Agenda

Mr. Máximo Torero Cullen is the Chief Economist of the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO). He joined the Organization in January 2019 as Assistant Director-General for the Economic and Social Development Department. 

Prior to joining FAO, he was the World Bank Group Executive. Director for Argentina, Bolivia, Chile Paraguay, Peru and Uruguay since November 2016 and before the Bank, Mr. Torero led the Division of the Markets, Trade, and Institutions at the International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI).t

His major research work lies mostly in analyzing poverty, inequality, importance of geography and assets (private or public) in explaining poverty, and in policies oriented towards poverty alleviation based on the role played by infrastructure, institutions, and on how technological breakthroughs (or discontinuities) can improve the welfare of households and small farmers.

His experience encompasses Latin America, Sub-Saharan Africa, and Asia.

Mr. Jakovljevic is the Director of the Digital FAO and Agro-Informatics Division and Chief Information Officer of the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO).

He has more than 20 years of IT experience and use of technology in International Development. He is a strategic leader in the field, aiming to harness the power of technology towards achieving SDG goals. His work focuses on driving Digital Transformation, organizational modernization and enabling Innovation scale up and delivery.

Prior to joining FAO, Mr Jakovljevic held positions with UNICEF and WHO, with leadership roles in East Asia and Pacific, European Region, and driving global initiatives in the other parts of the world. Mr. Jakovljevic has Master's and Bachelor's degrees from the University of Houston, Texas.

Henry is a national of the Netherlands with 20 years of experience in digital innovation. He has always explored new boundaries for the use of digital solutions for agrifood systems transformation and accelerating the achievement of the Sustainable Development Goals.

He firmly believes digital technologies are a powerful means of implementing agrifood systems transformation through speed and scale of uptake; reduced deployment costs; growth in public awareness; delivery of innovation, connectivity, productivity and efficiency gains across sectors.     

In the framework of FAO’s work, it is about creating value and impact for achieving the FAO Strategic Framework 2022-31 and the Sustainable Development Goals (SDG) action agenda, leaving no one behind. This means special attention for the most vulnerable people; women, youth and the rural poor.

He leads the FAO Programme Priority Area on Digital Agriculture that is part of the FAO Strategic Framework 2022-31, and leads the Digital Agriculture Unit in the FAO Office of Innovation. He also acts as Lead Technical Officer of the Global Network of Digital Agriculture Innovation Hubs.

Ms Treinen has 37 years of information and communication experience in International Development, out of which 24 with the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO).

Since early 2000’s, she has been mainstreaming gender in ICTs, incorporating this dimension in FAO projects and programmes, resulting in several subsequent publications for FAO and the World Bank. She was part of WSIS since its inception and has led for several year FAO e-agriculture community of practices. Under her leadership, the Digital agriculture team was created for FAO Regional Office of Europe and Central Asia, working hand in hand with the International Telecommunications Union (ITU) for the development of e-agriculture strategies and the contest on digital excellence in agriculture. Ms Treinen also initiated the concept of twining Smart villages of Europe with FAO Digital Village initiative.

Prior to joining FAO, Ms. Treinen held positions within the European Union, the civil society and the private sector. She has a Master's degrees from the University of Louvain-La -Neuve, Belgium in social communication and development.

Sebastian Bosse is heading the Interactive & Cognitive Systems Group in the Vision and Imaging Technologies Department, at Fraunhofer Heinrich Hertz Institute (HHI), Berlin, Germany.

Mr Bosse is a lecturer at the German University in Cairo. He is on the board of the Video Quality Expert Group (VQEG) and on the advisory board of the Interational AIQT Foundation. He is an affiliate member of VISTA, York University, Toronto, and serves as an associate editor for the IEEE Transactions on Image Processing. Since 2021, he has been appointed a chair for the ITU focus group on Artificial Intelligence for Agriculture.

His current research activities center around computational perception and cognition, machine learning, computer vision, and human-machine interaction and cover a wide field of applications ranging from multimedia and augmented reality, through medicine to agriculture and industrial production.

Ms Grossi is an international advocacy, capacity building, cooperation and public relations expert with 6 languages and 15 years of work experience in external relations, public affairs and project coordination within international organizations and research institutes. She currently serves as programme officer in FAO's office of the Director-General leading the strategic outreach, awareness raising and capacity building strategic activities, also supporting programme implementation, for digitalization and data protection related topics, to better streamline understanding, sensitization and compliance overall.

She held previous positions within the Organization for Economic Cooperation Development (OECD), the European Forest Institute (EFI) with the European Commission, the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), the United Nations Industrial Development Organization (UNIDO) and the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE), as well as several experiences in the private sector and NGOs in the field. 

She has been focusing on multicultural impact and solution delivery oriented work across 4 continents including Austria, Argentina, Brazil, Belgium, France, Finland, Japan, Italy, Kenya, Spain, Vietnam, Tanzania, Peru, Switzerland and is deeply committed to identify and leverage opportunities for Growth and Sustainable Development in fast paced and innovative environments.