WOCAN Staff, Board and Core Associates

WOCAN Staff

Dr. Jeannette Gurung, Executive Director

Jeannette Gurung is a forester and gender and development expert whose career has focused on leading organizational change for gender equality within agriculture and natural resource management organizations in Asia and Africa. She is founder and director of Women Organizing for Change in Agriculture and Natural Resource Management (WOCAN). Jeannette has a MSc in forestry from the University of Washington, and a PhD in Gender and Development from the University of East Anglia (UK) with a focus on organizational development and change for gender equality based on her decade of experience leading gender mainstreaming at ICIMOD (International Centre for Integrated Mountain Development) in the Hindu Kush Himalayas. She has expertise in training/capacity building, action research, gender analysis, organizational analysis, policy advocacy and network building, and has published numerous articles and books. She is active in international advocacy work within the UN Forum on Forests, Committee on Food Security, Commission for Sustainable Development, and Network of Women Agriculture Ministers and Leaders; she is the Gender Expert of the Program Advisory Committee of the CGIAR Participatory Research and Gender Analysis Program, a Steering Committee member of The Forest Dialogue and the President of the Adelboden Bureau for Mountain Development that is associated with the UN Food and Agriculture Organization.

Lamia El-Fattal Masadiah, Liaison Officer, Washington D.C.

Lamia El-Fattal Masadiah is a Canadian and Syrian national with 20 years of experience supporting development agendas, policy, research and action on gender and agriculture in the South. Until recently, she was a senior program specialist at the International Development Research Centre (IDRC-Canada), based in Cairo, where she worked on applied research and capacity development initiatives to improve rural peoples' livelihoods and health and reduce poverty and inequity through local sustainable and equitable management of natural resources, mainly in Africa and the Middle East. Lamia has also worked with FAO, USAID contractors and local and internatioanl NGOs. A significant portion of her work is with poor women and men farmers to augment agricultural productivity, food and economic security through improved management of water, soils and agricultural biodiversity; strengthening local institutions and governance of resources; and development and adaptation of technologies in order to enhance benefits and address social inequalities. Her most recent interest has been to strengthen the adaptive capacity of small-holder farmers in the contexts of climatic change and variability. An increasing focus of her work has been to facilitate synthesis of lessons learned, south-south exchange, peer networking and regional cross-fertilization, particularly in areas of agriculture, gender and adaptive management in water and land resources. Lamia has a BA from Oxford University, an MSc. from the American University of Beirut and a PhD from the University of Delaware, USA.

Dibya Gurung, Coordinator of WOCAN Nepal

Dibya has a MSc in biological science from Tribhuvan University, Nepal and is in the process of completing a PhD on Mountain Tourism and Empowerment of Women In Nepal from Griffith University, Australia. She has worked for more than 20 years in the field of natural resource conservation and gender and social inclusion issues in Nepal, beginning with the Annapurna Conservation Area Program, organisinglocal women (mother's groups) to conserve and sustainably use the natural resources in the Annapurna Conservation Area. Today the mothers groups are the force behind conservation and development in the rural areas of Nepal. She has worked for several international organizations ,most recently as Biodiversity Analyst at UNDP, and provided consultancy services to many others. She has also worked closely with the Government of Nepal , to assist in integrating gender and social inclusion issues in policy papers and organizing high level policy dialogues/consultations and played key role in making these processes inclusive and consultative such as the Forest Sector Taskforce of the Ministry of Forest and Soil Conservation. She has advocated and integrated gender and social inclusion into programs and policies within the organizations that she has worked for.

Supranee Wangfeungkanagul, Director of Administration and Finance of WOCAN

Supranee is specialized in overall operations functions with more than 17 years of operations management experience and 33 years of administrative experience. She worked in more than 15 developing countries to train local staff, develop and implement human resource systems, oversee procurement processes, ensure financial compliance, and open and close project offices in accordance with local laws. She has strong knowledge of USAID policies and procedures, USAID NICRA rates and the basis of its calculation, budgeting and reporting requirements and has served local USAID missions in Azerbaijan, Bangladesh, Cambodia, India, Nepal, and Philippines. She has extensive experience in managing operations and staff in Southeast Asian countries. 

Bonnie Harris, Office Administrator (USA)

Bonnie is the Office Administrator at the WOCAN Secretariat office in Washington D.C. Her primary tasks are to formulate, update, document and implement office policies and procedures. Prior to WOCAN, she worked as the Administrative Assistant/Office Manger for the North American Liaison Office (NALO) of the International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD). In addition, she has almost 20 years of office management, administrative, and technical computer experience in diverse industries such as community foundations, for-profit consulting businesses, corporate law firms, and non-profit research and political organizations. She has a B.A. (Political Science/Women's History) from Texas A&M University and was the recipient of the college's President's Achievement Scholarship Award.

