December 6, 2007

Jim Phippard Announces Retirement

On November 30 ACDI/VOCA President Carl Leonard announced that Senior VP for Special Projects Jim Phippard would be retiring effective January 15, 2008. His retirement will end a career with ACDI/VOCA that began in 1991 and included a stint as chief operating officer during a period of rapid organizational change and growth, before he stepped down to a part-time position.

Phippard, who has lived and worked in West Africa, North Africa and Egypt, joined ACDI as its first VP for Central and Eastern Europe and the newly independent states of the former Soviet Union (CEE/NIS). In Poland, he designed and won ACDI’s first major enterprise development project, as well as a large project privatizing state-owned banks. He also won a large World Bank banking project in Albania. He ultimately expanded the CEE/NIS portfolio to be larger than the whole of ACDI at the time of his hiring. While running the Food for Development division, he became a leading proponent of monetization as a development instrument.

Phippard spent most of his career in international development. After the Navy and a stint as a House subcommittee counsel, he joined USAID. There he served as assistant general counsel for legislation and, later, for Africa. As special advisor to the chairman of the U.S. Senate Committee on Agriculture, he played a critical role in the 1990 Farm Bill reform of PL 480 and other food aid programs. Before that, he served in various positions at USAID, rising to director of the Office of Near Eastern/North African Affairs and directing the U.S. response to a devastating earthquake in southern Italy. As director of the agency’s mission in Tunisia, Phippard developed the Rural Potable Water Institutions Project, which established local water users’ associations, an innovation which later spread throughout rural Tunisia. He also led the effort to develop a multi-year PL 480 strategy, which was one of five cited in USAID’s report titled “Negotiating and Programming Food Aid: A Review of Successes.” Upon Phippard’s departure from Tunisia, President Habib Bourguiba decorated him “Commander, Order of the Republic,” the only director in Tunisia to have been so honored. Later he became president of the American Tunisian Association and was on the U.S. presidential delegation to the funeral of the Tunisian president. He retired from the U.S. Foreign Service as a minister counselor. Leonard said, “This holiday season we’ll be saying goodbye to a Wise Man. Few people have meant as much to ACDI/VOCA as Jim Phippard, and few could have operated with his combination of business acumen and team spirit.”