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| 2006 - The newest members of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation include a World Bank vice president, a genetic engineer from seed giant Monsanto, the founder of an Internet company in Africa, and the former chief executive of a $100 million cattle-breeding company. | | Submitted by fedup | 2008-01-21 19:58:20 | Robert B. Horsch is currently the Vice President, Product and Technology Cooperation of Monsanto Company with responsibility for small-holder agricultural development partnerships and public-private technology cooperation programs. From 1981-1995 he led the company's plant tissue culture and transformation efforts. Dr. Horsch was awarded the National Medal of Technology by the President of the United States for contributions to the development of agricultural biotechnology. He received his PhD in Genetics from the University of California at Riverside
http://www.gene.ch/genet/2006/Oct/msg00077.html
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7-Business: Monsanto vice president joins the Gates Foundation
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* Subject: 7-Business: Monsanto vice president joins the Gates Foundation
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PART 1
----------------------------- GENET-news ------------------------------
TITLE: Monsanto vice president joins the Gates Foundation
SOURCE: GM Watch
http://www.gmwatch.org
DATE: 17 Oct 2006
------------------ archive: http://www.gene.ch ---------------------
*Monsanto vice president joins the Gates Foundation - GM Watch*
The Gates Foundation has hired Rob Horsch, Monsanto's vice president for
international development partnerships.
As the piece below from the Seattle Times notes:
"The foundation... has hired... Monsanto vice president Robert Horsch, a
scientist who led genetic engineering of plants at the seed giant. As
senior program officer, Horsch will apply the technology toward
improving crop yields in regions including sub-Saharan Africa..."
Horsch's most famous project for Monsanto was also a GM project for
Africa. The GM sweet potato project was dreamt up by Horsch with his
Monsanto colleague, Robert Fraley, and Joel Cohen from USAID. The three
men then recruited Florence Wambugu to come to Monsanto and front the
project for the company. Wambugu, incidentally, has also been involved
with the Gates Foundation.
http://www.gmwatch.org/profile1.asp?PrId=131
And Horsch's GM sweet poatato project really exposes the cras and
misguided character of much of Gates' philanthropy, because in actual
practical terms the project totally failed to deliver. (See 'Monsanto's
showcase project in Africa fails', New Scientist)
http://www.gmwatch.org/archive2.asp?arcid=2561
But getting the GM sweet potato out to farmers was not the real
intention anyway. Horsch's project was a PR confection, based to a very
large extent on lies and misinformation, which generated endless media
hype for Monsanto and helped open doors to GM, and in those terms it was
a runaway success.
http://www.gmwatch.org/profile1.asp?PrId=131
In other words, the project served its purpose as a vehicle for
poor-washing GM while driving forward the regulatory frameworks and the
technical capacity that US corporations require to build-up global
markets for their GM crops.
As Horsch himself has said of his philanthropic mission at Monsanto, his
role was twofold - to "create goodwill and help open future markets" for
the company.
http://www.gmwatch.org/archive2.asp?arcid=3632
The Gates Foundation provides him with a perfect platform for much more
of the same.
Meanwhile, as Aaron deGrassi of the Institute of Development Studies is
not alone in pointing out, the hype over GM crops "can divert financial,
human, and intellectual resources from focusing on productive research
that meets the needs of poor farmers."
http://www.gmwatch.org/profile1.asp?PrId=131
In other words, the kind of showcase "philanthropy" that Horsch, Gates,
USAID and Monsanto seem determined to engage in can actually inhibit
change for some of the world's poorest farmers.
PART 2
----------------------------- GENET-news ------------------------------
TITLE: Want to work for the Gates Foundation?
SOURCE: Seattle Times, by Kristi Heim
http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/businesstechnology/2003308397_gateshires17.html
DATE: 17 Oct 2006
------------------ archive: http://www.gene.ch ---------------------
If you were the richest person in the world out to solve some of the
hardest problems on the planet, who would you put on your team?
The newest members of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation include a
World Bank vice president, a genetic engineer from seed giant Monsanto,
the founder of an Internet company in Africa, and the former chief
executive of a $100 million cattle-breeding company.
The Gates vision to remake the world has plenty of capital, flush with
the first $1.6 billion infusion of Warren Buffett's estimated $31
billion donation. Now the foundation requires experts to manage
burgeoning programs and figure out how to spend twice as much money each
year as it did before.
New hires are flocking to Seattle from around the country and the world,
demonstrating the foundation's ability to attract top talent.
But keeping them all focused on the same goals and values in the midst
of such frantic growth is another challenge.
The foundation has hired about 100 people since January, 68 of them for
newly created positions. It now has 319 employees, and the flood of job
applications averages about 100 per day.
"Having the opportunity to be here now is pretty exciting," said Martha
Choe, a former Seattle City Council member who directs the Global
Libraries Program. "We're moving quickly, and we're trying to get a lot
of things done."
