Josette Sheeran

Josette Sheeran (born 12 June 1954) is an American non-Profit executive and diplomat who served in the United States Department of State.

The World Food Programme, founded in 1963, last year provided food to more than 90 million poor people in more than 80 countries worldwide.

Sheeran was raised in the Roman Catholic Church and joined the Unification Church in 1975.

She earned a Bachelor of Arts from the University of Colorado at Boulder in 1976.

As Executive Director of WFP, Sheeran was responsible for managing the world's largest humanitarian organization with nearly 11,000 staff worldwide.

WFP provides emergency food aid to the world's hungry as well as addressing the causes of chronic hunger.

Under Sheeran's leadership, WFP enacted financial and structural reforms designed to increase transparency and agility.

She pioneered new initiatives such as the African Risk Capacity (ARC), the first disaster insurance model for Africa, and “Purchase for Progress” in more than a dozen nations and conflict zones.

Under her leadership, WFP diversified its donor base to more than 100 nations and became the first UN program to include the so-called BRIC countries and the Gulf States among its top 10 donors, she also increased private sector partnerships 10 fold to around $100 million a year.

She instituted key reforms to reduce dependency on food aid among millions of aid recipients.

Its annual budget was US$1.7 billion in 1993.

She was the eleventh Executive Director of the UN World Food Programme (WFP), appointed by United Nations Secretary-General Kofi Annan in November 2006.

Sheeran served as a diplomat and negotiator for the United States, and was unanimously confirmed by the Senate twice.

She served as United States Under Secretary for Economic, Business, and Agricultural Affairs, and as deputy U.S. Trade Representative.

She was appointed coordinator of the Pakistan earthquake response by Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, and developed economic recovery plans for front line areas in Pakistan, Afghanistan and beyond.

She has served on the boards of OPIC, and the Millennium Challenge Corporation; as well as the lead U.S. representative to the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation and the OECD.

On July 26, 2021 she was appointed President of Canoo (NASDAQ: GOEV) an electric vehicle startup based in Los Angeles with manufacturing facilities in Oklahoma City, OK.

Sheeran was born in Orange, New Jersey, one of six siblings.

In 2008, it had a budget of US$3 billion and employed 10,000 people in 78 countries.

In April 2008, Sheeran attracted worldwide attention with a speech in London warning about an impending worldwide food crisis, which she likened to a "silent tsunami" and lobbied the United States and other governments to give more aid to the world's poor.

In January 2009, Sheeran called on the government of Israel to allow more UN food aid to the people in Gaza during the conflict there.

Sheeran's influential TED Talk on ending world hunger has been viewed more than one million times and has been used in schools to teach children about ending hunger through innovation and partnerships.

Ms. Sheeran chaired the UN High Level Committee on Management for two terms, leading more than 40 UN entities in a series of historic reforms, from the adoption of International Public Accounting Standards (IPSAS), to enacting world-class agreements on transparency, ethics, whistle-blowing, financial disclosure and technology.

In January 2012, Sheeran announced that she would assume the role of Vice Chairman of the World Economic Forum upon completing her term at WFP in 2012.

Sheeran serves as the seventh president and CEO of Asia Society since June 10, 2013.

Sheeran was also the United Nations's Special Envoy for Haiti.

Sheeran is former Vice Chair of the World Economic Forum.

While there, she helped found and advance global initiatives encompassing global, regional, and industry agendas such as Grow Africa, which has attracted $10 billion in private sector investment to end aid dependency and tackle hunger and malnutrition in Africa.

Sheeran has expressed commitment to meeting the UN Millennium Development Goal of halving hunger and poverty by 2015.

Pedro Medrano Rojas, a Chilean diplomat, originally led the UN's cholera response, and left in 2015 upset that the international community failed to "acknowledge the fact that we have in Haiti the largest epidemic in the Western Hemisphere."

David Nabarro was originally placed in charge of fundraising for the UN's new approach.

As Under Secretary of State for Economic, Business, and Agricultural Affairs, Sheeran led new State Department initiatives in supporting Central Asia's and Afghanistan's economic transformation and reconstruction.

She was also responsible for a range of economic issues including: development, trade, agriculture, finance, energy, telecommunications and transportation.

She helped foster and carry out aid and development initiatives in countries like China, India, Pakistan, Afghanistan and Lebanon.

Sheeran also served as the Foreign Affairs Sous-Sherpa on behalf of the President of the United States at the Group of Eight (G8) Summit.

She headed a host of high-level bilateral or multilateral economic dialogues with the European Union, China, India, Japan, Iraq, Afghanistan, and many others.

The New UN's Approach to Cholera in Haiti was launched under former Secretary General Ban Ki-Moon when he publicly apologized for the UN's role in Haiti's cholera epidemic in December 2016.

The apology came six years after soldiers from the UN's peacekeeping mission in Haiti, MINUSTAH, introduced the disease by contaminating Haiti's Artibonite River, causing more than 10,000 deaths.

Sheeran also served as the UN Special Envoy to Haiti, appointed on June 20, 2017, representing UN Secretary General António Guterres in advancing Haiti's transition from an aid-dependent economy, at the end of more than 17 years of UN peace-keeping operations.

She has crafted the first UN “pay for success” development bond to help secure an end to the transmission of cholera in Haiti.