2022 transatlantic partnership event

Robert Bonnie is the Under Secretary for Farm Production and Conservation at USDA. Prior to joining USDA, Bonnie was at Duke University first as a Rubenstein Fellow and later as an Executive in Residence at the Nicholas Institute for Environmental Policy Solutions working on conservation and environmental issues in rural America. In 2020, Bonnie also worked with the Bipartisan Policy Center on its Farm and Forest Carbon Solutions Initiative. Bonnie was Under Secretary for Natural Resources and Environment at USDA from 2013 to 2017, and a senior advisor to Secretary Tom Vilsack from 2009 to 2013. Prior to joining USDA, Robert was vice president for land conservation at Environmental Defense Fund where he focused on developing incentives to reward stewardship on private lands. Robert has master’s degrees from Duke in forestry and environmental management. He lives with his wife, Julie, and daughter, Lilly, in Loudoun County, Virginia.

John Clarke is director for international affairs in the European Commission’s DG Agriculture. Since May 2013 he has been focused, in particular, on multilateral negotiations with industrialised countries that include the USA and Japan, as well as with Africa in DG Agriculture and Rural Development. In this role, he has also been responsible for relations with Asian and Latin American countries, their free trade agreements, neighbourhood policy and EU enlargements. Prior to this, he was head of the EU delegation to the World Trade Organisation and the UN in Geneva. He joined the European Commission in 1993 as a trade negotiator. For ten years before joining the Commission, Mr Clarke held various official roles in the Hong Kong government, including as the governor’s head of cabinet.

Maciej Golubiewski is the Head of Cabinet of Commissioner for Agriculture, Mr. Janusz Wojciechowski. He holds a Bachelor of Arts degree in Philosophy, Politics and Economics from Washington and Lee University (1999) and a Master of Arts degree in Political Science from the Johns Hopkins University (2005). He also holds an International Baccalaureate Diploma from the United World College of the Atlantic in the UK. After graduation, he moved to Washington D.C. where he spent three years in business consulting at Charles River Associates International (CRAI) before going on to graduate school. During his studies Mr. Golubiewski interned with the office of Senator Richard Lugar, served as a summer fellow at the Heritage Foundation and was an associate scholar at the Center for European Policy Analysis. For close to five years, he was a teaching assistant and lecturer in political science and international relations at the Johns Hopkins University and spent two semesters as a visiting professor at Mannheim University in Germany. In 2008, he joined, as an established official, the Directorate General for Development and Relations with African, Caribbean and Pacific countries at the European Commission in Brussels as a desk responsible for regional political and economic cooperation with the Horn, East and Southern Africa region. During that time he participated in the Economic Partnership Agreement free trade negotiations with the African regional blocks. In 2011, he was transferred to the newly created European External Action Service, where, since 2012, he had been responsible for preparing the EU’s Foreign Affairs Council positions on the developing conflict in Syria. Between 2014 and 2016, Mr. Golubiewski served as the Deputy Chief of Mission and the Head of the Political Section at the EU Delegation to Lebanon in Beirut and between 2017 and 2019 as the Consul General of the Republic of Poland in New York. Mr. Golubiewski sits on an advisory board of the Integral Economic Development master programs at the Catholic University of America in Washington, D.C, and for almost ten years has been associated with the Sobieski Institute in Warsaw as an expert on the EU and foreign policy. He speaks Polish, English and French.

Jason Hafemeister is the Acting Deputy Under Secretary for Trade and Foreign Agricultural Affairs and the Trade Counsel to the Secretary at the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA). In this role, he advises the Secretary and the Under Secretary for Trade and Foreign Agricultural Affairs on agricultural trade policy.

As the company’s first CSO, Chris drives business strategy across the company, guiding Indigo’s research, external affairs, and strategic partnerships to advance understanding of agriculture’s potential as a climate solution. He is charged with further developing Indigo’s partnership across the ag ecosystem and incubating new business concepts. Most recently, Chris served as Global Head of Carbon, where he oversaw Indigo’s development of the industry’s first scalable, high quality, and scientifically rigorous carbon credit program for farmers. He first joined the company in 2019 as a Vice President, where he was responsible for guiding Indigo’s Product and Engineering teams in the development of digital agronomic tools.

Alan Matthews is Professor Emeritus of European Agricultural Policy in the Department of Economics, School of Social Sciences and Philosophy at Trinity College Dublin, Ireland. His major research interests are agricultural policy analysis, the impact of international trade on developing countries, and computable general equilibrium analysis of trade and agricultural policy reforms. He has previously worked as a consultant to the OECD, the Food and Agricultural Organisation of the United Nations and the UN Industrial Development Organisation, and has been a panel member in a number of WTO Dispute Settlement procedures.

Jeff Nawn is the founder and CEO of North Hill Group, a mission-driven firm that specializes in regulatory, government and consumer affairs for the food and agricultural sectors. Jeff has more than two decades of experience in international trade policy and market access analysis and negotiations, as well as in developing and executing domestic and international regulatory advocacy strategies. Throughout his career, both in the public and private sectors, Jeff has gained first-hand experience in balancing the demands of market access, agricultural innovation, regulatory approvals, sustainability, and consumer acceptance.

