Program Director of CIP / CGIAR

Simon Heck is a Program Director at the International Potato Center (CIP) of the CGIAR and Leader of the new CGIAR Research Initiative on Resilient Cities Through Sustainable Urban Food Systems. Currently based in Kenya, he has more than twenty years’ experience developing and managing research and development programs addressing food security and environmental sustainability at field and policy levels in Africa, Asia and Latin America. He holds a PhD in Anthropology and has published on food systems transformation and its relation to social and environmental change. Prior to the CGIAR, he worked with IUCN – The World Conservation Union and the UK Department for International Development in Africa and the Middle East.