Staff experts

Browse the entire IATP staff directory

Jim Harkness
President
(612) 870-3403  jharkness@iatp.org
Harkness joined IATP in July 2006. Previously he served as Executive Director of the World Wildlife Fund in China from 1999-2005, where he expanded the organization’s profile from a strict focus on conservation of biodiversity to also addressing the consequences of China’s economic growth on a broader sustainable development agenda. From 1995–1999, Harkness worked as the Ford Foundation’s Environment and Development Program Officer for China. Harkness has written and spoken frequently on China and sustainable development, and has served as an adviser for the World Bank and the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization. Harkness grew up in Minneapolis, Minnesota. He’s a graduate of the University of Wisconsin where he majored in Asian Studies. He received his graduate degree in Development Sociology from Cornell University.

Alexandra Spieldoch
Director, Trade and Global Governance Program
(612) 870-3419 aspeildoch@iatp.org
Alexandra Spieldoch is Director of the Trade and Global Governance Program. Most recently, she co-directed the Gender, Trade and Development Project at the Center of Concern and coordinated the secretariat for the International Gender and Trade Network in Washington, D.C.

Spieldoch has been engaged in World Trade Organization and regional trade advocacy since 1999. She has published research and popular education on trade negotiations at the WTO and in the Americas from a human rights and development perspective. A member of the Alliance for Responsible Trade and active in the Hemispheric Social Alliance, Spieldoch studied at the University of Buenos Aires and lived in many places in France. She received an master's in international policy from the Monterey Institute of International Studies. Her bachelor's is from Washington University in St. Louis, Mo., with a major in French literature.

Dr. Steve Suppan
Senior Policy Analyst
(612) 870-3413  ssuppan@iatp.org
Steve Suppan has been Director of Research since 1998. Suppan began to work at IATP in 1994 as a translator, editor, bulletin writer and program officer for western hemispheric trade policy. Suppan is IATP's liaison to several governmental and intergovernmental organizations. From 1998 to 2003, he was IATP's liaison to the Trade and Environnment Policy Advisory Committee of the Office of the U.S. Trade Representative. Since 2002, he has been the U.S. co-chair of the trade working group of the TransAtlantic Consumers Dialogue. Since 2000 he has been IATP's main liaison to Consumers International and has served on several Consumers International delegations to the Codex Alimentarius Commission and to Codex committees. He has written extensively on food safety policy and on agricultural trade policy. Most recently, he has written a paper on structural reform in the Codex Alimentarius Commission for CI's Decision Making in the Global Market project. Suppan has also represented IATP at meetings of the United Nations Commission on Sustainable Development, the United Nations Development Program, the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization, and was the NGO liaison to the U.S. government for the World Food Summit +5. He serves on the board of the Community Nutrition Institute.

Suppan has a Ph.D. in comparative literature from the University of Minnesota and studied philosophy at the University of Vienna. Prior to coming to IATP, he was an assistant professor in the department of Romance languages at the University of Missouri-Columbia.

Alexandra Strickner
Director, Transatlantic Dialogue Project
+43 (1) 317 40 14  astrickner@iatp.org
Strickner was born and raised in Tyrol, Austria. She studied political economics at the Vienna University of Economics and Business Administration, focusing on Development Economics and worked for five years as a research assistant and political adviser in the Austrian Foundation for Development Research. As part of that experience, Strickner worked on the Austrian campaign against GATS—the services treaty within the World Trade Organization.

R. Dennis Olson
Senior Policy Analyst
(612) 870-3412  dolson@iatp.org
R. Dennis Olson is the Director of IATP's Trade and Agriculture Project, which advocates for farmers and peasants both in the U.S., and around the world, within the context of global trade debates. He works on U.S. agricultural trade policy among domestic and international rural advocacy and other social justice networks. In 2005, Olson worked on behalf of IATP to oppose passage of the Central American Free Trade Agreement, and published a paper, Sweet or Sour: The U.S. Sugar Program and Threats Posed by the Dominican Republic-Central American Free Trade Agreement. Olson advocates for the rights of farmers in issues related to genetically engineered crops. In 2005 he published an article, "Hard Red Spring Wheat at a Genetic Crossroad: Rural Prosperity or Corporate Hegemony?" on his experiences in a successful effort by North American wheat farmers and their allies to stop Monsanto's efforts to introduce the first ever variety of genetically engineered wheat. The University of Wisconsin Press published the article as a chapter in the book, Controversies in Science and Technology From Maize to Menopause. Before coming to IATP, Olson worked as a community organizer for seventeen years with grassroots farmer and environmental organizations in North Dakota and Montana on agricultural, environmental and other social justice issues. In 1994, he spent three months in the former Soviet Union networking with environmental and agricultural activist organizations. Olson graduated from the University of Montana in 1983 with a combined degree of history/political science and a minor in Russian.

Carin Smaller
Director, Trade Information Project
+41 (22) 789 0734  csmaller@iatp.org
Smaller is the project officer for the Trade Information Project, where she monitors WTO negotiations, writes "Geneva Update," and provides information and analysis to developing country trade negotiators and civil society groups working on trade. Carin is also developing alternative approaches to agriculture trade using a human rights approach and has written a policy paper, Planting the Rights Seed: A Human Rights Perspective on Agriculture Trade and the WTO. Prior to working with IATP, Smaller worked with a trade and human rights NGO, 3D - Trade - Human Rights -Equitable Economy. she also worked on development projects for the UNDP in Windhoek, Namibia, the Australian Aid Agency for International Development (AusAID) and the German Development Service in Nepal. She has a bachelor of laws and bachelor of arts in political science and comparative development from the University of New South Wales (Australia).

