LD4D Steering Committee

The Steering Committee will support LD4D’s overarching goal by identifying and supporting improvements to livestock data. They will advance solutions in this area by providing direction on LD4D working groups and other activities, and exchange knowledge on this topic with the wider community.   

The purpose of the LD4D Steering Committee will be to:

1. Advising on the scientific direction of LD4D
2. Prioritising topics for consideration and implementation
3. Advising on LD4D’s knowledge exchange and communication strategy
4. Identifying and promoting opportunities to move towards a sustainable structure 
5. Reviewing the progress of LD4D’s working groups and other activities 
    

Steering Committee members

	Andrew Bisson (LD4D Steering Committee chair) is a Senior Livestock Advisor for the Bureau for Resilience and Food Security at the United States Agency for International Development (USAID). He started his career in smallholder farm veterinary practice before completing an MSc in Tropical Veterinary Medicine and Epidemiology at Edinburgh University. He has lived and worked in a number of countries in East and West Africa, Asia and the Middle East, working with pastoral and mixed crop-livestock production systems. His interests include strengthening animal health service delivery including community-based animal health; transboundary and zoonotic disease control and One-Health initiatives; livestock market system development, and resilience programming.
	Isabelle Baltenweck is a Program Leader for Policies, Institutions and Livelihoods at the International Livestock Research Institute (ILRI). She is a development economist with twenty years’ experience in agricultural systems in Africa, South and South-East Asia, focusing on livestock value chains. Isabelle has increasingly sharpened her skills in gender and social equality research, looking at how women and men’s needs and capabilities differ on terms of accessing and using technologies and practices.  She has worked at the interface of research and development, working with private sector, farmers’ groups, ministries, NGOs and investors
	Alan Duncan is a visiting Professor of Livestock and Development, Global Academy of Agriculture and Food Security, University of Edinburgh, UK and Principal Livestock Scientist, International Livestock Research Institute (ILRI), Ethiopia. Alan has a PhD in livestock nutrition from University of Edinburgh. As well as technical expertise in livestock nutrition, Alan is interested in societal, economic and institutional barriers to improved livestock nutrition. He has developed several participatory approaches to livestock feed improvement including the widely used Feed Assessment Tool (FEAST).
	Ulf Magnusson is professor of Animal Reproduction at the Department of Clinical Sciences at the Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences (SLU). He is a licensed Swedish Veterinarian and Diplomate of the European College of Animal Reproduction. His current research activities deal with infectious diseases in livestock that affect reproduction and might be transmissible to humans.
	Shannon Mesenhowski is a Senior Program Officer with the Livestock Team at the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. Shannon is responsible for the Foundation's animal systems body of work, focusing on policy, data, veterinary service, advocacy, and collaboration as tools for optimising livestock’s role in development. Shannon has a Doctorate of Veterinary Medicine (D.V.M.) and Master of Public Health (M.P.H.) degrees from the University of Minnesota, and has worked in private clinical veterinary practice doing both mixed and small animal work.
	Simplice Nouala Fonkou is Head of Division of Agriculture and Food Security at the Department of Rural Economy and Agriculture, African Union Commission. His background is in tropical animal health and production.
	Julie Ojango is a senior scientist at the International Livestock Research Institute (ILRI). She works on projects designed to identify appropriate breeds and breed combinations for ruminant livestock production systems found in middle and low-income countries.  She has been instrumental in developing national livestock performance monitoring databases in developing countries. Her current research focus is on dairy improvement in smallholder farming systems, and on improving sheep and goat productivity in extensive pastoral systems and climatically challenged smallholder systems.
	Tim Robinson works as a Livestock Policy Officer at the Food and Agriculture Organisation of the United Nations. His work concentrates on sustainable livestock agri-food systems, specialising in climate and natural resource.
	Aashna Singh is the Co-Founder at MoooFarm, an award winning agritech startup building a connected commerce platform to enhance the lives of 75 million dairy farmers in India. Through its mobile application, MoooFarm assists small-holder dairy farmers to get access to qualified veterinarians, buy/sell cattle, learn dairy best practices, manage dairy farm accounts and soon access financial services as well as nutritional inputs. She was recently awarded the 'Most Influential Agriculture Industry Professional' in India at the Agriculture Innovation awards.
	Alberto Zezza works with the Development Data Group of the World Bank, where he is the Program Manager of the Center for Development Data (C4D2), based in Rome in. His research interests are in the area of agricultural and rural development and food security. He is part of the Living Standards Measurement Study (LSMS) team, where he focuses specifically on improving the availability and quality of food consumption and of livestock data in LSMS-type household surveys.