Consortium Leadership Team

Gordon MacNeil is a Canadian citizen and an international civil servant with over 40 years of experience in the international development sector.

After several years teaching in the West Indies in the early 1970s, Gordon joined the International Development Research Centre (IDRC), based in Ottawa. His last assignment there, before joining the CGIAR system, was deputy director of the Social Sciences Division. He was based for four years in IDRC’s West Africa Regional Office in Senegal.

In 1988, he joined the CGIAR as director of finance and administration at the West Africa Rice Development Association (WARDA) in Cote d’Ivoire. In late 1992, he moved to the World Bank as senior finance officer in the CGIAR Secretariat. He joined the International Rice Research Institute (IRRI) in 1998, as treasurer and director for finance. In 2003, Gordon moved to the International Service for National Agricultural Research (ISNAR) to coordinate the program with the International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI). He has since consulted extensively, mainly with CGIAR centers, and has had several long-term assignments as interim director for resources.

Gordon was a member of the International Center for Tropical Agriculture (CIAT) Board of Trustees from 2008 to 2010 and chair from 2008 to 2009. He is presently on the Board of Directors of the Centro Agronómico Tropical de Investigación y Enseñanza (CATIE) in Costa Rica. He has BSc and MBA degrees from Canadian universities.