Our Scientific Advisory Committee

Fatiha Charradi is Vice President of Farming Development for OCP Group. She is an experienced leader and a passionate advocate for entrepreneurs and farmers. Her mission is to development new and innovative business models, approaches, solutions and services for farming in line with her company’s mission and ambition of “Farmer Intimacy.” Charradi graduated as an ICT Engineer from Ecole Mohammadia des Ingénieurs. She holds an MBA from École Nationale des Ponts et Chaussées in Paris, a Certificate in Strategic Management and Geopolitics from HEC Paris, and Certificates in Executive Management and Leadership from MIT in 2014 and 2018. In 2014, Fatiha was identified by the Choiseul Institute among Young African leaders of 40 years and under, who will play a major role in the development of Africa in the near future. In 2016, Fatiha was selected to participate in the Regional Entrepreneurship Acceleration Program (REAP) of the prestigious MIT University to contribute to the emergence of strong entrepreneurial ecosystems in different regions of Morocco. As an intrapreneur, Fatiha spent 19 years in major Moroccan and multinational companies. In 2011, she was appointed Chief Executive Officer of the OCP Fund for Agricultural Innovation. Fatiha Charradi is also a board member of many national and international institutions, a board member of H-Seven, an African Accelerator (https://www.hseven.co/), a Non Executive Director of iSDA (Innovation solutions for Decision Agriculture, https://www.isda-africa.com) and an active member in many local NGOs and social initiatives.

Dr. Simon Cook is a strongly inter-disciplinary scientist with interests in subjects such as digital agriculture, precision agriculture, and the development of sustainable global food and water systems. Trained at Swansea, Reading and Cambridge Universities in in the UK, he moved in 1990 to CSIRO Australia to develop digital methods of soil mapping. During his time at CSIRO, he built a team to develop precision agriculture for grains, grapes and sugar cane. In 2000 he moved to the GIS Group at the International Center for Tropical Agriculture [CIAT] in Colombia, where he was drawn into global-scale research programs to support agricultural development, including the Challenge Program for Water and Food and the CGIAR program on Water, Land and Ecosystems, where he was the inaugural director. In 2016 he returned to Australia to take up a professorship at Curtin and Murdoch Universities as the Western Australian Premier’s Fellow, where he initiated research on digital agriculture and on-farm experimentation. He lives in Perth, Australia and Cali, Colombia.

As Chief Scientist, Dr. Achim Dobermann provides strategic scientific advice to the International Fertilizer Association (IFA) and its members on promoting responsible plant nutrition and enhancing nutrient stewardship worldwide. He served as Director & CEO of Rothamsted Research in the UK (2014-2019), Deputy Director General of the International Rice Research Institute (IRRI, 2008-2014), Professor of Soil Science and Nutrient Management at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln, USA (2000-2007), and as a Soil Nutrient Specialist at IRRI (1992-2000). He received his MSc in Tropical Agriculture and PhD in Soil Science from the University of Leipzig in Germany. Dr. Dobermann has over 30 years of field experience working in every region of the world on science and technology for sustainable farming, with particular emphasis on soil science, plant nutrition and agronomy. He has published on a wide range of agricultural issues and also leads a Massive Open Online Course on Feeding a Hungry Planet: Agriculture, Nutrition and Sustainability. He believes that taking risks, working in the field, and being critical and unselfish are the most important things for succeeding in agricultural research.

Dr. Ken Giller is Professor of Plant Production Systems at Wageningen University. He leads a group of scientists with profound experience in applying systems analysis to explore future scenarios for land use with a focus on food production, including impacts of climate change. Ken’s research focuses on smallholder farming systems in sub-Saharan Africa. Particular emphasis is given to problems of soil fertility and the role of nitrogen fixation in tropical legumes, with emphasis on the temporal and spatial dynamics of resources within crop/livestock farming systems and their interactions. He leads a number of initiatives such as N2Africa – Putting Nitrogen Fixation to Work for Smallholder Farmers in Africa – funded by the foundation and the global public-private partnership on cocoa – www.CocoaSoils.org. Ken is member of the Unilever Sustainable Sourcing Advisory Board. He is co-chair of the Thematic Network 7 on Sustainable Agriculture and Food Systems of the Sustainable Development Solutions Network (SDSN) of the United Nations. Ken joined Wageningen University as Chair of Plant Production Systems in 2001 after holding professorships at Wye College, University of London, and the University of Zimbabwe.

Dr Amy Sullivan is a private consultant focusing on gender, water, and natural resource-based livelihood systems across Africa and Asia. A former US Peace Corps Volunteer in Senegal, and trained at the University of Florida in the US, she joined the Pretoria South Africa office of the International Water Management Institute (IWMI) as part of the Challenge Programme on Water and Food (CPWF) in 2004. She guided research teams in establishing relationships between customary water arrangements and emerging statutory governance systems. In 2010 she joined the Food, Agriculture, and Natural Resources Policy Analysis Network (FANRPAN) as the Limpopo Basin Leader of CPWF. In that role and as the theme lead for the natural resource and environment programme at FANRPAN, she developed and coordinated multi-disciplinary teams to diagnose, document and address challenges facing smallholder farmers in a region heavily influenced by climate change, migration, and mining. As a consultant since 2014, Amy has focused on gender transformative approaches in development and led the Inclusive Service Delivery team for the Iraq Governance and Performance Accountability. She is currently a member of the Global Water Partnership (GWP) Africa Water Investment Programme Technical Reference Group monitoring and contributing to inclusive water security and climate resilience through gender transformative approaches in the Africa Water Investment Support Programme to Water, Climate, Development and Gender (WACDEP-G). She is based in Pretoria.

Dr. Michael Wironen is a Senior Scientist in The Nature Conservancy’s Center for Sustainability Science. In this role he provides technical and strategic leadership to collaborations with the agri-food sector to drive investment into the sustainable intensification of agriculture. His portfolio includes place-based projects to improve soil health, increase resource use efficiency, and protect habitat in Kenya, Brazil, Argentina, the United States, China, and India. In this role, he has collaborated with companies including Syngenta, Walmart, AB InBev, and McDonald’s. As Science Lead for the Syngenta collaboration, Dr. Wironen helped secure and structure Syngenta’s $2 billion commitment to invest in technology innovation to support sustainable agriculture. Prior to joining TNC, Dr. Wironen worked for a private consultancy, where he led sustainability and climate action projects with an array of private and public-sector clients in the US and Africa. He holds a PhD in Natural Resources Science from the University of Vermont and has published on nutrient cycling in forests and agroecosystems, among other topics.