The Wharton Award

McCue is a member of the Cornell-Sathguru Foundation for Development, participated in several International Agriculture 401-601 courses in India, and served as a consultant for the International Rice Research Institute in the Philippines. In 2025, she had the pleasure of joining Professor Ralph Christy and a SMART team in a service-learning project in New Orleans. During her thirty-year career in public services, libraries evolved from print-based models to electronic collections and services. Helping to lead this transition was a highlight of her career. During her tenure at Mann, McCue led a $4M endowment campaign for the library as well as the multi-year renovation and addition to the library.

Since her retirement in 2013, McCue has published two books and numerous articles. Her biography of the conservationist (and Cornell grad) Horace Kephart won the prestigious Thomas Wolfe Memorial Literary Award in 2019. Her newest biography, “George Masa: A Life Reimagined,” focuses on the Japanese-born photographer whose images had a major impact on the establishment of the Great Smoky Mountains National Park. Co-authored with filmmaker Paul Bonesteel, Masa’s life will be featured in an upcoming documentary on PBS in May 2026. In the words of 19th century writer and conservationist Horace Kephart, McCue believes that “librarianship offers a better field for mental gymnastics than any other profession.”

Dr. Low is a true believer in the power of biofortification to make a difference to human health in low income countries. Dr. Low obtained her doctorate in agricultural economics at Cornell University, minoring in nutrition. Having worked over 30 years in sub-Saharan Africa, her research effort has focused on working with multi-disciplinary teams to develop and promote biofortified orange-fleshed sweetpotato to combat vitamin A deficiency. During her 20 years at the International Potato Center (CIP), based in their regional office for Africa, she managed the 10-year Sweetpotato Action for Security and Health in Africa (SASHA) research project and co-led the Sweetpotato for Profit and Health Initiative (SPHI) that reached 6.3 million African households in 15 target countries with improved varieties of sweetpotato, promoting their diversified use. She also worked for the International Food Policy Research Institute and Michigan State University as a researcher and policy advisor in Mozambique. Dr. Low has served as President of the African Potato Association (APA) from 2011-2013. In 2016, along with two CIP sweetpotato breeders (Maria Andrade and Robert Mwanga) and Howarth Bouis of HarvestPlus, Dr. Low was awarded the World Food Prize for her work on biofortification. Currently, she is Managing Director of JWLOW Limited (Nairobi, Kenya) and is supporting several innovation teams to develop their scaling delivery strategies.

Fenton Sands is an agricultural economist with a BS from Cornell University (1970) and PhD from Michigan State University (1984). After his first job with the USDA, he spent almost 26 years with USAID until he retired in 2007. Since retiring, Dr. Sands has continued his professional commitment to economic development (almost 45 years to date) as a policy and strategic planning consultant to USAID HQs and missions in Guyana, Ghana, and Malawi. Dr. Sands has led a gypsy-lifestyle that he inherited from his parents because his father (with a PhD from Cornell University) was an international agricultural expert who, over a period of many years, lived and worked overseas for several international development organizations. Besides him growing up in Liberia, Nigeria, and Sudan (with his parents and two sisters), Dr. Sands attended high school in both Egypt and Switzerland. Dr. Sands has lived, worked and traveled in almost 20 countries covering the four corners of Africa. He has also traveled to many other countries in Europe and a few countries in the Middle East, Latin America, and the Caribbean. In particular, after he initially worked for USAID in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, his long-term overseas assignments with the Agency continued from there to Uganda to Morocco, to Egypt, then Ghana, and briefly in Washington, DC before going to Guyana in 2005 as the USAID Mission Director. Throughout his career, Dr. Sands has gained broad-based experience and expertise in economic analysis, international country-level and program level policy and strategic design, development economic activity level design and implementation, organizational and program level senior management, etc. Today, Dr. Sands and his wife Cynthia (a professional artist) live in Washington, DC and their sons, Bemani and Jahmal, are the third generation of Sands in the foreign service.

Ronnie Coffman serves as International Professor of Plant Breeding & Genetics (emeritus) in the College of Agriculture and Life Sciences (CALS) at Cornell University. He serves as Principal Investigator in the Next Generation Cassava project and Vice Chair of the Borlaug Global Rust Initiative (BGRI). Previous positions include International Professor of Plant Breeding & Genetics at Cornell University (1981-2022); Director of International Programs in CALS (2001-2022); Associate Dean for Research in CALS, and Director, Cornell University Agricultural Experiment Station (1993-2001); Chair of the Department of Plant Breeding and Genetics at Cornell University (1987-1993 and 2001-2006), and Plant Breeder at the International Rice Research Institute (IRRI) (1971-1981).

