Pedro Arias | Regional Office for Europe and Central Asia of the FAO (REU), Hungary

Pedro Arias is an economist working in the Regional Office for Europe and Central Asia of the FAO (REU), specializing on the analysis of market governance structures. Before joining REU, he worked in the Trade and Markets Division of FAO for two decades as an analyst of agricultural commodity markets and FDI in agriculture. During the pandemic, he developed a methodology for analyzing the consequences of the pandemic in the agriculture sector of countries in the Western Balkans, the Caucasus and Central Asia. Pedro is native of Uruguay and has a PhD from the University of Reading, UK.

Fatma Nil Döner | Istanbul Medeniyet University, Turkey

Fatma Nil Döner is Assistant Professor of International Relations at Istanbul Medeniyet University, Turkey. She has had research positions at Oxford University, Athens Agricultural University, and Kyoto University. Her research interests include rural transformation processes in Turkey with a multidisciplinary perspective combining rural sociology, political science, and international political economy. Within the broad scope of rural transformation, she is particularly interested in rural governance, crises, and livelihood strategies. She is member of the Executive Committee of the European Society for Rural Sociology (ESRS).

Stephan Hubertus Gay | Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), France

Stephan Hubertus Gay is Senior Agricultural Policy Analyst at the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) in Paris. He coordinates the OECD-FAO Agricultural Outlook and is the principle analyst for dairy and oilseed markets. Before joining the OECD, Stephan Hubertus Gay has worked in similar functions for the European Commission, the Thünen Institute and ISTA Mielke GmbH (Oilworld). He studied agricultural economics in Germany, the United Kingdom, the Netherlands and South Africa and obtained his PhD at the University of KwaZulu-Natal (South Africa).

Petra Jacobi – Head of Section for Rural Development & Food Security, Gesellschaft für Internationale Zusammenarbeit (GIZ)

Petra Jacobi is heading the Section Rural Development & Food Security in the Sectoral Department of GIZ, based in Germany. The unit is responsible for planning, backstopping and monitoring of GIZ’s broad program portfolio in this field. She has over 25 years of experience.  An agronomist by profession, she has worked in Asia, before her regional focus shifted to Africa. Her expertise covers rural development, agriculture-based development, value chain management, natural resources management and climate change.

Doris Marquardt | European Commission, Belgium

Doris Marquardt works for the European Commission, in the Directorate-General for Agriculture and Rural Development since July 2019 focussing on the digitalization of the agricultural sector and rural areas and at Research and Innovation. Before, she held positions at the European Environment Agency, the German Permanent Representation, the German Federal Ministry of Food and Agriculture, the European Network for Rural Development Contact Point, the Germany-based Leibniz Institute for Agricultural Development in Central and Eastern Europe, the Center of Rural Economy in Newcastle, United Kingdom, and the European Academy in Bolzano, Italy. She has experiences in the implementation of the Common Agricultural Policy in several EU Member States, including Romania, Italy and Germany. She served as expert in policy design, agriculture, and rural and regional development in the wider European region in projects commissioned by, e.g. the World Bank, UNEP and FAO. She completed her PhD in agricultural policies at the Martin-Luther University, Halle-Wittenberg, Germany and holds a diploma (Msc) in Environmental Planning from the Technical University of Munich, Weihenstephan.

Miranda Meuwissen | Wageningen University, The Netherlands

Miranda Meuwissen is professor of risk management in food supply chains at the Business Economics group of Wageningen University, the Netherlands, and scientific director of the Wageningen BSc Honours program. She coordinated the H2020 SURE-Farm project on resilience in EU-farming systems and organises annually the international PhD summer school on risk management in agriculture.

William Seitz | Senior Economist, World Bank, Kazakhstan

William Seitz is a Senior Economist and team leader of the World Bank’s Poverty and Equity program in Central Asia, based in Almaty, Kazakhstan. His areas of expertise include poverty measurement, survey methods, and analysis of social programs and labor markets. William leads the Listening to Central Asia surveys in Tajikistan, Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan, and the Kyrgyz Republic. Before joining the World Bank, William worked as a Research Officer at the Centre for the Study of African Economies at the University of Oxford. He holds an MBA from the University of Denver and a Ph.D. in Economics from the University of Milan.

Yasmin Siddiqi | Asian Development Bank (ADB), Philippines

Yasmin Siddiqi is the operational director for agriculture and natural resources in the Central and West Asia Department of Asian Development Bank (ADB). She is a chartered civil engineer, UK, and has a post graduate degree in irrigation engineering, UK. Yasmin Siddiqi has over 25 years of experience in natural resources management, including integrated water resources management, irrigation, knowledge solutions and leading teams at ADB.