 

Board of Directors

Board Chairperson

Sarah Tisch, PhD, Managing Director, Asia Division, Chemonics International

Dr. Sarah Tisch is a gender specialist with 22 years of experience in project leadership, management and governance on USAID and other donor funded projects. A three-time USAID Chief of Party and program leader for the African Women's Leaders in Agriculture and the Environment and the Global Women's Leadership Initiative, as well as the program manager for the World Bank InfoDev E-Government Knowledge Map and Toolkit, she is experienced with integrating gender into project activities in many sectors. Dr. Tisch recently served as the home office director for the MCC and USAID Indonesia Control of Corruption Project and currently is the Director for the Anti-Trafficking in Persons Task Order for USAID/EGAT/Office of Women in Development. She is also the Gender Practice Director for Chemonics International, helping staff respond to the USAID requirements for integration of gender in projects and proposals. Dr. Tisch has a Ph.D. in Political Science from the State University of New York at Binghamton, has lived in Russia, Nepal, and the Philippines and has worked in 23 countries in Asia, Africa, the Middle East and Eastern Europe.

Members

Vera Weill-Halle, Director of Donor Relations at PANGEA, Pan Euro-African Bio Energy Group, Brussels

Vera P. Weill Hallé began her career in 1977 working with a non-Governmental Organization, Population Reference Bureau in Washington, then later joined the United Nations and subsequently, the International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD). She was instrumental in establishing the first IFAD office outside Headquarters; the IFAD North American Liaison Office in Washington, D.C., 1987 and New York, 1994 (at the UN Secretariat) - and became the Director of both offices. In 2004, she was appointed the Director of IFAD's Resource Mobilization Division in Rome, successfully enabling IFAD to secure one of the largest replenishments in the organizational history. She is currently a Senior Advisor for Innovative Financing and in this role has developed a strategy for private-sector and foundations outreach, successfully securing funding for IFAD from the United Nations Foundation, the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, and Copernic Foundation, among others. She has served on numerous Boards, including AWID, Women in Environment and Development and the Congressional Hunger Centre amongst others. Vera holds an MBA from the Executive MBA Program through the London School of Economics, HES School of Business and the New York University Stern Business School and an M.A. in International Affairs from The George Washington University.

Mark Blackden, Gender and Development Consultant

Mark Blackden has been working on gender issues in development for nearly 20 years, primarily in the World Bank's Africa Region. He led the Africa Region's gender and development program for more than 10 years.  During this time, he helped to make the business case for attention to gender issues in the Africa Region's operational work.  Given the importance of agriculture in Africa, much of this work has focused on improving the understanding of women's role in agricultural development, and addressing the many obstacles to improving productivity. Mr. Blackden contributes a wide range of operational experience in addressing gender issues in development to the WOCAN Board.  In the last three years, he has gained substantial perspective through work on gender issues with various organizations including the United Nations Development Program (UNDP), The Organization for Economic Co-Operation and Development (OECD), The Gates Foundation, and the International Finance Corporation (IFC), the private sector arm of the World Bank Group. Mark graduated with his Masters Degree from Georgetown University School of Foreign Service.

Isatou Jack, PhD, Director, Sustainable Food and Agriculture Systems, International Relief and Development

Dr. Isatou Jack has over 25 years of experience working with smallholder farmers, particularly women, to develop market-oriented agriculture systems and increase organizational capacity through farmer organizations. Isatou's tenure in the agricultural development field has included working at the government, NGO, and private sector levels. This background has influenced her continuous interest in creating partnerships among diverse stakeholders as a mechanism to increase agricultural productivity and profitability. Dr. Jack currently serves as the Director of International Relief and Development's (IRD) Sustainable Food and Agriculture Systems sector, where she oversees programs on three continents. Isatou received her Masters and Doctoral degrees in International Agriculture and Adult Education, respectively, from Cornell University and her Bachelors degree in Agricultural Science from the University of Florida.

Jacqueline Ashby, PhD, Senior Advisor in Gender, CIAT CGIAR

Dr. Ashby is a development sociologist, researcher, teacher and senior manager with international development experience in social change, technology development and poverty reduction in agricultural and food systems. She is currently employed at the International Potato Research Center (CIP) as a part of the Consultative Group on International Agricultural Research (CGIAR). Previously, Dr. Ashby worked as a consultant to the World Bank on the Gender and Agriculture Sourcebook. She is also responsible for launching, conducting fundraising for and coordinating the Participatory Research and Gender Analysis (PGRA) Program through CGIAR. Dr. Ashby provided leadership in the development of recommendations to the International Center for Tropical Agriculture's (CIAT) Gender Analysis Working Group and has lectured widely on gender integration in agricultural institutions. Her experience in formulating program strategy for donor relations, partnership, and mainstreaming novel approaches into core research areas of the CGIAR system will help her contribute invaluable perspective to the WOCAN Board. Dr. Ashby received her PhD from Cornell University.