Catherine Ann Bertini

        Professor of Public Administration &
        Chair of International Relations Program
        Maxwell School of Citizenship and Public Affairs

      




       Full Biography
       Hi-res Photo
      


Research Areas:
Agricultural Development
Humanitarian Relief
Girls' Education
United Nations


Contact:
Syracuse University
351 Eggers Hall
Syracuse, NY 13244
Phone: 315-443-1341
Email: cbertini@maxwell.syr.edu


Assistant: Sallie Guyder
Phone: 315-443-4022
slguyder@maxwell.syr.edu

Following more than a decade of service to the United Nations, Catherine Bertini joined the faculty of the Maxwell School of Citizenship and Public Affairs in 2005 as Professor of Public Administration. She teaches courses in Humanitarian Action, UN Management, Girl's Education, and Post-Conflict Reconstruction, drawing on the vast experience she gained during her years of leadership in public sector management, international organizations, humanitarian relief, nutrition policy, and agricultural development.

Professor Bertini's career spans public service at international, national, state, and local levels and includes private sector and foundation experience. She was the driving force behind reform of the United Nations World Food Programme (WFP), where she was the Chief Executive for ten years. During her tenure, WFP's institutional changes in the area of efficiency, effectiveness, and accountability were cited by the United States government and the thirty-six-government board of WFP as a model of UN reform.

She received honorary degrees from McGill University in Canada, State University of New York - Cortland, Loyola University Law School, Colgate University, American University of Rome, John Cabot University in Italy, Slovak Agricultural University in Slovak Republic, Pine Manor College, Dakota Wesleyan University, University of South Carolina, and University of Delaware. Professor Bertini is the 2003 World Food Prize Laureate and, in 2007, was awarded the Gene White Lifetime Achievement Award for Child Nutrition.

She is a member of two US AID Advisory Committees: the Board of International Food and Agricultural Development and Voluntary Foreign Aid, a board member of the Stuart Family Foundation, a juror of the Hilton Foundation Humanitarian Prize, a member of the Advisory Council at Rockefeller College on Public Affairs and Policy, and at the William Jefferson Clinton School of Public Service. She also served as a Senior Fellow in Agricultural Development at the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. There, she advised on the development of the foundation's new agricultural portfolio which strives to improve the well-being of poor farmers in Africa and South Asia. Currently, she is co-chair of the Global Agriculture Development Initiative for the Chicago Council on Global Affairs and chair of the Council's Girls in Rural Economies project.


Public Affairs Appointments (pdf)

Honorary Degrees and Awards (pdf)