Dr Janez Potočnik graduated from the Faculty of Economics at the University of Ljubljana, Slovenia. After a successful career starting in 1989 in Slovenia as a researcher at the Institute of Economic Research, Director of the Institute of Macroeconomic Analysis and Development (1994), he was appointed Head of the Negotiating Team for the Accession of Slovenia to the EU (1998). He was also Director of Government Office for European Affairs (2000), Minister Councillor at the Office of the Prime Minister (2001) and Minister responsible for European Affairs (2002). In 2004 he joined the European Commission, first as "shadow Commissioner for Enlargement and then as Commissioner responsible for Science and Research. In 2010 Dr Potočnik became Commissioner for Environment. His term ended in November 2014 and he was appointed as a Co-Chair of UN Environment International Resource Panel and was also appointed as a Chairman of The Forum for the Future of Agriculture and RISE Foundation and a Member of the European Policy Centre's Advisory Council. From April 2016 he is also the Partner in SYSTEMIQ. More information Twitter – @JanezPotocnik22 Facebook – potocnikjanez LinkedIn - janez-potocnik-872470a7

Alain-Dominique Quintart is the Head of Government & Public Affairs EAME and the Head of Syngenta Brussels office.  He joined the Brussels office in September 2007. He previously held senior management positions with Syngenta, Global Head for the worldwide Flowers Seeds activity, Country Head for Syngenta Crop Protection in Belgium and Portugal, Marketing Head in France and in Switzerland for the European Region. He started his career with Syngenta in 1991 in the UK as European Product Manager for Animal Health. Alain-Dominique Quintart has been involved in managing mergers and acquisitions, setting business strategies and ensuring their implementation and delivery. He has a Master of Science in Engineering from UCLouvain and an MBA from Insead.

Giulia Riedo is currently working for the WWF EPO as Agriculture and Sustainable Food System Policy Officer. Previously she worked for the UNFAO, among others, on food production resilience and climate change adaptation.

Shari is president and CEO of Farm Foundation with over 25 years of global leadership and executive experience. She has a unique perspective, developed through her experience as a fifth-generation farm owner and operator, entrepreneur in the organic branded food industry, founder of an agribusiness consulting firm and leader of a soil health technology firm. Shari also served as CEO for a suite of service companies for 1,000 farms across the US. She began her career in London in financial services and continued in Europe with the Boston Consulting Group. Shari has served on several corporate boards, including Farm Credit Mid America and Coastal Pet. She currently serves as a trustee for The Nature Conservancy, and advisory boards of the St. Louis Federal Reserve, and Lewis & Clark Agrifood Fund.

Jeremy Rollison is Senior Director of EU Government Affairs within Microsoft’s Corporate, External & Legal Affairs (CELA) group. Based in Brussels, his work focuses on policy related to the EU Digital Single Market (DSM), with a particular emphasis on data issues and corresponding public policy covering privacy, cybersecurity, cloud policy, and the cross-border provision of online services. Prior to joining Microsoft, he worked in the Government Relations team at Nokia in the company’s EU representative office, and was previously Director of the European Digital Media Association (EDiMA) in Brussels. He has over a decade of experience in Brussels at the company, association, and consultancy levels, focusing and engaging with EU stakeholders on issues related to the development and delivery of online services in the Internal Market and corresponding EU regulatory policy.

Kerstin Rosenow is Head of Unit ‘Research & Innovation’ in DG AGRI, European Commission where she is responsible for the EU research and innovation policy in the intervention area of "agriculture, forestry and rural areas". Her unit programmes and monitors the research funded under Cluster 6 "Food, Bioeconomy, Natural Resources, Agriculture and Environment" of Horizon Europe R&I Programme. Her unit also provides the secretariat for the Horizon Europe R&I Mission” A Soil Deal for Europe”. Previously, she was Head of Unit in the EC Research Executive Agency (REA) where she managed the implementation of the project portfolio for Horizon 2020 Societal Challenge 2 (food security, sustainable agriculture and forestry, marine, maritime, and inland water research and the bioeconomy). She has been working in the EC for over 20 years after covering a managerial position in the German administration (Representation of the State of Hessen to the EU). For DG AGRI she coordinated negotiations with pre-accession and candidate countries and the preparation of the 2014-2020 CAP legislative framework. She studied law, politics and administration in Marburg, Grenoble and Bruges.

Lukas Visek is a member of the Cabinet of Executive Vice-President of the European Commission Frans Timmermans. In the context of the European Green Deal, his responsibilities cover the Farm to Fork Strategy, agriculture and the EU’s common agricultural policy as well as the zero pollution initiatives. He also advises on policies related to health, food safety and animal welfare. Lukas started working in the European Commission in 2001 after three years in the Czech Ministry of Agriculture. Lukas graduated as an economist from the Czech University of Life Sciences Prague.

Marta Zuluaga Zilbermann is Vice President of Government Relations for Cargill in the EMEA region, leading the work of the team in designing and implementing government affairs and advocacy strategies for Cargill across the region. Marta represents Cargill in a number of EU industry trade associations and is currently Vice-Chair of the AmCham EU Agro-Food Committee, Chair of FEDIOL Environment Committee as well as Vice-Chair of COCERAL Food and Feed Safety Committee. Marta lives in Brussels and prior to joining Cargill she worked as consultant in European affairs both in the public and private sector. Marta obtained her Law and business degree at the Universidad Pontificia Comillas, ICADE, Madrid, and has an LL.M degree in European Law from the Institut d’Etudes Européenes, ULB, Brussels.