Simon Winter became Executive Director in 2017. He joined the Syngenta Foundation from TechnoServe, where he had most recently been Senior Vice President, Development, in Washington, D.C., and previously led regional operations in sub-Saharan Africa, having joined in 2003. Simon was a management consultant with McKinsey and Company from 1998-2003, during which he co-led the firm's international development practice. He worked as an economic planner for the Botswana government, and as a development consultant in Southern Africa. He started his career with Barclays Bank plc in the UK, Côte d'Ivoire, and Australia.  From 2015-2017, Simon Winter was also a Senior Fellow of the Mossavar-Rahmani Center at the Harvard Kennedy School of Government (HKS)*, where he researched climate risks and sub-Saharan African food and agricultural systems, co-publishing three papers with the Harvard Corporate Responsibility Initiative. Simon additionally holds advisory positions with the World Economic Forum and the Private Sector Mechanism for the Committee on World Food Security. He currently chairs the Steering Committee of the Farm to Market Alliance and the board of ACRE Africa. Simon originates from the UK and holds a Ph.D. in economics from the School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London, 1998, which focused on the development of the manufacturing sector in Zimbabwe. *Here are papers he co-authored at HKS on lessons from multi-stakeholder initiatives (MSI) in ag, on MSI & climate change, and on climate risks and Tanzanian maize (corn).