Coffman’s work has been important to the development of improved rice varieties grown on several million hectares throughout the world. He has collaborated extensively with institutions in the developing world and has served as a board member for several international institutes. Currently, he serves on the Board of Trustees of the American University of Beirut (emeritus), the Council of Advisors of the World Food Prize, and the Advisory Committee of the West Africa Center for Crop Improvement (WACCI). In 2006 Coffman received the Chancellor’s Award for Faculty Service from the State University of New York. In 2013 he was awarded the Inaugural World Agriculture Prize by the Global Confederation of Higher Education Associations for the Agricultural and Life Sciences (GCHERA). In 2016 he was named Andrew H. & James S. Tisch Distinguished Cornell University Professor and received the Yaqui Award from CIMMYT. In 2019 he was named as a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) and received the Outstanding Career Accomplishment Award from CALS. In 2021 he received the African Plant Breeders Association (APBA) Distinguished Award for Meritorious Service.

He received his Ph.D. from Cornell University (thesis research supervised by Norman Borlaug in Mexico) and undergraduate work was done at the University of Kentucky, his home state.

Iwan Azis is a Professor of Emerging Markets within the Dyson School of Applied Economics and Management and was the Director of Graduate Studies, Regional Science program (2005-2010) at Cornell University where he has taught since 1992. Prior to that, he was the Chair of the Department of Economics and the Director of the Inter-University Center for Economics at the University of Indonesia.

Iwan has served as a consultant to several governments and organizations in Asia and taught as a visiting professor in Japan, Australia, Singapore and Indonesia. He previously served as the appointed Head of the Office of Regional Economic Integration at the Asian Development Bank (ADB), during which he became the Interim Chair of the Board of Directors of the Trust Fund-Credit Guarantee Investment Facility (CGIF), and a member of the International Policy Advisory Group. He is currently advising the Indonesian Central Bank and the Deposit Insurance Corporation, and a member of the International Advisory Panel of the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank (AIIB). Iwan is a “Distinguished Scholar in Regional Science, Financial Economics, and Economic Modeling.” His research focuses on the interlink between macro-financial economics, social institutions, and spatial inequalities in emerging markets. He has published several books, the latest ones are “Regional Economics: Fundamental Concepts, Policies, and Institutions,” World Scientific (2021), and “Periphery and Small One’s Matter: Interplay of Policy and Social Capital” (Springer, 2022). Among his latest articles are “Financial Spillover in Emerging Asia” Asian Economic Papers(MIT Press, 2021), and “Indonesia: A Tale of Three Crises” in Trauma to Triumph: Rising from the Ashes of the Asian Financial Crisis(World Scientific, 2022). He is currently leading a major research program that entails interviewing hundreds of micro-small and medium enterprises (MSMEs) throughout Indonesia, emphasizing the role of social capital and mechanism design approach to improve the effectiveness of policies.

Dr. Uma Lele has been driven by a desire to inform public-policies based on rigorous empirical evidence. A renowned development economist and scholar, she completed her postgraduate studies in Applied Economics at the University of Chicago and Cornell University. Uma has made enduring contributions to policy and international development strategies from the World Bank, US universities and many international organizations. Her work has impacted millions of lives, especially women, in developing countries. Uma has received numerous awards including the Distinguished Alumnus – Cornell University (2007). More information about her distinguished career is available at http://www.umalele.org/.

Dr. Randolph Barker is Professor Emeritus in the Charles H. Dyson School of Applied Economics and Management (formerly the Department of Agricultural Economics) at Cornell University.  He served as Director of the Southeast Asia Program (1989 to 1994) and was an International Professor in the College of Agriculture and Life Sciences (1978 to 1994), Cornell.

Randy has spent approximately half of his career conducting research and teaching in Asia.  He served for thirteen years as head of the Economics/Social Science Division at the International Rice Research Institute (IRRI) in Los Banos, Philippines (1966-78 and 2007-2008), and he was on the Board of Trustees of the International Institute of Tropical Agriculture in Nigeria (1987-1993) serving as chairman the last two years.  He then spent nine years at the International Water Management Institute in Colombo, Sri Lanka (1995-2005). During that period, he was principal investigator on the project “How to Grow More Rice with Less Water” with Wuhan University. He also taught a short-course once a year (1999-2004) in Agricultural Development to sixty mid-career Vietnamese students in the Harvard-Fulbright Economics Teaching Program in Saigon.  Among his numerous publications, the most widely cited is “The Rice Economy of Asia” (Resources for the Future, 1985), co-authored with Robert Herdt. His most recent publication is “Water Productivity in Context: The Experience of Taiwan and the Philippines over the Past Half-century,” co-authored with Gilbert Levine. (International Water Management Institute Research Report 145, 2012)

Randy began his academic career at Princeton, received his B.S. from Cornell University (’53), M.S. from Oregon State University (1957) and Ph.D. from Iowa State University (1960).

