John E. Bowman MA’78, MS’80 Retires from Federal Service
John Bowman MA’78, MS’80 retired recently from a career in international agricultural development, which took him on a journey of 40+ years working in 40+ countries. Most of his work was with USAID (United States Agency for International Development), a branch of the State Department, where he managed programs and projects related to food security, agricultural research, and human nutrition. He led horticulture and integrated pest management programming in the Feed the Future (FTF) initiative, a global food security directive launched by the Obama administration. Earlier in his career, he worked for international agricultural research entities such as CIMMYT (International Maize and Wheat Improvement Center) and CIAT (International Center for Tropical Agriculture) and managed global potato supply chains for multinational firms such as PepsiCo/Frito Lay. John lived as an expat for significant periods of time in Brazil, China, Costa Rica, Mexico, Philippines, and Turkey, transferring innovative agricultural technologies to thousands of resource-poor farmers. At the UW, he earned his master of arts in Ibero-American studies and his master of science in plant pathology. He went on to earn his PhD in plant pathology at the University of Illinois in 1984. In the photo, Dr. Bowman is leading a USAID-funded household nutrition survey in Tulsipur, Nepal, ca. 2005.
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