Jimmy W Smith, a Guyanese and Canadian citizen, recently served as Director General of the International Livestock Research Institute (ILRI), a position he assumed in October 2011. ILRI is an international research organization in the family of CGIAR Centres working towards a food secure world by focusing on livestock research for sustainable development.
Before joining ILRI, Smith worked for the World Bank, in Washington, DC, where he led the Bank’s Global Livestock Portfolio. Working at the corporate level, he anchored the bank’s investments on sustainable livestock development and mitigating the threat of zoonotic diseases with pandemic potential. Prior to his tenure at the World Bank, Smith held senior positions at the Canadian International Development Agency (CIDA). Still earlier in his career, Smith worked at ILRI and its predecessor, the International Livestock Centre for Africa (ILCA), where he served as the institute’s regional representative for West Africa and later as director of its global program on crop-livestock-natural resource integration. Before his decade of work at ILCA/ILRI, Smith held senior positions in the Caribbean Agricultural Research and Development Institute (CARDI-Trinidad) and the Livestock Development Company (LIDCO-Guyana).
Jimmy Smith is a graduate of the University of Illinois at Urban-Champaign, USA, where he completed MSc and PhD degrees in animal sciences. He is widely published, with more than 100 publications, including papers in refereed journals, book chapters, policy papers and edited proceedings.
