Catherine A. Bertini

Catherine Ann Bertini is a senior fellow at The Chicago Council on Global Affairs. She serves as cochair of the Council’s Global Agricultural Development Initiative and chair of its Girls in Rural Economies project. Ms. Bertini is also a Professor of Public Administration and International Affairs at the Maxwell School of Citizenship and Public Affairs at Syracuse University. She previously served as UN Under Secretary-General for Management (2003-2005) and as Executive Director of the UN World Food Program (WFP), the world’s largest international humanitarian agency (1992-2002). She was credited with assisting hundreds of millions of victims of wars and natural disasters throughout Africa, Asia, Latin America, the Middle East, and parts of Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union and reforming WFP’s operations.

Ms. Bertini is the 2003 World Food Prize Laureate. She was awarded the Gene White Lifetime Achievement Award for Child Nutrition in 2007, and the Borlaug CAST Communication Award in 2011. She was decorated by the Republic of Italy with its Order of Merit, and holds 11 honorary doctorates from universities in four countries.

For two years, she was senior fellow, agricultural development at the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. Before serving in the UN, Ms. Bertini was USDA Assistant Secretary for Food and Consumer Services where she ran the nation's then $33 billion domestic food assistance programs. She was fellow at the John F. Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University, and policy maker in residence at the Gerald R. Ford School of Public Policy at the University of Michigan.

Ms. Bertini is a member of two U.S. Agency for International Development Advisory Committees: the Board of International Food and Agricultural Development, and the Advisory Committee on Voluntary Foreign Aid. She also serves on the High Level Panel of Experts on Food Security for the United Nation’s Committee on World Food Security & Nutrition. She is a member of the board of directors of the Tupperware Brands Corporation, a member of the Council on Foreign Relations, and a fellow of the National Academy of Public Administration, the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and the International Academy of Food Science and Technology. She is a member of the jury for the Hilton Foundation's Humanitarian Prize, and of the board of the Stuart Family Foundation. She earned a bachelor's degree in political science from the State University of New York at Albany.