Please join us for a conversation with United Nations World Food Programme Executive Director David Beasley, who will discuss "Challenges of 21^st Century Humanitarian Response." The conversation will be moderated by his predecessor at the agency, Ertharin Cousin, a visiting fellow at the Center on Food Security and the Environment.

R.S.V.P.

As Executive Director of the World Foods Programme (WFP), Mr. Beasley serves at the level of Under-Secretary-General of the United Nations and is a member of the organization's Senior Management Group under the leadership of Secretary-General António Guterres. At WFP, he is putting to use four decades of leadership and communications skills to mobilize more financial support and public awareness for the global fight against hunger. Under his leadership, WFP kept four countries from slipping into famine in 2017 and is moving beyond emergency food assistance, to advance longer term development that brings peace and stability to troubled regions. Before coming to WFP in April 2017, Beasley spent a decade working with high-profile leaders and on-the-ground programme managers in more than 100 countries, directing projects designed to foster peace, reconciliation and economic progress.

David Beasley was elected at the age of 21 to the South Carolina House of Representatives (1979-1992) and as Governor of South Carolina (1995-1999), one of the youngest in the state’s history.  He received a Profile in Courage Award in 2003 from the John F. Kennedy Library Foundation and is a 1999 Fellow of the Institute of Politics at Harvard University’s Kennedy School of Government. Born in 1957, he attended Clemson University and holds a B.A. from the University of South Carolina, as well as a J.D. from the University of South Carolina School of Law.

The Conversation with David Beasley is co-sponsored by Stanford’s Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies; the Center on Food Security and the Environment and the Annenberg Foundation Trust at Sunnylands.

 The lecture will be held at the David and Joan Traitel Building, 435 Lasuen Mall, Stanford University. For more information about the event, contact Sonal Singh at sonals@stanford.edu.

About the Wesson Lecture

The Wesson Lectureship was established at Stanford by the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies in 1988. It provides support for a public address at the university by a prominent scholar or practicing professional in the field of international relations. The series is made possible by a gift from the late Robert G. Wesson, a scholar of international affairs, prolific author, and senior research fellow at the Hoover Institution.