Margaret Zeigler

Since January 2022, Margaret Zeigler has worked at IICA (Inter-American Institute for Cooperation on Agriculture) as Representative in the United States of America, based in Washington, DC.

Over the past 28 years in Washington, DC, she has worked to advance public policies for sustainable agriculture, climate resilience and international food security. She worked at the Congressional Hunger Center and at the Global Harvest Initiative (GHI), a private-sector collaboration now based at Virginia Tech University to promote sustainable productivity in agriculture. In 2019, she conducted research on agricultural innovation in Colombia, Peru, and Argentina, visiting farms, ranches, and research centers, including those of the Consultative Group for International Agricultural Research (CGIAR). Before coming to IICA, she served as Interim President of the Supporters of Agricultural Research (SoAR) Foundation in Washington. D.C., where her work focused on increasing investment in public agricultural research.

Margaret has collaborated with the International Potato Center (CIP) on a photo-journal project entitled The 50 Future Foods of the Andes, published in December 2021 by CIP to commemorate its 50th anniversary.

She holds a doctorate and a master's degree in Geography and International Development Studies from the University of Cincinnati and a bachelor’s degree in Psychology and Geography from Miami University in Oxford, Ohio.

Margaret is grateful to her ancestors, who she says planted the "seed of agriculture" in her heart by raising cattle and harvesting tobacco, corn, and other crops, near Lexington, Kentucky. One of her heroes is Dr. Norman Borlaug, who famously said, “Food is the moral right of all who are born into this world” - a quote that inspires her work at IICA to advance sustainable agriculture and end hunger.