Alexandra Spieldoch
Director
(612) 870-3419 aspieldoch@iatp.org
Alexandra Spieldoch is the Director of the Trade and Global Governance Program at the Institute for Agriculture and Trade Policy. The TGG team is focused on reforming agriculture and trade policy and rebalancing global norms to support the Right to Food, international food safety, intellectual property rights and biodiversity, global water justice and women's rights. Ms. Spieldoch has been engaged in WTO and regional trade advocacy since 1999. She has published various research and popular education materials on trade negotiations at the WTO and in the Americas region from a human rights and development perspective.

Formerly, she co-directed the Gender, Trade and Development (GTD) Project at the Center of Concern and coordinated the secretariat for the International Gender and Trade Network (IGTN) based out of Washington, D.C. She is a member of the Alliance for Responsible Trade and active in the Hemispheric Social Alliance. She studied at the University of Buenos Aires, Argentina as well as the University of Caen in Normandy, France. Ms. Spieldoch received an M.A. in International Policy from the Monterey Institute of International Studies. Her B.A. is from Washington University in St. Louis, Missouri with a major in French literature.

Sophia Murphy
Senior Advisor
smurphy@iatp.org
Murphy leads IATP's work on the World Trade Organization, focused on agricultural trade rules, U.S. trade and agriculture policy and the interests of developing countries in the multilateral trade system. Murphy has published many reports and articles, including analysis of the effects of international trade rules on development and food security, the impact of corporate concentration in the global food system and, most recently, a critique of U.S. food aid programs. Sophia has worked with IATP's Trade and Agriculture team since 1997. She joined the Institute from Geneva, where she had worked for two years with the United Nations Nongovernmental Liaison Service. Before that, she worked as a policy officer with the Canadian Council for International Cooperation in Ottawa. Sophia has a degree in politics, philosophy and economics from Oxford University and a master's from the London School of Economics.

Dr. Steve Suppan
Senior Policy Analyst
(612) 870-3413  ssuppan@iatp.org
Steve Suppan has been Director of Research since 1998. Suppan began to work at IATP in 1994 as a translator, editor, bulletin writer and program officer for western hemispheric trade policy. Suppan is IATP's liaison to several governmental and intergovernmental organizations. From 1998 to 2003, he was IATP's liaison to the Trade and Environnment Policy Advisory Committee of the Office of the U.S. Trade Representative. Since 2002, he has been the U.S. co-chair of the trade working group of the TransAtlantic Consumers Dialogue. Since 2000 he has been IATP's main liaison to Consumers International and has served on several Consumers International delegations to the Codex Alimentarius Commission and to Codex committees. He has written extensively on food safety policy and on agricultural trade policy. Most recently, he has written a paper on structural reform in the Codex Alimentarius Commission for CI's Decision Making in the Global Market project. Suppan has also represented IATP at meetings of the United Nations Commission on Sustainable Development, the United Nations Development Program, the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization, and was the NGO liaison to the U.S. government for the World Food Summit +5. He serves on the board of the Community Nutrition Institute.

Suppan has a Ph.D. in comparative literature from the University of Minnesota and studied philosophy at the University of Vienna. Prior to coming to IATP, he was an assistant professor in the department of Romance languages at the University of Missouri-Columbia.

Alexandra Strickner
Director, Global Dialogue Project
+43 (1) 317 40 14  astrickner@iatp.org
Strickner is Director of a new IATP project, “Building a new social contract for agriculture and food: Establishing a global dialogue on U.S. and EU agricultural policy reforms.” The project supports a new framework for public regulation and investment in agriculture, particularly by the U.S. and the EU. Strickner formerly headed IATP's Trade Information Project in Geneva from 2003 to 2006. She monitored World Trade Organization negotiations with a focus on agriculture and services, and helped trade-focused networks better understand the WTO's negotiation process. Strickner edited "Geneva Update" and developed a series of IATP publications on the link between services negotiations and other sectors. Before joining IATP, Strickner worked for five years as senior expert and policy adviser at the Austrian Foundation for Development Research in Vienna, covering issues such as educational cooperation and poverty reduction. She holds a masters degree in political economy with a specialization on development economics and regional integration from the Vienna University of Economics and Business Administration.

