Edith Hesse

Dr. Edith Hesse is the President of IAALD, the International Association of Agricultural Information Specialists. For the past 10 years she has been working at CIAT, the International Center for Tropical Agriculture, initially as the head of the Center's Scientific Information Management Unit and Library, and later assuming additional responsibilities in the areas of scientific training, visitors/conference services, and communications. With a Doctorate in Socio-economics from the University of Social and Economic Sciences, Vienna, Austria, she had joint the Economics Program of the International Maize and Wheat Improvement Center (CIMMYT) in Mexico in 1979 and had become the leader of a scientific information management project funded by the International Development Research Centre (IDRC), Canada, in 1984. Throughout her professional career she has successfully implemented various innovative approaches to scientific information management and knowledge sharing not only at CIAT and CIMMYT, but also at the CGIAR level. She has also served as consultant, commissioned by the World Bank, the Kellogg Foundation, and other entities in Latin America, Africa, and Asia.