Join the Scaling Community of Practice (SCoP) for a closing Plenary starting with a review of the key insights from this year’s Annual Forum. This will be followed by an interactive session where we want to hear from participants how they and their organizations may join us in launching the Scaling Campaign. We will discuss how the SCoP and our collective members can assist and enable one another to advance transformative scaling. We hope you will accept this Call to Action and join us for this exciting capstone event.
TODD KIRKBRIDE
Todd has over 25 years of experience designing and leading public–private partnerships for development, advancing private sector engagement in emerging markets with multinational corporations, donors, foundations, nonprofits, and start-up ventures. He is recognized internationally for his expertise in partnership brokering, training and coaching, organizational strengthening, market assessments, and directing cross-sector platforms in renewable energy, agriculture, mining, mobile technology, tourism, and manufacturing.
In senior leadership roles at Pact Inc. and Land O’Lakes Venture37, Todd rebuilt private sector engagement teams and strategies, revitalizing organizational growth with the private sector, foundations, and non-US government donors. He developed and implemented global partnership strategies that advanced food systems transformation, climate resilience, and inclusive economic growth. Over his career, Todd has mobilized more than $110 million in new funding through strategic partnerships and project development, consistently prioritizing results-based management, knowledge sharing, and social equity.
Previously, Todd led a successful consulting practice for seven years in Washington, DC and Kosovo, advising clients on shared value and inclusive business approaches. He directed more than a dozen USAID Private Sector Landscape Assessments and PSE strategies, and worked with the World Bank, GAIN, MCC, UNDP, and INGOs to deliver strategic consulting, Fit for Partnering trainings, and partnership facilitation.
Earlier in his career, Todd held positions with Resonance, The Partnering Initiative, TechnoServe, USAID’s PSE Lab, and Chemonics. He holds an MBA from Thunderbird School of Global Management and a bachelor’s degree from Northwestern University. He has worked in more than 40 countries, with long-term assignments in Mozambique and Kosovo, and currently lives in Bethesda with his wife Pranvera and their two children, Adrian and Rea.
JULIE HOWARD
Julie Howard is an independent consultant focusing on food and agricultural system development in sub-Saharan Africa and related US policies and programs. She is a non-resident Senior Adviser in the Global Food and Water Security Program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies. Dr. Howard is a Director of the World Vegetable Center and chairs the Board’s Nominations and Governance Committee. She co-chairs the Agriculture and Rural Development Working Group of the Scaling Community of Practice. From 2011-2014, Dr. Howard served as the first chief scientist in the Bureau for Food Security and senior adviser to the USAID administrator on agricultural research, extension, and education. Previously she was CEO of the Partnership to Cut Hunger and Poverty in Africa, a nongovernmental research and advocacy organization, and a faculty member and senior adviser at Michigan State University. She holds a Ph.D. in agricultural economics from MSU and was a Peace Corps Volunteer in the Dominican Republic.
CHARLOTTE COOGAN
Charlotte has a small, independent consulting firm where she strives to use the most rigorous possible methods to answer decision-relevant questions for actors in the international development space through a collaborative approach to research. She tries to serve as a bridge between the vast evidence base on food security and nutrition topics and the actionable needs of specific stakeholders. She has a decade of experience in international development and a PhD in Nutritional Epidemiology from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.
YASHODHARA RANA
Yashodhara Rana serves as the President, Programs at the Eleanor Crook Foundation. In this role, Yasho oversees ECF’s multi-million-dollar portfolio of grants in maternal and child nutrition and provides thought leadership both to the ECF team and its community of partners. She is currently a member of Power of Nutrition’s Technical Advisory Group, Global Nutrition Report Stakeholder Group and also serves as a member of the Editorial Board of Maternal & Child Nutrition. Prior to ECF, Yashodhara was an Associate Director at Results for Development (R4D) Yasho holds a Ph.D. in Policy Analysis from the Pardee RAND Graduate School and a BA (Honors) in Government from Dartmouth College.
