Tony Simons

Tony is a land-use specialist with business, scientific and strategic expertise in agriculture, biodiversity and forestry. He obtained his Bachelor’s in NZ, and PhD at Cambridge University. He has published over 160 research papers. Tony’s experience covers public sector, private sector and academia including Shell Forestry, Oxford University and UK Government ODA. From 1995, he worked at ICRAF (Kenya), and from 2011 was Director General until October 2022. He holds honorary positions at Copenhagen University, and is Lifetime Fellow of the Royal Swedish Academy. Tony is passionate about the transformative change that the private sector and private investors can bring to development having established partnerships with BNP Paribas, Astanor Ventures, MARS Inc, Danone, CEMOI, Boehringer, Unilever and many institutional investors.