Ambassador James Joseph has served four U.S. Presidents, beginning with President Jimmy Carter who appointed him Deputy Secretary of the Department of Interior in 1978, to President Bill Clinton who appointed him the United States Ambassador to South Africa in 1996. He was also appointed to national commissions under President Ronald Reagan and the first President George Bush. In South Africa, he was the first and only American Ambassador to present his credentials to President Nelson Mandela. In 1999, President Thabo Mbeki awarded him the Order of Good Hope, at that time the highest honor the Republic of South Africa bestowed on a citizen of another country.

Ambassador Joseph has also had a distinguished career in business, education and organized philanthropy. From 1982-1995, he was President and Chief Executive Officer of the Council on Foundations, an international organization of more than 2000 foundations and corporate giving programs. He served as a Vice President of Cummins Engine Company and President of the Cummins Engine Foundation from 1971-1976. An ordained minister, he has taught at Yale Divinity School and the Claremont Colleges where he was also University Chaplain. In 1985, he was a Distinguished Visitor at Nuffield College at Oxford University. He is currently Professor of the Practice of Public Policy Studies and Executive Director of the United States – Southern Africa Center for Leadership and Public Values at Duke University. He is also an Honorary Professor and a member of the Board of Advisors of the Graduate School of Business at the University of Cape Town.

In 2015, Ambassador Joseph published his autobiography Saved for a Purpose: A Journey from Private Virtues to Public Values. Saved for a Purpose explores Joseph’s work with civil rights, corporate ethics and political morality.

Dr. Norman Uphoff, professor emeritus in the Department of Government and a former director of the Cornell International Institute for Food, Agriculture, and Development (CIIFAD) and the Cornell Institute for Public Affairs (CIPA), joined the Cornell faculty in 1970 after completing his Ph.D. at the University of California, Berkeley. He served as chair of Cornell’s interdisciplinary Rural Development Committee between 1970 and 1990, when he was appointed first director of CIIFAD and also a professor of International Agriculture. His work has focused on local institutions and participatory development, and since 2000 on agroecology and particularly on the system of rice intensification (SRI) developed in Madagascar.

His publications include two books with Warren Ilchman, The Political Economy of Change (1969) and The Political Economy of Development (1972); also Local Organizations: Intermediaries in Rural Development (1982), Local Institutional Development (1986); Learning from Gal Oya (1992); Puzzles of Productivity in Public Organizations (1994); and Reasons for Hope: Instructive Experiences in Rural Development (1997) and Reasons for Success: Learning from Instructive Experiences in Rural Development (1998). His most recent book (2006) is an edited volume on Biological Approaches to Sustainable Soil Systems, and his most recent articles, co-authored, were published last month in Plant and Soil and Advances in Agronomy. He has served on USAID’s Research Advisory Committee, and he has been a consultant for the World Bank, USAID, the United Nations, the CGIAR, and other agencies. In March 2015, he received the first international Olam Prize for Innovation in Food Security for his work with SRI.

Malden C. Nesheim is Professor of Nutrition Emeritus and Provost Emeritus. He joined the Cornell faculty in 1959. In 1974 he was named Director of the Division of Nutritional Sciences, a post which he held until the summer of 1987, when he became Vice President for Planning and Budgeting. He was named Provost of Cornell University in September 1989, a position he held until 1995. Dr. Nesheim has served on numerous NIH, USDA and DHS advisory committees and was the Chair of the 1990 US Dietary Guidelines Committee and was appointed by President Clinton to Chair a Commission on Dietary Supplements. He has served as President of the American Institute of Nutrition a group that awarded him the Conrad A. Elvehjem Award for public service. In 1995 he was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. He was elected a fellow of the American Society of Nutritional Sciences in 1997.

Dr. Nesheim earned a B.S. in agricultural science and an M.S. in animal nutrition from the University of Illinois followed by a Ph.D. in nutrition from Cornell. His research interests have been aspects of nutritional biochemistry.

