FRANCES SEYMOUR

Frances Seymour is a Senior Fellow at the Center for Global Development based in Washington, DC, and a Senior Advisor to the David and Lucile Packard Foundation. At CGD, she is co-authoring a book, Why Forests? Why Now? The Science, Economics and Politics of Tropical Forests and Climate Change to promote the importance of forest conservation and results-based financing for REDD+. Last year, she was awarded France’s Order of Agricultural Merit. From 2006 to 2012, she served as Director General of the Center for International Forestry Research (CIFOR), an international organization headquartered in Indonesia. She led the development of a new strategy for CIFOR, guided the launch of the CGIAR Research Program on Forests, Trees and Agroforestry, and contributed to CIFOR publications on forests and climate change.  Prior to CIFOR, Ms. Seymour was the founding director of the Institutions and Governance Program at the World Resources Institute (WRI), and served as Director of Development Assistance Policy at World Wildlife Fund, where she led research and outreach focused on mainstreaming environmental considerations into development finance. Early in her career, she spent five years with the Ford Foundation in Indonesia, where her grant-making focused on community forestry and human rights. Ms. Seymour holds an MPA in Development Studies from Princeton University, and a BS in Zoology from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.