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)
Catherine Ann Bertini