R. Dennis Olson
Senior Policy Analyst
(612) 870-3412  dolson@iatp.org
R. Dennis Olson is the Director of IATP's Trade and Agriculture Project, which advocates for farmers and peasants both in the U.S., and around the world, within the context of global trade debates. He works on U.S. agricultural trade policy among domestic and international rural advocacy and other social justice networks. In 2005, Olson worked on behalf of IATP to oppose passage of the Central American Free Trade Agreement, and published a paper, Sweet or Sour: The U.S. Sugar Program and Threats Posed by the Dominican Republic-Central American Free Trade Agreement. Olson advocates for the rights of farmers in issues related to genetically engineered crops. In 2005 he published an article, "Hard Red Spring Wheat at a Genetic Crossroad: Rural Prosperity or Corporate Hegemony?" on his experiences in a successful effort by North American wheat farmers and their allies to stop Monsanto's efforts to introduce the first ever variety of genetically engineered wheat. The University of Wisconsin Press published the article as a chapter in the book, Controversies in Science and Technology From Maize to Menopause. Before coming to IATP, Olson worked as a community organizer for seventeen years with grassroots farmer and environmental organizations in North Dakota and Montana on agricultural, environmental and other social justice issues. In 1994, he spent three months in the former Soviet Union networking with environmental and agricultural activist organizations. Olson graduated from the University of Montana in 1983 with a combined degree of history/political science and a minor in Russian.

Shiney Varghese
Senior Policy Analyst
(612) 870-3471  svarghese@iatp.org
Shiney Varghese leads our work on global water policy. The current water crisis, its impact on water and food security and possible local solutions that emphasize equity, environmental justice and sustainability concerns are her focus. In her current work she focuses on the implications of GATS/WTO, water sector liberalization, and industrial agriculture for people's access to water. Since 2001 she has been the co-chair of the UNCSD fresh water caucus, the primary civil society voice on water at the UN Commission on Sustainable Development. Shiney has been working with IATP since 2001. Before moving to United States in 1998, she worked in India on social and environmental issues for over a decade with indigenous groups, civil society organizations and international groups such as Oxfam. She has presented and published works on environment, gender, and human rights. Shiney grew up on a farm in South Indian state of Kerala, and after high school moved to Gujarat. She is a graduate of Institute of Rural Management, India, and has a master's in development from the Institute of Social Studies, Netherlands. Shiney was a visiting fellow at the agrarian studies program at Yale University, New Haven in 1997-98.

Trade Information Project, Geneva

Carin Smaller
Director, Trade Information Project
+41 (22) 789 0734  csmaller@iatp.org
Smaller is the project officer for the Trade Information Project, where she monitors WTO negotiations, writes "Geneva Update," and provides information and analysis to developing country trade negotiators and civil society groups working on trade. Carin is also developing alternative approaches to agriculture trade using a human rights approach and has written a policy paper, Planting the Rights Seed: A Human Rights Perspective on Agriculture Trade and the WTO. Prior to working with IATP, Smaller worked with a trade and human rights NGO, 3D - Trade - Human Rights -Equitable Economy. she also worked on development projects for the UNDP in Windhoek, Namibia, the Australian Aid Agency for International Development (AusAID) and the German Development Service in Nepal. She has a bachelor of laws and bachelor of arts in political science and comparative development from the University of New South Wales (Australia).

Anne Laure Constantin
TIP Project Officer
+41 (22) 789 0724 aconstantin@iatp.org
Constantin joined IATP's Trade Information Project in Geneva in July 2006. Constantin comes to IATP from the French Committee for International Solidarity where she advocated on international agriculture and trade issues. Prior to that she worked with Association pour la Création de la Fondation René Dumont (Association for the Creation of the René Dumont Foundation) in Paris, and the World Organization Against Torture in Geneva. She has a masters degree in International Relations from La Sorbonne University in France.