Senior Adviser, Non-resident, to the Center for Strategic and International Studies Global Food Security Project

Emmy Simmons is currently an independent consultant on international development issues with a focus on food, agriculture, and Africa. She serves as a non-resident senior adviser to the Global Food Security Project at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, as a member of the steering committee for the CGIAR Agriculture for Nutrition and Health program, and on the Board of SNV-USA. She is also a member of the Global Panel on Agriculture and Food Systems for Nutrition, a high-level international group focused on developing evidence-based policies to increase access to healthy, safe, and affordable diets.

She has previously served as a co-chair of AGree, an initiative that brought together a diverse group of interests to transform U.S. food and agriculture policy to meet the challenges of the future and as a co-chair of the U.S. National Academies of Science Roundtable on Science and Technology for Sustainability. She has served as a member of several Boards, including those for the International Livestock Research Institute, the International Institute of Tropical Agriculture, the World Vegetable Center, and the Partnership to Cut Hunger and Poverty in Africa.

She completed a career of nearly 30 years with the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) in 2005, having served since 2002 as the Assistant Administrator for Economic Growth, Agriculture and Trade, a Presidentially-appointed, Senate-confirmed position.  Prior to joining USAID, she worked in the Ministry of Planning and Economic Affairs in Monrovia, Liberia, and taught and conducted research at Ahmadu Bello University in Zaria, Nigeria.

She began her international career as a Peace Corps Volunteer in the Philippines from 1962-64. She holds an M.S. degree in agricultural economics from Cornell University and a B.A. degree from the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee.

“Every day in every home across the world people think about what they are going to eat. The agriculture for nutrition agenda unites us all.”