John "Bick" Riley

Chief of Party & Country Representative, Ethiopia

John “Bick” Riley is an accomplished project management and design specialist with 20 years of experience managing field programs in Africa. Currently, he serves as chief of party and country representative for our Ethiopia programming. Before his current position, he served as chief of party for the $34 million USAID-funded Agricultural Development and Value Chain Enhancement Project (ADVANCE) in Ghana. Previous to that, he worked at headquarters as the senior technical director of agriculture-based livelihoods programs, providing technical and management oversight to programs in Ethiopia, Sudan and Sierra Leone. Mr. Riley’s negotiation and partnering skills have enabled him to build strong institutional and working relationships with host governments, producer organizations, local civil society leaders and donor organizations. In addition, Mr. Riley has extensive experience in producer group, civil society and nongovernmental organization capacity building. From 2002-2007, Mr. Riley headed as chief of party ACDI/VOCA’s 5-year, $15 million, USAID-funded Cape Verde PL 480 Title II Food Security Program. He oversaw the development of community-based agribusinesses for sustainable livelihood improvement. The project developed the organizational capacity of approximately 100 community associations in financial management, microenterprise creation and management. With Mr. Riley’s guidance, the project also helped smallholder vegetable farmers adopt drip irrigation systems and provided technical and financial assistance to two nascent microfinance associations preparing them for financial sustainability. Prior to his work with ACDI/VOCA, Mr. Riley had been a long-term resident project director in Benin, Guinea, Rwanda and Chad for Africare. He has also conducted assignments in Central African Republic, Ethiopia, Liberia, Malawi, Sierra Leone, Sudan and Tanzania. He earned an M.S. degree in international agricultural development at the University of California at Davis, a B.S. in geography and anthropology at California State Polytechnic University, and an executive management certificate from Claremont Graduate University. He served as a Peace Corps volunteer in Togo teaching vocational agricultural courses and worked in the horticulture industry in California before embarking on his international career. He is fluent in French and Portuguese.