FEEDING THE NEXT

BY MIKE ECKEL

Less than an hour’s helicopter flight northwest of the Haitian capital Port-au-Prince is the town of Anse Rouge, where the coastal landscape is a patchwork of squares, white mounds and tropical vegetation. Salt farming is the subsistence livelihood that Haitians eke out here; it is backbreaking, sweltering labor, whose low pay means it is mainly women doing the work. The conditions are such that the women are frequently plagued by health problems caused by dirty water and unsanitary conditions. And, the hurricanes that regularly blow through often wipe out any meager investments.

By planting trees, building canals, erecting retaining walls and using improved salt harvesting methods, development experts and aid workers hope that they can make the effort more sustainable, more profitable and healthier, particularly for women who toil there.

In the thick of the effort is the World Food Programme (WFP), the United Nations agency whose work helping to alleviate hunger and build resilience around the world earned a Nobel Peace Prize late last year. And one of many of those intimately involved in the program’s work in Haiti last spring was Meghan Sullivan ’17, a graduate of the Maxwell School’s master of arts in international relations program.

Speaking from her home in Port-au-Prince in early April, Sullivan says there’s no way she would be doing what she’s doing if it hadn’t been for Maxwell. “Maxwell really opened doors for me that wouldn’t have been opened otherwise,” she says. “I’m from a farming family in rural, Upstate New York. The U.N. is not a place that I thought I would end up when I was younger. It’s those relationships that Maxwell had, and the preparation that Maxwell gave me, that made all of this possible.”

Sullivan, in fact, is one of several alumni who found their calling—the place to put their Maxwell theories into practice—through the WFP.

Catherine Bertini, professor of practice emeritus, is largely to thank for that. She headed the WFP for a decade, between 1992 and 2002, serving under presidents George H.W. Bush, Bill Clinton and George W. Bush, and was the U.N.’s undersecretary general in New York for three years before she joined Maxwell.

“We were thrilled when Catherine Bertini joined the Maxwell faculty. Her expertise, gained from incredible life experiences, was a tremendous asset to our students, particularly those who felt a calling to humanitarian policy and development work,” says David M. Van Slyke, dean of the Maxwell School.

“She took a special interest in her students’ success, pointing several of them toward the World Food Programme for internships, thereby creating a pipeline between Maxwell and the United Nations that has launched the careers of several of our alumni.”

The photos on Catherine Bertini’s website offer a snapshot of what it might have been like to lead the World Food Programme. In one, she pours food into a bowl held by a youngster in Zimbabwe. In another, she walks hand-in-hand with two children in Rwanda. Other images show her in much different environs: Sitting, for instance, next to Pope John Paul II during a 1997 meeting, and three years later, shaking hands with then-United Nations Secretary General Kofi Annan. Still another has her seated at a long table in the White House, along with President George W. Bush, for a 2001 talk about Afghanistan.

It has indeed been a storied career. Bertini was the first U.S. citizen to head the WFP, and she is credited with helping transform the agency’s operations with actions that no doubt helped set it on a trajectory toward last year’s Nobel Peace Prize.