Daniel Gustafson

Daniel Gustafson is Special Representative of FAO's Director-General. Prior to this role, he was the Deputy Director-General for FAO, where he oversaw the work of the Organization to ensure that it contributes to its Members’ Sustainable Development Goals. As the Deputy Director-General of Operations, he also oversaw the Organization’s decentralized offices and other operations-related departments and units. Gustafson has worked for the past 40 years on agriculture and rural development issues and holds B.Sc. and M.Sc. degrees from the University of Wisconsin, and a Ph.D. from the University of Maryland. In April 2015, he was conferred a Ph.D. Honoris Causa by the Acharya N G Ranga Agricultural University (ANGRAU) in India. He joined FAO in 1994, first working within the Ministry of Agriculture in Mozambique, and subsequently as FAO Country Representative in Kenya, Somalia, India and Bhutan. In 2007, he was appointed Director of FAO’s Liaison Office for North America, based in Washington D.C., and then moved to FAO headquarters in 2012 as Director of FAO’s Office of Support to Decentralization, responsible for strengthening FAO’s country and regional offices and supporting the decentralization-related aspects of FAO’s transformative change.