Panelists

Marcela Quintero

Research Director, Alliance of Bioversity International and CIAT

Marcela Quintero is the Research Director of the Multifunctional Landscapes Research Area at the Alliance of Bioversity International and the International Center for Tropical Agriculture (CIAT). With 20-years of experience, Marcela combines socioecological approaches and agronomy principles in her work that focuses on agricultural landscapes improvement towards environmental and livelihoods sustainability. Currently leads the design process of a new CGIAR research initiative on Agroecology, a multi-partner effort to support agroecological transformation of food systems in the Global South. Marcela is an ecologist from the Universidad Javeriana of Colombia, and holds a Ph.D. from the Department of Agronomy at the University of Florida.

Rasheed Sulaiman

Director CRISP

Dr Rasheed Sulaiman is the Director of the Centre for Research on Innovation and Science Policy (CRISP), Hyderabad, India and has more than twenty-eight years of experience in research on agricultural extension, agricultural innovation systems and have recently started analyzing the role of extension and advisory services in promoting agroecology. Dr Rasheed coordinates the Agricultural Extension in South Asia Network (AESA). He served as a Commissioner to the Commission on Sustainable Agricultural Intensification (CoSAi) and is a Member of the Steering Committee of FAO-Tropical Agricultural Platform (TAP). From 2014-2019 he served as the Chair, Steering Committee of the Global Forum for Rural Advisory Services (GFRAS) and is currently a Member of the GFRAS Board.

Janet Maro

CEO SAT

Janet Maro is Co-Founder and Chief Executive Officer Programme of Sustainable Agriculture Tanzania (SAT), a local organization in Tanzania which for over 10 years has been working at the national level with the goal that smallholder farmers are able to feed their families and earn an income from practicing agriculture in a sustainable and environmentally friendly way. Ms. Maro has been able to build capacity and develop strategies for initiatives in Malawi and Ethiopia to work with communities on agroecology.

Abram Bicksler

Agricultural Officer, FAO

Abram J. Bicksler, Ph.D., is an Agricultural Officer with the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) based in Rome. He works with the Agroecology and Ecosystem Services Team within the Plant Production and Protection Division (NSP) on various initiatives related to the scaling-up of Agroecology, provision of ecosystem services, and is also the focal point for pollinators within the division. He is currently a co-leader of the development of the Tool for Agroecology Performance Evaluation (TAPE), backstops various agroecology projects globally, and is the focal point for FAO's facilitation of the International Pollinators Initiative 2018-2030 (IPI 2). Prior to joining FAO, he directed a regional NGO based in Thailand which extended technical advisory services and sustainable agricultural information across Asia and beyond.

Stefan Kachelriess-Matthess

Project Leader, GIZ

Dr. Stefan Kachelriess-Matthess worked as consultant and staff of the Deutsche Gesellschaft für Internationale Zusammenarbeit GmbH (GIZ) mostly in the Sub-Saharan African region. He speaks fluently French and English. He is an agronomist by training, specialized in agricultural production in the tropics and agricultural and rural development. His professional background is on natural resource management, value chain promotion, agricultural research & extension, communication, adult training and the linkage between research and extension using participatory methods and process-oriented capacity development. He is an experienced moderator, trainer and facilitator. His regional experience covers Sub-Saharan Africa, especially Benin, Burkina Faso, Côte d’Ivoire, Cameroon, Nigeria, Kenya, Morocco and Ghana and he has professional experience in Anglophone and Francophone Africa since 1990.