Sometimes it's hard to move quickly enough, she said. "I joke that I'm
looking around for my motorized Rollerblades."
No part of the foundation has grown as fast as its newest effort, Global
Development, which aims to bolster the nonprofit's work in health and
education by improving food production, supporting small business
through microcredit, and increasing access to computers and the Internet
in libraries.
With the breakneck pace of a startup company, Global Development went
from a strategic opportunity to be studied to a major program doling out
$200 million in grants this year. Since its inception in May, the
program has grown to 36 employees.
At its helm is Sylvia Mathews, the 41-year-old former deputy chief of
staff to President Clinton, who has been with the foundation since 2001.
Mathews said she looks for "people who are experts in their field but
also have a proven track record of devising innovative solutions."
Last month she brought in Geoffrey Lamb, a World Bank vice president who
had led its Concessional Finance and Global Partnerships arm. Lamb
joined the foundation as senior fellow, charged with guiding strategy
and forming partnerships with governments. He will work to gather
support for efforts such as a pilot program to provide free public
Internet access in libraries in Eastern Europe and a major drive to
improve farm productivity in Africa.
The foundation also has hired heavyweights from the agricultural
industry, such as Monsanto vice president Robert Horsch, a scientist who
led genetic engineering of plants at the seed giant. As senior program
officer, Horsch will apply the technology toward improving crop yields
in regions including sub-Saharan Africa, where the foundation recently
launched a major drive with the Rockefeller Foundation.
Lutz Goedde, former chief executive of Alta Genetics, the largest
private cattle-breeding company in the world, also left private industry
to join the foundation. His work as senior program officer will include
expanding access to domestic and international markets for small farmers
in Asia, Latin America and Africa.
Earlier this year, the foundation hired Tadataka Yamada, former chairman
of research and development at pharmaceutical giant GlaxoSmithKline, to
direct its Global Health Program. His experience developing new drugs is
critical for understanding how to speed vaccine development for malaria
and other diseases, said senior policy officer Monica Harrington.
Some people coming from private industries take significant pay cuts to
join the foundation, Harrington said. Salaries are generally measured
against comparable positions in the nonprofit sector, she said.
According to the foundation's most recent tax filing, its highest-paid
employee, Ashok Alexander, who directs the HIV prevention initiative in
India, made about $400,000 a year.
Several new employees have backgrounds in Africa, including Amolo
Ng'weno, a native Kenyan who co-founded Internet service provider Africa
Online and worked for the Trust for African Rock Art; Roy Steiner, a
Canadian transplant in Zimbabwe who founded Web development company
Cyberplex Africa and helped run Africa Online; and Bakari Bakari, a
native Tanzanian who directs overall operations for global development.
New employees have also come from local sources such as Microsoft and
Boeing, government and other nonprofits. The foundation tends not to
hire people just out of college. In fact, most come in with about 10
years of experience.
"We're looking for people who are really driven by the mission," Choe
said. That means "a willingness to tackle some tough things with not a
lot of road signs on how to do it. People who are very comfortable with
change."
Sometimes the growth borders on chaos. Staffers joke that there's no
need to get business cards — their titles and responsibilities change
too fast. The foundation's office space has been continually reorganized
to make room for more employees. Bill Gates moved into Melinda's office
recently to share space, handing his old office over to four staff members.
To accommodate that growth, the foundation is expected to break ground
next year on a new headquarters on a 12-acre site near Seattle Center.
One of the biggest challenges is "instilling the principles of the
foundation" in its newest team members, Mathews said.
At the core is faith in the power of science and technology to improve
lives.
Some of the new global development initiatives head into controversial
territory, such as the debate over genetically modified crops. But the
foundation says it intends to pursue any options that could help to
reach its goal of increasing agricultural productivity in poor countries.
Free giveaways of Microsoft software to libraries in 35 countries, part
of the Global Libraries Initiative, could face resistance in places like
Europe, where the government has imposed antitrust sanctions.
Another challenge will be getting people with such vastly different
backgrounds to embrace a common culture. It might not be so easy
convincing high achievers with advanced degrees from Ivy League schools
to be "humble and mindful."
That motto, one of the principles said to reflect the Gateses' views
about philanthropy, originated with Bill Gates Sr., who is the "ultimate
conscience" of the foundation, Harrington said.
As the new employees converged on Seattle, a scavenger hunt was
organized in September to help them get acquainted. Teams raced around
to find landmarks, donning ski jackets at REI, jamming air guitar with a
Jimi Hendrix sculpture, heaving raw fish at Pike Place Market and
searching shelves at Elliott Bay Book Co. to find a book written by Bill
Gates.
While the foundation doubles in size up to 600 employees over the next
two years, it will continue to juggle hiring with the business of giving
away money.
"Getting new team members takes time," Mathews said, "and so does the
work of our grantmaking."
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