Devon Jenkins is the program manager for the Feed the Future Innovation Lab for Crop Improvement.

Previously, Devon worked as the project manager for two gender-related projects in Cornell’s Department of Global Development, ‘Gender-responsive Researchers Equipped for Agricultural Transformation’ (GREAT) and ‘Advancing Women in Agriculture through Research and Education’ (AWARE). With GREAT, Devon worked closely with colleagues at Uganda’s Makerere University through a joint management structure, and ran communications, reporting and the group’s Community of Practice. With AWARE, Devon managed a weekly global newsletter, graduate travel grants, and a campus speaker series. He joined the department in 2014, working first on a 13-country project ‘Improving and Scaling up the System of Rice Intensification in West Africa’ (SRI-WAAP) project, where he led communications, designed and developed project websites, created a mobile data collection and GIS-based monitoring and evaluation system, led technical field trainings, led donor reporting, and co-wrote project technical manuals.

Devon has a Master’s Degree in International Agriculture and Rural Development from Cornell University (2013), a Bachelor’s Degree in Liberal Arts from The Evergreen State College (2001), and is working on a Master’s Degree in Regional Planning at Cornell University, with a focus on municipal climate change mitigation. He served as an agriculture volunteer with the Peace Corps in Benin (2012-2013), where he worked with the Songhaï Center testing and developing new agricultural training packages, and coordinated a rice training for Feed the Future West Africa Food Security Partnership, and in Niger (2004-2005), where he worked on agriculture and public health projects in a small village, and organized a 60-village garden seed purchasing cooperative.

Devon lives in Ithaca with his wife and small child, and enjoys biking, hiking, gardening, and caring for fruit trees.