Carla Denizard currently serves as the World Vision International Regional Leader for West Africa based in Dakar, Senegal. She is an international development economist who has 25 years of experience leading and managing large complex national and regional private and multi-donor programs in West and Central Africa. Her technical expertise includes food security, value chain, and agribusiness development, organizational change and capacity development. She has been responsible for designing and implementing programs to enhance individual leadership and management skills and to strengthen institutional performance.
In her current role as World Vision International’s Regional Leader for West Africa, she oversees a multi-million dollar portfolio of development, humanitarian and emergency response programs aimed at transforming the lives of the most vulnerable children and adults in the region. As the West Africa Regional Director for the Africa Lead, Feed the Future and USAID-funded Building Capacity for Agricultural Transformation Project, she led and managed capacity development programs in six Feed the Future focus countries (Ghana, Nigeria, Senegal, Guinea, Sierra Leone, DRC), targeted Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) member states, and had oversight over two sub-regional offices in Dakar, Senegal and Kinshasa, Democratic Republic of Congo.
She has been responsible for designing and implementing programs to enhance institutional effectiveness and strengthen policy processes for policy change and reforms to increase agricultural productivity and food security. She has led organizational capacity assessments and designed integrated capacity development programs implementing technical assistance packages and short-term customized courses for private companies, and government ministries of agriculture and trade and regional institutions like ECOWAS, West and Central African Council for Agricultural Research and Development and the Permanent Interstate Committee for Drought Control in the Sahel. In Senegal, she organized under the Trade Africa Initiative, a regional Mango week.
In Nigeria she supported the establishment and launch of the Nigeria Agribusiness Resource center in Abuja to promote agribusiness investment and trade. She integrated female and youth empowerment programs in the Africa Lead program portfolio that includes the Champions for Change leadership and Agribusiness and Entrepreneurship Boot camp courses for women and university students as well as a Young Professional internship program promoting workforce development in Nigeria.
Ms. Denizard also served as DAI’s Senior Development and Food Security Specialist, responsible for growing the firm’s agriculture and food security project portfolio in Africa and strengthening local staff and government human capacity to manage and implement agriculture and food security programs.
Previously, Ms. Denizard served as Country Representative and Regional Director for Opportunities Industrialization Centers International (OICI) in Ghana, Togo, and Côte d’Ivoire, where she managed a team of more than 300 local staff, a $7 million program budget, and a multi-sector portfolio of food security and humanitarian assistance programs funded by multiple clients, including USAID/Food for Peace, the U.S. Department of Agriculture, the United Nations World Food Programme, and private firms like the Dangote Group, Newmont Gold, Goldfields and Asanti Gold.
Ms. Denizard holds a Master’s degree in International Agriculture and Development from Cornell University and a Bachelor’s degree in Development Economics and African studies from Georgetown University’s School of Foreign Service. She is multilingual in English, French and Haitian Creole.