Board of Trustees

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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.

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Ernest Aryeetey is the Secretary-General of the African Research Universities Alliance (ARUA), a network of 16 of Africa’s flagship universities. He is also a Professor of Economics and former Vice-Chancellor of the University of Ghana (2010–2016). He served previously as Director of the Institute of Statistical, Social and Economic Research (ISSER) (2003–2010) at the University of Ghana and was the first Director of the Africa Growth Initiative of the Brookings Institution, Washington, DC.

Prof. Aryeetey has held academic appointments at the School of Oriental and African Studies in London and at Yale University and Swarthmore College in the United States. He was a member of the Governing Council of the United Nations University (2016–2019) and was also Chairman of the Advisory Board of UNU-WIDER (Helsinki). He is currently the Board Chair of the African Economic Research Consortium. He was, until recently, the Board Chairman of Stanbic Bank Ghana Limited. He holds honorary degrees from the University of Sussex (UK), Lund University (Sweden), Stellenbosch University (South Africa), the University of Ghana, Legon (Ghana), and the University of Health and Applied Sciences (Ghana).

Among Prof. Aryeetey’s strategic priorities as Vice-Chancellor at the University of Ghana was developing the University into a research-intensive institution that supports structural transformation in Africa.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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