Jimmy Smith, a Canadian was appointed director general of ILRI from 1st October 2011. Before joining ILRI, he was based at the headquarters of the World Bank, in Washington, DC, where he served for five years, leading the Bank’s Global Livestock Portfolio. Previously, Jimmy held senior positions at the Canadian International Development Agency (CIDA) (2001–2006). Earlier in his career, Jimmy had worked at ILRI and its predecessor, the International Livestock Centre for Africa (ILCA) (1991–2001). At ILCA and then ILRI, Jimmy was the institute’s regional representative for West Africa, where he led development of integrated research promoting smallholder livelihoods through animal agriculture and built effective partnerships among stakeholders in the region. At ILRI, he spent three years leading the ILRI-led Systemwide Livestock Programme of the CGIAR, an association of 10 CGIAR centres working on issues at the crop-livestock interface. Before his decade of work at ILCA/ILRI, he also hel