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International Support Program Staff
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A. |
William Motes - Chief Economist.
Dr. Motes works out of the
Informa Economics Washington, D.C., office, as chief economist,
working with Informa's Office of the Chairman, with his primary
responsibilities including client consulting for international
commercial clients and development projects. Formerly, he was a
principal member of Economic Perspectives, Inc. and served as
director of policy analysis for the Secretary of Agriculture
(1979-81). Dr. Motes was associate director of USDA's Budget and
Program Evaluation Office and also was legislative assistant for
agriculture for US Senator Dick Clark. He holds degrees in
agricultural economics from Kansas State University and received his
doctorate in agricultural economics from Iowa State University. |
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B.
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Mark Jekanowski - Senior Vice President.
Dr. Jekanowski is manager of Informa's Washington, D.C., office and is primarily responsible for
economic analyses and agricultural policy research. Prior to joining
the company, Dr. Jekanowski was an agricultural economist in the
Food Markets Branch of USDA’s Economic Research Service where his
research focused on the changing structure of the food manufacturing
and retailing industries as well as trends in consumer demand. Dr.
Jekanowski was raised on a family owned tobacco and vegetable farm
in Massachusetts. He received his bachelor’s degree in resource
economics from the University of Massachusetts at Amherst and his
master’s and doctorate degrees in agricultural economics from Purdue
University. |
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C.
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Numerous other staff with expertise in a
wide range of export-related issues |
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D.
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Stuart Proctor, Jr. - Consultant.
Mr. Proctor is a former President/CEO of prominent agriculture trade
associations and, most recently, was with the USA Rice Council, an FAS cooperator. Prior to that, he served in the top staff
leadership position with the National Turkey Federation. At both
organizations, Proctor aggressively instituted many management
changes that streamlined the staff and operations, created a new
focused work ethic, and increased productivity and financial
security. Few people have such broad experience in international and
domestic marketing of such a wide range of bulk and value added
products. For almost ten years, Proctor was employed by the FAS/USDA
in several marketing positions, including assignments in the
Oilseeds and Products Division and Assistant Agricultural Attaché to
the Philippines. For this service, he received three FAS and one
USDA meritorious service award for strengthening the market for U.S.
agriculture exports. As P/CEO of the USA Rice Council, Proctor was
responsible for a $10 million cooperator program that had activities
in 30 emerging and developed countries. He was also responsible for
domestic promotion of rice and turkeys and was instrumental in
helping NTF develop a new domestic marketing program that the Wall
Street Journal said was "an imaginative tactic that involved
rethinking just who its consumer was and then blitzing its new
target on the Web.
Joe Somers - Consultant.
Mr. Somers is responsible for economic analyses and agricultural
policy consultant work out of the Informa Economics Washington,
D.C., office. He came to the company with 27+ years’ experience with
USDA’s Foreign Agricultural Service as a foreign service officer and
as a private sector consultant. While at FAS, he served in Brazil
and Argentina and extensively traveled on FAS overseas fact-finding
trips. In Washington, D.C., he supervised and conducted world
supply/demand and trade policy analyses for a wide range of
commodities and managed publication of several analytic circulars.
Most recently, he was director of research and marketing for the GIC
Group, Alexandria, Virginia, where he was responsible for business
development and economic and market analyses. He received his
bachelor’s degree in political science from Northeastern University,
Boston, and master’s in agricultural economics from the University
of Massachusetts, Amherst. |
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E.
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Strategic partnerships:
Elizabeth H.
Callanan - Strategic Partner to Informa Economics. Ms.
Callanan retired in 2006 after nearly 34 years in the Foreign
Agricultural Service (FAS), U.S. Department of Agriculture
(USDA). Virtually the whole of her career was dedicated to the
implementation of the Agency's more than $250 million in foreign
market development programs which are conducted in cooperation
with nonprofit agricultural trade associations. She supervised
the unit responsible for developing and implementing the
regulations by which those programs are managed and designing
and overseeing the processes by which FAS program funds are
allocated, including program evaluation
requirements.
During her tenure with USDA, Ms. Callanan also served as the
Deputy Director responsible for the oversight of the FAS-funded
and/or checkoff-funded export promotion programs of the forest
products, fish and seafood, oilseeds (soybeans, sunflower seed,
peanuts, cottonseed), cotton and planting seeds industries. In
that capacity, she provided training and guidance to program
participants in the design and implementation of evaluations at
various program levels (i.e. activity, constraint and
program-wide) and reviewed and critiqued evaluations for
sufficiency relative to FAS’ program regulations.
She served as the Assistant Deputy Administrator overall of FAS'
marketing programs, and had the opportunity to become familiar
with most of the other 80 commodity organizations working with
FAS. She designed and first implemented the Unified Export
Strategy (UES), which is today used by FAS as the single
application process for requesting FAS program funds. Since her
retirement, Ms. Callanan has provided technical guidance to US
agricultural industry groups seeking to refine their global
strategic planning processes, improve the quality of their UESes,
including suggestions and assistance accessing new funding
sources and implementing more routine, cost efficient and
effective approaches to evaluation.
Alan J. Webb - Economics
Consultant. Dr. Alan Webb has been engaged in a
number of agricultural consulting projects including market
evaluation studies for the National Renderer's Association, US
Potato Growers, and the American Soybean Association, as well as
other assessments for the Asian Development Bank. Dr. Webb has
over twenty-five years of professional experience in commodity
analysis, economic research, university teaching,
and agricultural situation outlook in various capacities. He
served as Senior Economist for Asia with USDA from 1980 to 1993,
where he analyzed issues related to U.S. trade with Pacific Rim
countries.
He was a visiting professor with the
University of Arkansas in 1993-94 before going to Malaysia in
July 1994 as Team Leader for an Asian Development Bank technical
assistance project to the Economic Planning Unit, Prime
Minister's Department. In 1996 Dr. Webb worked as a consultant
on forecasting and training projects in Indonesia and China. He
took a two-year appointment with the Faculty of Economics and
Management at Universiti Putra Malaysia where he taught courses
in agribusiness and international trade. Webb holds a BA degree
in International Relations from American University, an MA in
Economics from the University of Arkansas and a PhD in
Agricultural Economics from Oklahoma State University.
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F.
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Extensive contacts and alliances with
individuals and firms that have specific foreign market and product
knowledge. |
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