Beth Bechdol is Deputy Director-General at the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO). Beth is responsible for FAO’s Partnership and Outreach work, including UN Collaboration, Resource Mobilization, Private Sector Engagement and South-South and Triangular Cooperation. She oversees Plant Production and Protection programmes, FAO’s technical advisory committee on agriculture and the International Plant Protection Convention Secretariat.
Before joining FAO, Beth was President and CEO of AgriNovus Indiana. Prior to this, she served as a Chief of Staff at the U.S. Department of Agriculture and Economist on the Senate Agriculture Committee.
Beth holds a bachelor’s degree     from Georgetown University and master’s from Purdue University in agricultural economics.

Hilal Elver is a global leader and expert in international human rights law, as well as international environmental law. From May 2014 to May 2020, Elver served as the Special Rapporteur on the right to food, responsible for carrying out the right to food mandate as prescribed by the United Nations Human Rights Council. She is currently serving as an appointed member of the Steering Committee of the High Level Panel of Experts (HLPE) at the World Committee of Food Security and Nutrition(CFS), and maintains several affiliations with academic institutions worldwide. Hilal Elver is Prof. of International Human Rights Law and International Environmental Law and Co-Director of the Climate Change, Democracy and Human Security

Bonnie has a Ph.D. in Genetics, with a minor in biotechnology, from North Carolina State University. Her master’s (University of California-Davis) degree was in agronomy with an emphasis in plant breeding and plant genetic resources and her bachelor’s (University of Wisconsin-Madison) degrees were in agronomy and South Asian Studies. She has extensive international experience teaching, conducting research, and consulting in Latin America, South Asia, and the Middle East. Currently, she works in the conservation of plant genetic resources for food and agriculture and is Officer in Charge of the Seeds and Plant Genetic Resources Team.  

President, Japan International Research Center for Agricultural Sciences (JIRCAS)
Osamu graduated from Faculty of Liberal Arts, the University of Tokyo. After joining the Ministry of Agriculture Forestry and Fisheries of Japan in 1979, engaged in econometric analyses of global food situation at the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) (1986-93) and JIRCAS (1993-). Also, in charge of research strategy setting in JIRCAS from 2002 until 2015 when moved to Vice President. Appointed to the current position in 2021.

Special Representative for Australian Agriculture.
Su is a highly experienced senior executive and non-executive director and is the first Special Representative for Australian Agriculture. She is a director of Australian Unity Limited, LiveCorp, the Australasian Pork Research Institute and AWN Rural and a Commissioner for International Agricultural Research. Su was previously the Chief Executive Officer of the Regional Australia Institute and the Council of Rural Research and Development Corporations and Executive Director of the Office of Best Practice Regulation.

Born and raised in Lebanon, Hanna earned his diploma in Agricultural Engineering in May 2017 from the Holy Spirit University of Kaslik (USEK) and his Masters in Plant Protection from the American University of Beirut (AUB) in January 2021. Hanna has conducted two studies targeting the Mediterranean fruit fly (Ceratitis capitata) on apples, in north of Lebanon; starting with the monitoring of the pest to determine it life cycle and introducing new sustainable, ecological and environmental practices to manage this pest. In parallel, Hanna was working in different NGOs, agricultural private companies, as well as UN-agencies and was always focusing during his field visits, trainings, and consultancies on the importance of sustainable agriculture practices as opposed to conventional practices. In January 2020, Hanna and his friends created a Facebook group known as “Izraa”. Izraa is a nonprofit, virtual community that provides free online services including consultancy and marketing for farmers, and empowers people to plant at home, wherever they are. This has further endorsed Hanna’s value in the sector, whereby several local leading media companies have reached out to him for interviews on the best agricultural practices, environmental issues, and community empowerment.

Special Chief Secretary, Natural Farming for the Government of Andhra Pradesh.
In his 37 years of Govt. service, he has spent about 25 years in large scale community mobilization and promotion of livelihoods of rural women, tribal communities and farmers. He spent a record 10 years, 2000 to 2010 as CEO of Society for elimination of Rural Poverty (S.E.R.P) in A.P and led the mobilizing and empowerment of 11.5 million rural poor women into thrift and credit-based self-help groups (SHGs) and their federations, to enable them to come out of poverty. The programme was supported by the World Bank. From 2010 to 2015, was the first Mission Director of the National Rural Livelihoods Mission (N.R.L.M), Govt of India.

Agripreneur, President of the Eastern Africa Farmers Federation (EAFF)
Elizabeth is a Ugandan agripreneur and the President of the Eastern Africa Farmers Federation and the Director of Women's Affairs and previous President of the Pan Africa Farmers Organization and Africa representative on the Board of World Farmers Organisation. She served as a member of the United Nations Advisory Committee for the Secretary General’s Food Systems Summit 2021 and also sits on the Global Steering Committee for Forest Farm Facility by FAO and on the board of Forum for Agricultural Research in Africa. She was recently appointed the vice president of the FAO Africa Region One Country One Priority Commodity program.

Secretary General of the Asian Farmers’ Association for Sustainable Rural Development (AFA)
Ms. Ma. Estrella “Esther” Penunia is secretary general of the Asian Farmers’ Association for Sustainable Rural Development (AFA), a regional farmers organization (FO), currently with 22 national farmers’ organizations (FOs) in 16 Asian countries, with around 13 million family farmers as members, engaged in crops, livestock, fisheries, forestry, herding and pastoralism. AFA promotes a six-point agenda which includes rights to natural resources; sustainable, integrated, diversified, organic, agroecological systems in farms, fisheries and forests; viable farmers cooperatives and their enterprises; women farmers’ empowerment; youth in agriculture and quality management of FOs.

Lauren M. Phillips is an international political economist and currently Deputy Director for the Inclusive Rural Transformation and Gender Equality Division of the United Nation’s Food and Agriculture Organization. Prior to joining FAO in 2021 she worked in a variety of policy, strategy and advisory roles at another specialized agency of the United Nations, the International Fund for Agricultural Development from 2015-2021, as an Assistant Professor in the Department of International Relations at the London School of Economics (2008-2014), as a Research Fellow at the Overseas Development Institute (2005-08), and in a variety of private finance roles in the City of London and New York. She holds a PhD in International Political Economy from the London School of Economics and Master and Bachelor degrees from Stanford University. Lauren is also an Adjunct Professor at Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies in Bologna, Italy, and has published widely on finance and development. 

Dr. Amaj Rahimi-Midani graduated from Pukyong National University (PKNU) in Busan, South Korea. He pursued his postdoctoral fellowship as a climate change modeler by analyzing the climate change impact on European freshwater species. As CEO of Poseidon-Al in Singapore, he collaborates with international organizations to implement sustainable practices in water, soil, aquaculture, and fisheries worldwide. He has published multiple peer-reviewed publications and has presented at global meetings, conferences, and congresses. His latest book titled “Deep Technology for Sustainable Fisheries and Aquaculture” published by Springer Nature, show cases the use of AI/ML for sustainable development of farmers, indigenous and vulnerable communities.