Brian King

Brian King leads the Platform for Big Data in Agriculture, a global program of the CGIAR consortium centered on digital transformation of food systems worldwide. He has led programs leveraging successive waves of transformational digital technologies including establishing early internet networks and policies, building sustainable rural internet, licensing of mobile operators, governance of submarine cables and cross-border backbone networks, developing digital strategies for an array of clients, and building more inclusive mobile financial services, most of this in developing economies. He is a former agriculture extensionist and a California rice farmer. Skilled in Corporate Social Responsibility, International Relations, Management, Non-Governmental Organizations (NGOs), and Policy Analysis. Strong digital development professional graduated from University of Maryland – Robert H. Smith School of Business and University of California, Berkeley Department of Spanish and Portuguese.

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Julian Lampietti

Julian Lampietti is the Manager for Global Engagement in the Agriculture and Food Global Practice. His responsibilities include strategic planning, donor outreach, and oversight for global knowledge and advisory programs. Previously, he managed the Agriculture and Food program in the Middle East, North Africa, Eastern Europe and Central Asia. Julian used to be based in Buenos Aires, Argentina and he has published books and journal articles on a broad range of topics including poverty, economics, agriculture, food security, logistics, and energy. He has a PhD in Public Policy from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and a Master’s in Natural Resources Economics from Duke University.

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Jacqueline Pieters

Since July 2020 Jacqueline is back with Rabobank as Executive Vice President, Food & Agribusiness. Until July 2020 she was Lead Finance & Investment, Vision 2050 at the World Business Council of Sustainable Development (WBCSD ); responsible for the investigation and proposition of roles and tasks finance and investment can take in driving systematic transformation towards a sustainable world in 2050.

Jacqueline holds a Master of Science in Agricultural Logistics and Marketing from Wageningen University & Research and has received executive management training at the Harvard Business School, the University of Chicago Booth School of Business. Instead and IMD.

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Chris Addison (Chair)

Chris Addison began his career in international development working within agricultural research with the University of Khartoum and the Natural Resources Institute in the UK. This work lead to supporting and evaluating digital projects in Africa, the Caribbean and South America. He worked on the first websites for a number of development organisations and spent time supporting the digitalisation of farmer led organisations across Africa, the Caribbean, and the Pacific. Most recently he has been working with Blockchain and distributed ledger solutions and developing strategic interventions for development organisations working on digitalisation solutions for development.

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Joost Volker

Joost Volker is Oracle Blockchain Leader for Europe, Middle East & Africa and BD Director with a specialty in Emerging Technology. He has 25+ years’ experience in ICT and IT Consultancy with focus on front-edge technology domains including Blockchain, IOT, AI, mobile and BPM. Joost has been engaged is several blockchains implementations in the Agritech and Sustainable Sourcing business. He is a renowned speaker and workshop leader on Enterprise Blockchain and his mantra is “Making Blockchain Work”

Joost holds a Masters’ degree in Electrical Engineering from Delft University with a major in Artificial Intelligence, executive degrees from INSEAD and Columbia Business School.

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Varun Baker

Over 15 years of enterprise level industry experience in business communications, and operational management, with a strong focus on software engineering. I design web services and website architectures based on open standards. Varun is current the Managing Director at Develop Digitally, improving products and services for our customers. He enjoys translating business requirements into detailed architectural designs and supporting all operational and business defined projects. The best part is working with business analysts, developers and development managers to ensure that all solutions are deployed within agreed timelines and are supported after implementation. This requires effective communication with the customer, third parties and the project teams.

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Erik van Ingen

Freelance Digital Innovation Architect. Able to see and apply Digital Innovation from both the technology and the business perspective. My current special inquiries are on Blockchain and Big Data in Agriculture. Expert in innovation proof of concepts for Development and Agriculture, evolving into pilots and prototypes.

Transparent with intuition for collaboration, specifically on the combination of the UN and the private sector. Hands on with Agile Kanban, certified SCRUM Master.

