Aaron Sundsmo named Winrock’s Senior Director of Agriculture, Resilience & Water

Winrock International is pleased to announce that Aaron Sundsmo has been named senior director of its Agriculture, Resilience & Water (ARW) group.

Aaron has 20 years of experience providing organizational and portfolio leadership within both for-profit and non-profit international development organizations, including 15 years in Africa and Asia. In his new position as ARW’s senior director, he supports Winrock’s mission through development of global partnerships with smallholder farmers, communities, and agricultural enterprises that increase food security, enhance livelihoods, and strengthen sustainable water solutions by applying resilience-based approaches.

Over the past two decades, Aaron has led complex projects focused on resilience, food security, agriculture, and government systems strengthening, in addition to working in the water security, public health, HIV/AIDS, and education sectors. He has provided senior technical assistance in monitoring, evaluation, research and learning, knowledge management, social and behavior change, organizational capacity building, and information communication technologies to increase project efficiency and impact.

Prior to joining Winrock, Aaron was director of resilience for Mercy Corps in Zimbabwe, and was the team lead for the Resilience Knowledge Hub, a strategic project of the Zimbabwe Resilience Building Fund. He also worked in Sri Lanka as senior director for international programs at Plan International, where he oversaw cross-sectoral support to Plan’s 52 country offices. Aaron also served as vice president of the Africa region for Danya International, where he led evidence-based approaches in agriculture and health programming. He has a master’s in international peace and conflict resolution from American University’s School of International Service.