From 2002 – 2005, Emmy B. Simmons served as the Assistant Administrator for Economic Growth, Agriculture, and Trade at the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID), capping a career with the Agency begun in 1977. As a Foreign Service Officer with USAID, she lived and worked in Africa for more than eight years and in Moscow, Russia for three years. USAID/Washington assignments included those of agricultural economist in the Program and Policy Coordination Bureau and Deputy Assistant Administrator in the Global Bureau’s Center for Economic Growth and Agriculture. Ms. Simmons also provided strategic leadership for USAID’s Africa Bureau as it took on the challenge of shaping the Development Fund for Africa (DFA).

Prior to her association with USAID, Ms. Simmons lectured and conducted rural research in northern Nigeria from 1969-1973. She collaborated with colleagues at Ahmadu Bello University’s Institute for Agricultural Research in authoring a book on “Farming Systems in the Nigerian Savanna,” published by Westview Press in 1982. Ms. Simmons also served as the Deputy Director for a national household expenditure survey while on the staff of the Ministry of Planning and Economic Affairs in Monrovia, Liberia from 1974 -1977.

Ms. Simmons was a Peace Corps Volunteer in the Philippines from 1962-64 before completing her M.S. in agricultural economics at Cornell University. She conducted her Master’s thesis research on the food economy of Mauritius in 1966 and received the Best Master’s Thesis award from the American Association of Agricultural Economics in 1968.

Today, in addition to her work with the Africa Center for Health and Human Security at GWU, she serves on the Boards of two international research centers supported by the Consultative Group on International Agricultural Research (CGIAR): the International Livestock Research Institute headquartered in Nairobi, Kenya and the International Institute for Tropical Agriculture headquartered in Ibadan, Nigeria. She serves on the board of the Partnership to Cut Hunger and Poverty in Africa, a small, Washington based NGO focused on research and advocacy and on the board of the Society for International Development - Washington chapter. She co-chairs the Roundtable on Science and Technology for Sustainability at the National Academy of Sciences.