Specialties: Blockchain (Hyperledger and Ethereum), Data Science, Data Analytics, Machine Learning, Data Governance, Business Process Design, Stakeholder Analysis, Enterprise Architecture, GIS, Remote Sensing, Google Earth Engine, Enterprise Architecture, Drones (UAV), RapidMiner, SDMX, UML, Java, JavaScript and Python.

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Lars Kahnert

Fostering digitalisation in the GIZ Programme for Sustainable Agricultural Supply Chains & Standards. Areas of work include traceability, sustainability monitoring and metrics and other related digital applications that increase supply chain transparency, foster sustainable production and benefit farmers. Key interests are the creation of enabling digital environments, facilitating cooperation, alignment and interoperability. Dealt with a broad array of topics including vocational training, smallholder access to finance, sustainability standards, carbon footprinting, pesticides, python coding, coffee, digital platforms, community health, data standard development, or metrics alignment.

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Gideon Kruseman (chair)

Gideon Kruseman leads the foresight, ex-ante impact assessment and targeting team at CIMMYT, and for MAIZE and WHEAT. It can take 10 to 25 years between the start of agricultural research to full deployment in farmers’ fields, so concentrating on today’s issues may provide solutions to yesterday’s problems. Kruseman seeks to overcome this challenge by focusing on climate change, new and emerging pests and diseases, dietary change, rural transformation, and disruptive technologies.

Ex-ante impact assessment looks at pipeline technologies and at research investments. Gideon holds a doctorate in development economics from Wageningen University and has worked for CGIAR, academia, national agricultural research systems and a nongovernmental organization. He is an expert at complex modeling, especially using GAMS and R. He leads the community of practice on socio-economic data in the CGIAR platform for big data in agriculture. He also chairs the Institutional Ethics in Research Committee.

“The comfort zone is a beautiful place but nothing ever grows there”

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Howard-Yana Shapiro

Shapiro was born in America in 1947 to Lithuanian and Russia parents. In 1989 he and his wife, Nancy, set up Seeds of Change, an organic seed producer and supplier. The company was sold to Mars Inc. in 1997, and Shapiro took on the role of Senior Scientist in plant science and agroforestry/agroecology for M&M, Mars.^[1] He went on to become Research Manager for plant science in 2000 and Global Director of Plant Science and External Research in 2005.

He is Adjunct Professor in the College of Agriculture and Environmental Sciences at the University of California, Davis, and leads the Multi-Disciplinary Research Unit, a collaborative effort between Mars, UC Davis and The University of Nottingham. He also serves on the external advisory board of UC Davis’ Agricultural Sustainability Institute. He has been a university professor, Fulbright Scholar, Ford Foundation Fellow, and has won the National Endowment for the Humanities Award.

In 2007 he was awarded the Organic Leadership Award by the Organic Trade Association, and in 2009 he was honored with UC Davis’ College of Agricultural and Environmental Sciences Award of Distinction.

Recently he has been working with Google X and other groups on a project to end human stunting through better nutrition worldwide, starting in Africa.

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Katherine Townsend

Dedicated, enthusiastic public servant for internal operations, civic engagement, public-private partnerships.

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Marieke de Ruyter de Wildt

Marieke started her career at the United Nations. For the next 10 years, she lived in all continents and worked in more than 45 countries, from Scotland to Vietnam. She returned to Wageningen University, leading a research team to analyse the impact of agrifood investments, working with the likes of Rabobank, Syngenta, PGGM and Ahold Delhaize. In 2014, she started as director of AgriPlace, a software company developing an application to digitize agrifood certification.

As blockchain matured, Marieke quickly concluded it addressed key challenges in agrifood: data ownership and data integrity. Convinced that blockchain will accelerate digitization in agrifood, she founded her current company The New Fork in 2017.

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Megan Vasko

Megan is a project manager with over 10 years of experience. She studied Medical Dietetics at The Ohio State University and then made her way to Edinburgh University to pursue an MSc in Public Health Research. Life took some twists and turns and she found herself project managing in the finance industry for 6 years. Here, she was first exposed to blockchain. After a 3 year passion project in the sustainable food business, Megan landed at The New Fork and is very excited to make an impact at the intersection of food, sustainability and tech.

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