investigation, and evaluation at UNESCO and at the OSCE. A former chair of the UN Representatives for Internal Audit and the UN Evaluation Group, she has also been serving on the Audit Committees of UNRWA, UNICEF and UNHCR, serving as chair of one of them. She is also currently a member of the Accreditation Panel of the Adaptation Fund where she reviews whether applicants meet the fiduciary and environmental, social and gender policy standards of the Fund and serves as the chair of the Advisory Board of the German Institute for Development Evaluation (DEVAL).
Susanne has a Masters of Science in Geography from the University of South Carolina, a certificate in corruption control from Harvard University and is a credentialed evaluator as well as a certified auditor.
Jill J. McCluskey
USA
JILL J. McCLUSKEY is Regents Professor and Director of the School of Economic Sciences at Washington State University.
She is the President Elect of the International Association of Agricultural Economists (IAAE) and former President and Fellow of the Agricultural and Applied Economics Association (AAEA) as well as Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS). She chairs the Board on Agriculture and Natural Resources of the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering and Medicine. She is a past Editor of the American Journal of Agricultural Economics. An award-winning researcher, Dr. McCluskey is widely published and cited on topics including product quality and reputation, retail food markets and food access, nutrition, economics of new technology, and the representation and success of women in academia.
She has served as major professor to 49 PhD graduates, many of whom are professors at major universities. She received bachelor’s degrees in Business Economics and Political Science from the University of California, Santa Barbara, her M.S. in Economics from Georgetown University, and her M.S. and Ph.D. in Agricultural and Resource Economics from the University of California, Berkeley, where she was named alumna of the year in 2022.
Tavneet Suri
Kenya
Tavneet Suri is the Louis E. Seley Professor of Applied Economics and a Professor of Applied Economics at the MIT Sloan School of Management. Her expertise is in the role of technology in Sub-Saharan Africa.
Tavneet is an editor at the Review of Economics and Statistics; Co-Chair of the Agricultural Technology Adoption Initiative at J-PAL; Co-Chair of the Digital Identification and Finance Initiative at J-PAL Africa; a member of the Executive Committee at J-PAL; and a Faculty Research Fellow at the National Bureau of Economic Research.
She holds a BA in economics from Cambridge University, UK, and an MA in International and Development Economics (IDE) and a PhD in economics, both from Yale University.