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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Patrick Caron has a deep understanding of the interface between science and policy, and leadership experience in steering, negotiating and forging alliances across groups with diverging views and perspectives. He is currently Vice President for International Affairs at the University of Montpellier, where he guides scientific and technical personnel across departments and faculties to consolidate the international ambitions of a university with 50,000 students and 5,000 staff. He is also International Director of the Montpellier University of Excellence, an alliance of 16 regional research and higher education organizations, Director of MAK’IT, the Montpellier Institute for Advanced Knowledge, and President of Agropolis International, a community with 42 member institutions. He was recently appointed as a member of the Scientific Group for the 2021 UN Food System Summit.

He spent much of his earlier career with CIRAD, a French public institution active in agricultural research in over 100 countries, including six years as Director General for Research and Strategy. He served two terms as Chair of the High Level Panel of Experts on Food Security and Nutrition, the science-policy interface of the UN Committee on World Food Security. He holds a PhD in Geography, a master’s in Food and Nutrition, a master’s in Public Health and a doctorate in Veterinary Medicine. He is also a certified mediator.

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Shenggen Fan has extensive experience in developing strong connections at the highest levels with a wide range of influential stakeholders, and has engaged widely on issues related to agriculture, food, health, climate change, natural resource management and information technologies. He is currently Chair Professor at the College of Economics and Management at China Agricultural University in Beijing. He is a member of the Global Panel on Agriculture and Food Systems for Nutrition; the Advisory Council of the Oxford Martin School at the University of Oxford; the Board of the Syngenta Foundation for Sustainable Agriculture; and the Council of Advisers of the World Food Prize. He also serves as a member of the Lead Group for the Scaling Up Nutrition (SUN) Movement appointed by the UN Secretary General.

He previously spent over 20 years with the International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI), including as Director General for the ten-year period until his departure in December 2019. His previous roles within IFPRI included several years as Division Director of Development Strategy and Governance, and prior to that, as a Research Fellow. His earlier professional experience also includes time as a Research Economist in the Department of Agricultural Economics and Rural Sociology at the University of Arkansas and as a Post-doctoral Fellow and Associate Research Officer at the International Service for National Agricultural Research in the Netherlands. He holds a PhD in Applied Economics and an MSc in Agricultural Economics.

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Alice Ruhweza has extensive experience working at the intersection of conservation and development in Africa and globally, fostering successful partnerships with a wide range of international institutions. She is currently the Africa Region Director for the World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF), where she leads and oversees a regional program comprising 10 countries and 400 staff. There she is leading design of a new conservation framework that brings together work at national, transboundary and global levels, as well as development of a new system of program quality assurance. She sits on the Board of The Global Ever-Greening Alliance and on the steering committee of the Future Earth Water-Food-Energy Nexus working group.

Before joining WWF, she was Vice President of Programs and Partnerships with Conservation International, where she oversaw the Vital Signs Program, which provides data and diagnostic tools to help inform agricultural decisions and monitor outcomes around the world. She was also the Team Leader and Technical Adviser for the United Nations Development Programme Global Environmental Finance Unit in Africa. In this role, she led a team supporting 44 sub-Saharan African countries to attract and drive public and private finance towards their sustainable development priorities. The program successfully mobilized over USD 600 million over six and a half years, which with co-financing made it the largest environment program in the UN. She is a former Sustainable Agriculture Intensification Commissioner. She holds an MSc in Agricultural and Applied Economics.

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