Catherine BertiniCatherine Bertini is an American public servant. She was the Executive Director of the United Nations World Food Program from 1992 to 2002. Currently, she is a Professor of Public Administration and International Affairs at the Maxwell School of Citizenship and Public Affairs of Syracuse University. She is a co-chair of the Chicago Council on Global Affairs’ Global Agricultural Development Initiative and Chair of the Council’s Girls in Rural Economies Initiative. She is the 2003 World Food Prize Laureate and Distinguished Fellow, Chicago Council on Global Affairs.
Catherine Bertini teaches graduate courses in international relations and leadership. She is a leader in public sector management, international organizations, humanitarian relief, agricultural development, gender programming, and nutrition policy. Her career spans public service at international, national, state, and local levels and includes university teaching and leadership roles in private and non-profit sectors.
Currently she is a senior fellow of the Chicago Council of Global Affairs, where she served for five years as co-chair of its Global Agricultural Development Initiative (GADI) and chair of its Girls in Rural Economies Project. The GADI Project is credited with creating the intellectual agreement to increase priority of support for poor farmers in the developing world. For two years, she was Senior Fellow, Agricultural Development at the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. Ms. Bertini was the driving force behind reform of the United Nations World Food Programme (WFP), where she was the Chief Executive for ten years.