GEORGE “MAC” MCCARTHY
Dr. George “Mac” McCarthy is president and CEO of the Lincoln Institute of Land Policy in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Since arriving at the Lincoln Institute in 2014, he has grown the organization from 38 to 165 full-time employees. His work to expand the organization’s relevance and impact is evidenced by numerous achievements, including establishing a partnership with Claremont Lincoln University, developing state-of-the-art technology that tells parcel-level stories of land use with unprecedented detail, and growing the Lincoln Institute’s presence on a global scale through its work in Africa, Asia, and Europe.
Before joining the Lincoln Institute, Mac directed Metropolitan Opportunity at the Ford Foundation, which sought to provide disadvantaged people better access to good jobs and other opportunities for advancement by supporting regional planning that integrates housing and public transit development. Mac also administered a program at Ford that focused on using homeownership to build assets for low-income families and their communities.
Prior to that, Mac worked as a senior research associate at the Center for Urban and Regional Studies at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. He has also worked as professor of economics at Bard College, resident scholar at the Jerome Levy Economics Institute, visiting scholar and member of the High Table at King’s College of Cambridge University, visiting scholar at the University of Naples, Italy, and research associate at the Centre for Social Research in St. Petersburg, Russia.
Mac received a BA in economics and mathematics at the University of Montana; an MA in economics at Duke University; and a PhD in economics at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.
SIMON WINTER
Simon started with RF Catalytic Capital (a public charity supported by Rockefeller Foundation) in August 2025 to lead a new initiative that looks to develop next generation integrated models to deliver resilient food and nutrition security in fragile regions. At the end of 2024, he founded Sustainable Agriculture Foundations’ International Association, to support the legacy Asia and African country organizations spun out of the Syngenta Foundation for Sustainable Agriculture (SFSA). He was SFSA Executive Director from 2017 to 2024, during which time SFSA saw a 5-fold increase in pre-commercial smallholder farmers supported. He joined from TechnoServe, where he had been SVP, Development, and led operations in sub-Saharan Africa. From 2015-2017, Simon was a Senior Fellow of the Mossavar-Rahmani Center at the Harvard Kennedy School. He serves on a range of boards including chair of the Dalberg Trust, the Scaling Community of Practice, and Griffith Foods Sustainability Advisory Council and is an Associate Director of Morphosis (an organization boosting investment in climate adaptation). His earlier career included positions at McKinsey & Co, a Ministry in Botswana, and Barclays Bank. A UK and German citizen, Simon holds a PhD in Economics from SOAS, London.
LARRY COOLEY
Larry Cooley is Founder and President Emeritus of Management Systems International and a specialist in managing large system change. He currently serves as Chair of the Governing Council of the Society for International Development and is the author of widely used methodologies for managing policy change, scaling innovation, entrepreneurship development, and results-based management. Larry is an elected Fellow of the U.S. National Academy of Public Administration and a non-resident senior fellow at the Brookings Institution; a Trustee of Elma Philanthropies; founder and co-curator of the Global Community of Practice on Scaling Development Outcomes, and Co-Chair of its Working Group on Monitoring and Evaluation.
JOHANNES LINN
Johannes F. Linn is a Non-resident Senior Fellow at the Brookings Institution, a Distinguished Resident Scholar at the Emerging Markets Forum in Washington, D.C., a Senior Fellow at the Results for Development Institute and a Senior Research Fellow at the International Initiative for Impact Evaluation. He is co-founder and co-chair of the international Scaling Community of Practice. He currently serves as Global Facilitator for the Systematic Observation Financing Facility (SOFF) of the World Meteorological Organization (WMO). From 2005-2010 he was Director of the Wolfensohn Center for Development at the Brookings Institution in Washington, DC. Before that, he worked for three decades at the World Bank, including as Vice President for Financial Policy and Resource Mobilization and as Vice President for Europe and Central Asia. He holds a bachelor degree from Oxford University and a doctorate in economics from Cornell University.