Mark Muller
Director, Environment and Agriculture Program
(612) 870-3420  mmuller@iatp.org
Since starting at IATP in 1997, Muller has worked on a wide variety of issues, including agricultural diversification, nutrient management, agricultural transportation, regional food systems and renewable energy production. He has been involved in both regional project-based efforts and national policy development. He has had opinion pieces on agricultural policy appear in newspapers throughout the Midwest. Muller has a B.A. in physics from the State University of New York at Geneseo and a M.S. in environmental engineering from Manhattan College. Prior to joining IATP, Muller worked as an environmental engineer and high school science teacher.

Dr. Dennis Keeney
Senior Fellow
(515) 232-1531  drkeeney@iastate.edu
Keeney was the first director of the Leopold Center for Sustainable Agriculture at Iowa State University. He retired in 2000, and is professor emeritus of Agronomy and Agricultural and Biosystems Engineering at Iowa State University. Keeney grew up on a family dairy farm near Runnells, Iowa, and obtained a B.S. in agronomy from Iowa State University, a M.S. in soil science from The University of Wisconsin, Madison and a Ph.D. in agronomy and biochemistry from Iowa State University. He was a faculty member at the University of Wisconsin in soils and water chemistry before coming to Iowa State in 1988. He has pioneered research and outreach on agricultural issues related to sustainability, land resource use, rural community development and water quality. Keeney has published over 140 refereed papers on soil and water quality research, and served on numerous state, federal and international scientific committees and task forces. He also served as president of the American Society of Agronomy and the Soil Science of America. He has been a Senior fellow at IATP since 2000 and also is a senior fellow in the Department of Soil, air and water in the College of Agriculture, Food, and Environmental Sciences, University of Minnesota.

Jim Kleinschmit
Director, Rural Communities Program
(612) 870-3430  jim@iatp.org
Kleinschmit's work focuses on promoting working landscapes and sustainable rural development in both the U.S. and abroad. Current projects include: working with farmers and other stakeholders to establish sustainable crop production standards and markets in the Midwest; promoting and facilitating renewable energy and sustainable bioindustrial development projects; and helping increase understanding of the relationship of agriculture to surface and ground water management in the Great Lakes Basin. He has a M.A. from the Jackson School of International Studies of the University of Washington, and a B.A. in European history and Russian studies from St. Olaf College, Minnesota. Kleinschmit was raised on and is still active in the operation of his family's farm in Nebraska. He worked on rural development in the Baltics and Russia and in 1995 began working as the coordinator for the IATP's International Fellows Program, which informed officials from the former Soviet Union and Eastern Europe about international trade and agriculture issues. In 1996, he joined the Environment and Agriculture Program, focusing on nutrient and watershed management.

Don Arnosti
Director, Forestry Program
(612) 870-3460  darnosti@iatp.org
Over the past 15 years, Don has held a number of leadership positions with Minnesota conservation organizations. Most recently he served as the Water Campaign Coordinator for the Minnesota Environmental Partnership, an association of more than 80 large and small non-profit conservation organizations. Prior to that he served for ten years as Executive Director of the National Audubon Society's Minnesota office. Audubon Minnesota, under Don's leadership, became involved in the earliest efforts to tailor Forest Stewardship Council standards to the Great Lakes region and were early supporters of the first public lands certifications in the region in Aitkin County.

Dr. David Wallinga
Director, Food and Health Program
(612) 870-3418  dwallinga@iatp.org
Wallinga gives frequent talks, interviews with the press and public testimony on the health impacts of environmental pollutants—including food borne pollutants—on the developing brains and other organs in children. He also is expert in the myriad public health impacts of industrialized food production, such as the huge use of antibiotics in livestock production. Nationally, he works with the health-based coalitions Keep Antibiotics Working and Health Care Without Harm. Dr. Wallinga co-authored In Harm's Way: Toxic Threats to Child Development, and authored Putting Children First: Making Pesticide Levels in Food Safer for Infants and Children. Prior to joining IATP in 2000, he worked in the public health program of the Natural Resource Defense Council in Washington, D.C. He has a medical degree from the University of Minnesota Medical School, and a master's degree from Princeton University.

Kathleen Schuler
Senior Associate
(612) 870-3468  kschuler@iatp.org
Schuler's focus is on protecting children, among other vulnerable populations, from environmental toxins in food. She has developed a Smart Fish Guide and online fish calculator to educate parents and women of childbearing age about eating safer fish and seafood lower in mercury and PCBs. She also served as the project coordinator for Reducing Pesticides in Minnesota Schools Pilot Project. Schuler has a master of public health degree from the University of Minnesota. As a Bush Leadership Fellow in environmental health, she also studied at Boston University and interned with the Center for Health, Environment and Justice. Schuler is an active member of both the Minnesota and American Public Health Associations.

Marie Kulick
Senior Associate
(612) 870-3422  marie@iatp.org
Kulick joined the Food and Health team in 2004. A key focus of her work is on preventing pollution of the food chain by among other things promoting the use of safer materials and building support for an agricultural food system that reflects health considerations. In 2005, she authored Healthy Food, Healthy Hospitals, Healthy Communities, a report that highlights the successful efforts of health care facilities to improve access to fresh, sustainably produced food and identifies strategies for overcoming potential hurdles such as tight budgets and restrictive vendor contracts. Marie has a B.A. in communications from McDaniel College and a master of studies in environmental law from Vermont Law School. Prior to IATP, Kulick worked for the National Fish and Wildlife Foundation, Environmental Fund for Maryland and Clean Water Action.