Donald R. Mickelwait is Chairman and CEO of Experience International, Inc. He founded Development Alternatives, Inc. (DAI) and was its CEO for 30 years. Mr. Mickelwait is an agriculture sector economist who has had extensive experience designing projects for USAID. 24 of these have been funded for a total of more than $750 million, including four economic growth projects (January-March 2008). Three projects in Pakistan’s agriculture sector  (January-March 2009) are awaiting funding. The Pakistan projects have dealt with employment, enterprise development, trade, and microenterprise promotion, horticulture exports, food security, field crops, and livestock and dairy development. He provides management oversight through regular visits to EI’s ongoing USAID-funded contracts in Pakistan, with particular attention to the automation of the FATA Secretariat’s process for managing its $140 million dollar yearly development fund. Mr. Mickelwait holds advanced degrees in economics from the University of Oregon, the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University, and the George Washington University. He has completed advanced management courses from, and is an alumnus of, the Harvard Business School.  He is based in Bangkok and travels extensively throughout Asia.

Eugene (Tony) Babb is EI’s Founder-President. He lived in Asia for 14 years, residing in Afghanistan, Laos, Jordan, Cambodia, the Philippines, and Pakistan. Mr. Babb was a career officer with the FAO, and held senior staff positions with USAID. He led development teams in the Philippines, Pakistan, and Cambodia, and was Team Leader of EI’s Uzbekistan Grain Improvement project for the Asian Development Bank. Mr. Babb was a senior technical advisor to Iraq’s agricultural sector, designing and proving the efficiency of minimum tillage technologies for dryland wheat production in northern Iraq. He is currently the director of EI’s agriculture sector development component, an estimated $30 million part of the Livelihood Development Program for FATA (north) in western Pakistan. Mr. Babb holds degrees in agricultural husbandry and agricultural economics from California Polytechnic State University, and an advanced degree in Development Economics from the Maxwell School, Syracuse University.

Henry C. Harmonis a food marketing and cold chain specialist with long-term assignments supporting agricultural development in Grenada (Eastern Caribbean), Sri Lanka, and Indonesia, where he has lived for the past eight years. While with Winrock International, he designed a highly successful bank guarantee program in Indonesia that increased the funds available for private sector cold chain investments to preserve high-value exports—such as seafood and horticultural produce. He is the founder of Caswell’s Coffee in Indonesia, which has five outlets selling premium fresh-roasted coffees, and an active and growing wholesale business. Mr. Harmon was the horticulture specialist on the Pakistan horticulture export project in February-March 2009.  He has also designed private sector investments in Asia and the Middle East for Castle and Cooke Foods, and FMC. He holds a degree in economics from the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School and a master’s degree in business administration from the University of California at Berkeley. He lives in Bali, Indonesia, and travels extensively in Asia.

Geoffrey Quartermaine Bastin is a University of Oxford-educated professional economist with international management experience in investment and development projects, commodity markets and trade, agribusiness and food, and competitiveness and innovation. He has worked as a project manager and expert advisor in 34 countries (mostly in Asia, including the Commonwealth of Independent States, but also in Eastern Europe). He  specializes in financial and economic analysis, the identification and design of large-scale agribusiness and rural development projects, competitiveness, and economic policy. In November, 2009, Mr. Bastin completed a three-year assignment as the technical specialist with the Competitiveness Support Fund, sponsored by USAID and the Ministry of Finance in Pakistan. He resides in Bangkok, Thailand.

Robert W. Resseguie is a manager of agricultural development programs who has had USAID direct-hire experience in Vietnam, Laos, Zaire, Thailand, the Philippines, and Egypt. After retiring from USAID, he led teams as Chief of Party in Laos, Cambodia, Macedonia, and Afghanistan, and has accepted consultancy assignments in the Sudan, Grenada, and Kosovo. Mr. Resseguie provides agricultural development management services to EI’s Livelihood Development Program for FATA, and makes regularly scheduled visits to support the local implementation teams. Mr. Resseguie holds degrees in agricultural economics from Cornell University and the University of Vermont, and speaks Thai, Lao, Vietnamese, and French. He lives in New York State.

Marcelo E. Suarezis EI’s Information Technology specialist. He is presently assigned full-time to the FATA Livelihood Development Program, Pakistan, overseeing both the monitoring and evaluation and the IT components of this $150 million USAID project.  He also supports the EI website and internet remote servers, and manages two remote and web-enabled servers holding monitoring and evaluation databases. Mr. Suarez designs software programs in Filemaker 10 professional, the off-the-shelf platform of choice for project M&E relational database systems. He is presently overseeing the construction of a Geographic Information System for the FATA program. Between 2003 and 2007 he was the IT Manager for the $105 million ARDI project in Iraq, supporting the main offices and five remote locations with the full range of wireless LAN/WAN and VSAT technologies. In the period 2000-2003, he served as systems administrator on DAI projects in Afghanistan, Bolivia, South Africa, Armenia, Honduras, El Salvador, Peru, Ukraine, Ecuador, Lebanon, and Jordan.

Michael Bielinski is EI’s software design and database manager.  He is presently constructing and putting in place an automated software system for the Secretariat that will manage all FATA development funding for the government of Pakistan.  This system, in Filemaker Pro 10, utilizes a PDF form that is filled out in the remote locations of FATA and transmitted over VSAT to the main servers in the Secretariat Headquarters, where it is integrated into a sophisticated Filemaker relational database, which can then generate the formal documentation required by the GoP to review and approve development project funding.  Mr. Bielinski has provided software design and database programming for development projects in Washington, D.C., Iraq, and Kuwait.  He is based in Las Vegas when he is not on the road or in Islamabad.

John M. Buck, a founder of Development Alternatives, Inc., joined EI as Director and Manager in 2004. He oversees the Bangkok office support to short-term consultancies and long-term implementation projects. Mr. Buck communicates regularly with staff members based overseas, and provides the written documentation that allows EI to obtain and manage its ongoing contracts. Mr. Buck holds a degree with high honors from the University Michigan and an MPA from the John F. Kennedy School of Government, Harvard University.

Guillerma (Emma) Durst is EI’s financial manager, having come from many years’ employment with DAI. She has worked on the special accounting requirements of development projects in the Philippines, Pakistan, Thailand, and the USA, with donors that have included USAID, the Asian Development Bank, the World Bank, and various United Nations agencies, as well as independent NGOs. She has a degree in Business Administration in Accounting, is a Certified Public Accountant in the Philippines, and lives in Bangkok