Mr. Tom Arnold, CEO Concern Worldwide

Mr. Tom Arnold, CEO Concern Worldwide

Concern Worldwide has been working in Somalia for the past 25 years and has currently scaled up operations in response to the famine in the Horn of Africa. Mr. Arnold just returned from the region where he was helping to shape Concern Worldwide's emergency response strategy. During his keynote address, Mr. Arnold will tackle the root causes for the famine, draw attention to ongoing relief efforts and give Iowans more information on how they can contribute to the cause.

Mr. Arnold has been CEO of Concern Worldwide since 2001 and has extensive experience working with agriculture and global food security, poverty alleviation and hunger. Before coming to Concern Worldwide, Mr. Arnold was previously Assistant Secretary General and Chief Economist in the Department of Agriculture and Food in Ireland. He was Chairman of the Organization of Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) Committee for Agriculture (1993-1998) and the European Food Security Group (EFSG), a network of 40 European NGOs engaged in food security work (2005-10). He also served on the UN Millennium Project’s Hunger Task Force (2003-05), was a member of the UN’s Central Emergency Response Fund’s (CERF) Advisory Group (2006-09), the Irish Hunger Task Force (2007-08) and the International Food Policy Research Institute’s (IFPRI) Advisory Board. In 2010, Mr. Arnold was elected to the nine member Board of the Consultative Group for International Agricultural Research (CGIAR), an organization charged with leading the reform of the international agriculture research system.

Mr. Arnold has also worked for the European Commission for 10 years, three of which were in Africa. He was fomerly a member of the Irish Government’s Commission on Taxation (2008-09) and served as a Governor and Director of the Irish Times, Ireland’s leading newspaper.

Mr. Arnold is a graduate in Agricultural Economics from University College Dublin, and has masters degrees from the Catholic University of Louvain and Trinity College Dublin. He has also received Honorary Doctorates of Laws from the National University of Ireland and Science from the University College Dublin.