2016-12-21

Faculty, staff, and students are invited to attend an ACES International Seminar:

Trade Capacity Building in Agriculture and Opportunities for Engagement with the Foreign Agricultural Service (FAS)

Presented by Jocelyn G. Brown, Deputy Administrator, Office of Capacity Building and Development; and Jim Suits, International Program Specialist, both of the Foreign Agricultural Service, U.S. Department of Agriculture

Pizza will be served.

Jocelyn G. Brown is the Deputy Administrator in USDA’s Foreign Agricultural Service (FAS).  In this position, she oversees USDA’s international food and technical assistance programs, including the McGovern-Dole Food for Education and Child Nutrition Program, the Food for Progress Program, the Cochran and Borlaug Fellowship Programs, and numerous technical assistance projects that promote U.S. government food security and trade capacity building goals.  Before serving as Deputy Administrator, she covered trade policy issues for Asia, Africa and the Middle East, concentrating on China, India, and Africa Growth and Opportunity Act agricultural policy issues.  She was also heavily involved in the development of USDA’s food security policy for the Group of Eight and Group of Twenty negotiations.  During 2010, she implemented the first Feed the Future strategy for post-earthquake Haiti, and worked directly for the Secretary of State’s Hillary Clinton’s Chief of Staff.  From 1998-2006, she worked directly with international organizations such as the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations and the Inter-American Institute for Cooperation in Agriculture.  Prior to coming to USDA in 1998, she worked the District of Columbia Control Board when the city was under receivership and negotiated the city’s largest municipal bond sale ever.  She was a Peace Corps volunteer at the Northwest Frontier Province Agriculture University in Peshawar, Pakistan from 1988-1990.  She holds an MBA with a concentration in international development from George Washington University and graduated magna cum laude from Harvard University in American Literature.

Jim Suits is an International Program Specialist in USDA’s Foreign Agricultural Service (FAS). In his role, he supports FAS’ scientific exchange programs by advising on and implementing best practices of project management, and monitoring and evaluation (M&E). One facet of this support is increasing awareness of these programs at land-grant universities throughout the United States, to link these programs with the best experts that U.S. agriculture has to offer. Prior to this assignment, he co-managed two projects in West Africa that built M&E capacity of local institutions, in which he oversaw the agency’s first multi-million dollar grants to African universities; and a third project in agricultural statistics and data systems that included work with the statistical agencies in Rwanda, Tanzania, and Bangladesh. A strong believer in evidence-based program management, he has conducted fieldwork in nine countries and 19 states. He holds a Masters of Agricultural Science from Colorado State University and a BA in Political Science from the University of Michigan.

ACES Agricultural and Biological Engineering Animal Sciences Crop Sciences Division of Nutritional Sciences Food Science and Human Nutrition Human and Community Development Natural Resources and Environmental Sciences Office of International Programs Office of Research Seminar Monday, February 27, 2017 -
12:00 to 13:00
Heritage Room, College of ACES Library

Show more