External Affairs Coordinator, HarvestPlus International

So, I'm Katrina Boyd, I'm the External Affairs Coordinator with Harvest Plus, which is a global development organization, we're based on Washington, D.C. We believe that everybody should be able to live a healthy, happy, productive life, but the reality is that most people around the world aren't getting access to all the vitamins and minerals, the nutrition that they really need, to grow physically and cognitively. And so our mission is to help these millions of people who are suffering from malnutrition and give them access to the foods and crops that they need to grow. So, as the External Affairs Coordinator, my day today looks like external meetings with donors, stakeholders, other partners. Basically, I work to ensure that our partnerships, fundraising, advocacy and communications teams are all aligned. And so, other things that I'm responsible for include coordinating with our global staff, to make sure that our strategies for policy and advocacy are aligned, supporting proposal development, to make sure that our fundraising goes through, and other things like that. Our number one donor, and number one partner in all things that we do is the Gates Foundation, so the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation funds most of our work, as does the U.S. government, USAID, the development agency. Those partners have been with us for as long as we've been around, they really provided the seed money to get our work going off the ground. So once that you've convinced them to give you the funds, then it's about actually implementing the project and reporting along the way. So a key function of my job right now is actually to complete donor reports on an annual basis, and so how many people have you reached, how are you using the funds, can you show impact. That's really important to maintain positive relationships with your donors because you want them to understand that what you're doing is having real, positive impact for the people like you said it would. Once you receive the funds, we work with a global staff that's based in 13 different countries around the world. I work at the headquarters office, in Washington, D.C., which is an exciting place to be, but can sometimes feel a little bit far from where all the work is actually happening. But a good way that we manage that is through field visits. And so I actually did a field visit to India earlier this year, to work, we had gotten a ton of funding from the Gates Foundation to work in some rural areas in India. And so once you get there, you decide who your staff is gonna be, you go through the project, through the timelines, and the budget, to make sure that you're gonna be able to hit all your targets that you said you would.