Participants
Gary Toenniessen

Gary Toenniessen
Managing Director, Alliance for a Green Revolution in Africa (AGRA)
Rockefeller Foundation
New York, USA

Gary H. Toenniessen is a Managing Director at The Rockefeller Foundation and currently serves as Interim President of the Alliance for a Green Revolution in Africa, a project of the Rockefeller Foundation and the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. As Managing Director, Toenniessen provides leadership and strategy direction for the Foundation’s initiatives in agricultural development. In Africa the emphasis is on resilient crops, soil fertility, strengthening markets and capacity building.

During his tenure at the Foundation, Toenniessen’s work has focused on science based development. From 1982 to 2000 he led the Foundation’s program on the application of advances in molecular and cellular biology to the genetic improvement of tropical crops. This included a $110 million investment over 15 years in creating the tools of rice biotechnology and building the capacity in developing countries, particularly in Asia, to use biotechnology for rice improvement.

Toenniessen is a writer and editor of numerous papers on biotechnology, agriculture and international food issues, many co-authored with other Foundation officers. He continues to develop ideas and theories on how the world’s growing population can and should be fed and how agricultural development can be an engine for economic growth.

Toenniessen has a Bachelor of Science degree in mathematics from the State University of New York at Buffalo, and a doctoral degree in microbiology from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.