Bioversity UK Board of Trustees Biographies

Paul Zuckerman is the Chairman & CEO of Zuckerman & Associates LLC. His expertise is in Finance, Agricultural Economics. He has a B.A. & M.A. in Economics, Trinity College, Cambridge University, 1964-67 Higher National Diploma, Agricultural Economics, Trinity College, Cambridge University, 1967-68 Ph.D., Agricultural Economics, Reading University, 1970-74.

He retired from full time investment banking in 1998, having been Managing Director and Founding Director Caspian Securities, Ltd. (1995-98); and before that Executive Director, S G Warburg & Co Ltd, London; Vice Chairman, S G Warburg International; Chairman S G Warburg Latin America Ltd (1981-95). He spent six years at the World Bank as Senior Economist, World Bank (1974-80); and before that was Research Associate, IITA (1970-72) and Training Associate, Ford Foundation (1968-70) based at IITA.

He is presently on the board of a number of international companies including ArcelorMittal Ltd in Brazil and Mexico; JMFinancial Ltd and TechMahindra Ltd in India; and a number of BlackRock Hedge Funds.

He was Chairman of the Intermediate Technology Group (1990-95) and is presently Treasurer of the International Women’s Health Coalition in New York, and of The Art Fund in the UK, and on the board of The African Medical Research Foundation in Nairobi.

He is a Foreign Member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and an Honorary Fellow of Kings’s College London.

Emile Frison has been the Director General of Bioversity International (formerly IPGRI – International Plant Genetic Resources Institute) since 1 August 2003.

Emile Frison has spent most of his career in international agricultural research, including 18 years of work related to plant genetic resources. He obtained an MSc in plant pathology from the Catholic University of Louvain and a PhD from the University of Gembloux in Belgium.

Dr Frison commenced his career in international agricultural research at the International Institute for Tropical Agriculture (IITA) in Nigeria in 1979. He worked in Africa for six years (Nigeria and Mauritania) and subsequently became Development Manager of an agrochemical company in Belgium for three years. He joined Bioversity in 1987 to coordinate research on plant health aspects in plant collections. In 1992, as Regional Director for Europe, he initiated a new phase of the European Cooperative Programme for Crop Genetic Resources Networks. He also launched the European Forest Genetic Resources Programme in collaboration with FAO.

As Director of Bioversity's International Network for the Improvement of Banana and Plantain (INIBAP), Dr Frison gave added impetus to research on this neglected crop, the tropical world's fourth most important staple food. In 1997, he launched the Global Programme for Musa Improvement (PROMUSA), which brought together researchers and growers with an interest in bananas and plantains. In 2002 he launched the Global Consortium on Musa Genomics with 27 members from 14 countries. The Consortium's goal is to decode the genetic sequence of the banana and use that information to improve the varieties available to smallholder farmers. “Although we work with plants, people are central to our interest” says Frison, “we continue to work with our partners to assist the poorest of farmers attain better livelihoods.”

As of August 2003 Dr Frison has led the System-wide Genetic Resources Programme (SGRP) of the CGIAR. In January 2004 he took on the role of Secretary for the CGIAR ‘s Genetic Resources Policy Committee (GRPC).  He has been a Member of the Executive Council of Ecoagriculture Partners, Washington DC since 2006. In December of the same year he joined the Comité d’Orientation de l’Agence de Recherche pour le Développement, Paris.

Dr Frison played a leading role in the creation of the Alliance of the 15 CGIAR Centres.  He was Chair of the Alliance Executive in 2007 and 2008 and in that capacity was actively involved in the CGIAR reform process, first as a member of the Scoping Team in 2007, and then as a member of the Change Steering Team in 2008.

In October 2007 Dr Frison was nominated Extraordinary Professor (part-time) at the Faculty of Bioscience Engineering, Katholieke Universiteit Leuven, Belgium.  He has also been a member of the International Advisory Council of the Svalbard Global Seed Vault.  As of March 2009 he is a member of the Executive Board of the Global Crop Diversity Trust.

Emile Frison is a Belgian national and has published over 150 scientific articles.

Lady Malloch-Brown is an Independent Humanitarian Affairs Consultant based in London.

She was the Vice Chair of the Refugees International (RI) Board for 12 years and has been an active supporter since 1986, when she worked at the Sawyer Miller Group, a New York-based strategic and political consulting firm. She is also a co-founder of the Washington Circle, an outreach group targeted at women in Washington, DC, who are interested in humanitarian affairs; the Circle also has groups in New York, Wyoming, Chicago and Boston. Lady Malloch Brown holds a BA in Political Science from Denison University and a Masters of International Affairs from Columbia University (SIPA).

She also served as a Program Officer for Eastern Europe at the Soros Foundation. In this capacity, she worked with a variety of technology exchange and educational programs in Romania, Czechoslovakia, Poland and other eastern European countries.

Current Board memberships include Refugees International; the International Rescue Committee UK; Commissioner of the Women’s Refuge Commission; the Columbia University Scholars Program; RADA Development Board; St Matthew’s C of E Primary School, London; The Chiari and Syringomelia Foundation (CSF); and, Co-Chair of the CSF Baltimore and Greater Washington Chapter.