Annual Meeting 2008
44th Annual Meeting
June 1-3, 2008

"Innovative Public-Private Partnerships that Promote
International Agricultural and Rural Development"
Speakers and Panelists

Jeff Morgan is the Director of Global Programs for Mars, Incorporated, based at their global headquarters in McLean, Virginia, near Washington, DC. He has worked in the Food and Agriculture industry for more than 31 years. He received his Bachelors Degree in Chemistry from Miami of Ohio and his Masters in Food Systems from The Ohio State University.

He joined Mars, Incorporated in 1979 where he has focused his attention on all aspects of the value chain for cocoa and chocolate. In that time he has worked on projects in nearly every major cocoa-growing region of Africa, Latin America and Asia - finding ways to improve cocoa farming practices since well before the question of farm working conditions became a priority issue in 2001.

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Since the signing of the Harkin / Engle Protocol and especially since 2005 Jeff has worked predominantly on this issue, representing not only the interests of Mars, Incorporated - but also working as the primary representative of the North American and European cocoa industry coalition - the Global Issues Group (GIG).

To address the design and implementation of a certification process for cocoa, Jeff has worked in partnership with key stakeholders in Ghana and Côte d'Ivoire - being actively engaged on the ground and spending significant amounts of time in the West African Cocoa growing regions over the past 4 years.

In addition to his effort on labor practices, Jeff is also working to implement a novel public / private partnership undertaken by Mars with a select group of development NGO's. The program, known as iMPACT (The Mars Partnership for African Cocoa Communities of Tomorrow) is focused on bringing needed services to cocoa growing communities in Ghana and Côte d'Ivoire, using a community empowerment model of entry, assessment and delivery.