Brady J. Deaton became the 21st chief executive officer of the University of Missouri on Oct. 4, 2004. Prior to his time at the University of Missouri, he taught at the University of Tennessee, where he was appointed as staff director of the Special Task Force on Food for Peace for the U.S. Department of Agriculture in Washington, D.C, Virginia Polytechnic Institute and Virginia Tech. In 2011 President Barack Obama appointed Dr. Deaton chairman of the Board for International Food and Agriculture Development (BIFAD).  He also chairs the Missouri Council on Public Higher Education (COPHE), and served as chair of the Academic Affairs Council of the Association of Public and Land-Grant Universities (APLU). Dr. Deaton participates in advisory roles with the U.S. Department of Agriculture and maintains active membership in the American and International Agricultural Economics Associations.

Per Pinstrup-Andersen is a Danish economist and policy-maker who won the 2001 World Food Prize for having personally initiated the research effort which enabled several governments to reform their food subsidy programs and dramatically increase food availability to the severely impoverished. This research laid the foundation for the establishment of “Food for Education” programs, in which families receive food subsidies when their children stay in school. Driven by a deep desire to alleviate the suffering of malnourished and starving children, Dr. Pinstrup-Andersen initiated a global effort to uplift those most at risk by formulating IFPRI’s 2020 Vision Initiative, which helped reverse the trend of decreasing global developmental assistance, and led contributed to significant decreases in hunger and poverty levels in many countries.

Willene A. Johnson is an economic consultant specializing in finance and development. She currently designs and facilitates courses in conflict management and peace building, including ones on economics and conflict at the U.S. Institute of Peace and others on security issues at the Africa Center for Strategic Studies. Reflecting a strong interest in microfinance and financial sector development, she also serves as the Vice Chair of the Africa Advisory Council of the Grameen Foundation. Johnson has worked extensively in Africa, starting as a volunteer teacher and, more recently, as the U.S. Executive Director of the African Development Bank. She worked for twenty years in the Federal Reserve System, where her assignments included research and operational responsibilities in foreign exchange and international financial markets. She speaks French, Spanish, Portuguese, and Swahili and holds degrees in social studies (Radcliffe College, Harvard University) and African History (St. John’s University) as well as a doctorate in Development Economics (Columbia University).

Robert W. Herdt is International Professor of Applied Economics and Management, Adjunct, at Cornell University, Ithaca, New York. For 17 years he worked at the Rockefeller Foundation in New York as Director of Agriculture and later as Vice President. He joined Cornell as advisor to the Director of Cornell’s International Program in the College of Agriculture and Life Sciences and Adjunct Professor in the Department of Applied Economics and Management. Herdt received his undergraduate and Master’s degrees at Cornell and his Ph.D. from the University of Minnesota, St. Paul. His career has focused on improving the well-being of poor, agriculturally-dependent people in developing countries through increasing the productivity of their farming systems. Before joining the Rockefeller Foundation he worked in agricultural research institutions in India and the Philippines, at the University of Illinois, and the CGIAR Secretariat at the World Bank. His current work on research management, intellectual property rights, and the economics of technological change is designed to foster understanding of the role of new technology as an important force generating agricultural productivity and income gains over the past century.

Frank Pedraza is an International Management Consultant, specializing in the solution of marketing and strategic planning issues faced by consumer products enterprises in emerging countries. Pedraza has extensive experience resolving marketing and management challenges in Asia, Latin-America, and the USA as Vice-President or Divisional CEO for leading consumer companies including Procter & Gamble, Kraft Foods and Chiquita Brands. Pedraza firmly believes in the power of marketing to generate strong economic development that rewards producers and other stakeholders while also satisfying consumer needs. Pedraza grew up in Colombia, S.A. and his education includes a B.S. in Agricultural Economics and an MBA from Cornell University and an AMP from the Harvard Business School. Frank is a member of the Cornell University Council and of the International Board of Advisors of Zamorano University, Honduras.

Peter Matlon has led a distinguished career in international development. In his most recent position as Managing Director of the Africa Regional Office of The Rockefeller Foundation (Kenya), he supported program planning and grant making in health, food security, education, and information systems throughout Africa. He also served as Interim President for Programs for the Alliance for a Green Revolution in Africa. In addition, he has served as a member of the United Nations’ Millennium Program Hunger Task Force, the InterAcademy Council Panel on African Agriculture, and the editorial boards of several international journals. He has been a consultant to the World Bank and other international organizations and serves on the advisory committees of numerous scientific cooperation arrangements in agriculture. He has published extensively on the economics of African agriculture and rural development.

Matlon holds a Ph.D. in agricultural economics from Cornell University, a MPA in development economics from the Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs at Princeton University, and a BSFS from the School of Foreign Service at Georgetown University.