The Advisory Board of the CGIAR Gender and Diversity Program appointed Ms. Vicki Wilde as new Program Leader on July 1st. She is posted in Nairobi, Kenya at ICRAF, Host Center of the program.

In the short time since her appointment, Ms. Wilde has met with the Board at MTM99, participated in the 4th CGIAR Womens Leadership and Management Course, and completed an efficient hand-over from former Co-Program Leaders Deborah Merrill-Sands and Sara J. Scherr. She has visited eight Centers to learn first-hand of their experiences, and emphasizes: My guiding word for the CGIAR Gender and Diversity Program is relevance. I want to get way past the jargon to deliver a program of services that is directly useful and relevant to the needs and priorities of the Centers.

Vicki Wilde has extensive experience working with organizational change and gender and diversity issues in both research and development, in countries throughout Asia and Africa. Based in Rome since 1989, she designed and led large and complex programs in international organizations including FAO, World Food Programme, and IFAD. She holds a B.A. in social ecology from the University of California, Irvine and an M.A. in environmental psychology from City University of New York, and has published several widely used sets of training materials in the fields of gender, agriculture, and forestry.

She notes, "The expansion of the program to include both gender and diversity brings a host of new challenges, but it also means that this program is for everyone in the CGIAR, women and men, international and national research systems, northern and southern. I strongly believe that the positive management of gender and diversity issues is essential for organizational excellence, which in turn is essential for scientific excellence."