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Dr. Walid Sallam is an agricultural marketing expert with 23 years of experience advising and supporting agribusinesses and farmers in Egypt. He helps them expand their businesses and implement practical solutions to increase productivity, quality, and sales. Sallam has provided expert analysis and evaluations for businesses, international and local organizations, and the government of Egypt on topics ranging from agricultural marketing and finance to operations. For the past eight years, he has led five capacity building and technical assistance agribusiness programs in Egypt that have introduced innovative, low-cost solutions to increase smallholder farmers productivity, improve the livelihood of rural communities, equip recent graduates with job-related skills, empower women, and mitigate the effects of climate change. As Associate Professor in the Department of Agribusiness at Cairo University, he taught undergraduate and graduate courses in marketing, international trade, agricultural finance, price analysis, and operations research.

James Gilling, regional vice president, East Asia and Pacific, has 35 years of experience in social and economic development in low- and middle-income countries. He has overseen Australian aid programs worth hundreds of millions of dollars and managed large teams of Australian and overseas staff, including as head of the Australian aid program in Indonesia. James has worked for United Kingdom (UK) and Papua New Guinea governments as an agricultural economist. He has also worked as a consultant economist with Oxford Policy Management in the UK and was an economic analyst with the Office of National Assessments in Australia.

Stephanie Landers Silva is an inclusive economic growth and agribusiness specialist, bringing more than 10 years of experience in strategic advisory services, partnership development, program design, and project management. She has worked with a wide range of clients and partners including multinational corporations, local businesses, industry associations, producer cooperatives, and government agencies. She focuses on working with the private sector to integrate sustainable and inclusive development considerations into business decisions, from supplier relationships to underserved customer segments and market entry. Operating cross-sectorally, Landers Silva also helps governments, NGOs, and donors partner with the private sector to address development challenges. Her work has spanned the globe but has generally focused on Latin America, Sub-Saharan Africa, and South and Southeast Asia.

Peter Levine is a multi-disciplinary economic growth and private-sector development specialist with more than 25 years of experience in program management, new business development, and communications for complex international programs. This includes extensive work in Asia, the Middle East, Latin America, Central/Eastern Europe and successful capture work for Abt Global in Africa. This portfolio of activities encompasses new business and technical/financial management of U.S.-government funded projects ranging from $5 million to $55 million. Committed to youth issues, he mentors students and young professionals and integrates them into programs.

Kelly Saldana has 25 years of experience in international development and health, including infectious diseases and nutrition. She worked in many regions of the world while serving in senior roles at the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID). She has worked with public, private, and non-profit sectors and communities. She represented USAID on interagency and international advisory committees and expert groups involving health systems strengthening. Beginning in 2021, Saldana also served as the strategic programming lead for the agency’s COVID-19 response and programmed $6 billion from American Rescue Plan funds to help end the COVID-19 pandemic.

Peter Saling has 14 years of experience designing, leading, and managing programs to increase incomes through agriculture-based livelihoods. His expertise spans from expanding climate resilient livelihoods for marginalized and disadvantaged populations to increasing affordable access to financing for catalyzing enterprise growth. Saling has designed climate smart agriculture, economic development, and financial sector strengthening programs in more than a dozen countries across sub-Saharan Africa, southeast Asia, and the Middle East. He has worked with governments, the private sector, cooperatives and associations, and civil society to link agricultural producers and small businesses to markets, while also designing innovations to engage young people in agriculture and increase earning opportunities for smallholder farmers.

Melissa Schweisguth is an inclusive market systems development and economic growth expert with more than sixteen years of experience in the international development and food and agriculture private sectors. She has focused extensively on designing programs, providing technical expertise for implementation, developing market systems approaches and guidance, and developing and delivering staff training.

Olga Zues, a health-system and financing specialist, has 20 years of experience in international development. She focuses on the design and implementation of comprehensive reform strategies to strengthen health systems and public finance management. Her expertise includes benefits design to move towards universal health coverage, arrangements to support efficiency gains and service delivery improvements, innovative payment mechanisms, sustainability strategies, and institutional development. She has worked with the World Health Organisation (WHO), the World Bank, the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria, the U.S. Agency for International Development, the UK Department for International Development – now the Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office – and numerous ministries of health, finance, justice, and education.

Katrina L. Bledsoe, Ph.D., is a trained evaluator, mixed methodologist, and social psychologist with evaluation experience in both U.S. and international settings. Dr. Bledsoe’s evaluation work has focused on community-based social services, health and education evaluation and programming, mixed methodology and methods, theory-driven evaluation, culturally responsive and equity-focused approaches, and topics in applied social psychology.

Nassim Díaz Casado is the chief of party for the USAID Local Health System Sustainability Project (LHSS) in the Dominican Republic (DR). He is an expert in project management with extensive experience in health systems, strategic management, and international development programs in the health sector. Diaz has more than 15 years of experience working as a project director for multilateral organizations, including the World Bank and International Development Bank. He has been chief of party of the USAID- Health Finance and Governance (HFG) project in the Dominican Republic and country program manager for the USAID-SHOPS Plus project, in addition to consulting with international organizations and public and private entities on health and social security systems.