Jim Harkness Email & Phone Number

Financial and technical support transforming the way China feeds itself and the world feeds China.

www.jimharkness.com

Building connections and understanding between China and the world for a better future. Clients include:Climate and Land Use AllianceChina Council for International Cooperation on Environment and DevelopmentEnvironmental Grantmakers AssociationFord FoundationSocial Resources InstituteOxfamRockefeller Brothers Fund

Minnesota, USA

• 30 staff, $3 million budget; for-benefit (B Corp) subsidiary Peace Coffee: 40 staff, $4.5 million annual sales.
• Responsible for strategy, external relationships, fundraising, internal systems and culture, Board development.
• Built a new, more strategic and governance-oriented Board, worked with the Board on a re-focused organizational vision, and then aligned IATP’s strategies and systems behind that vision.
• Created an endowment fund worth $2.4 million.Organizational achievements include:
• Developed successful market-based working landscapes certification program to improve sustainability of farming practices in Midwest.
• Raised and disbursed over $400K in flood relief funds for Minnesota’s small organic farmers.

Beijing, China

Provided strategic advice and evaluation services for foundations and NGOs working in China.Evaluated a national anti-domestic-violence network funded by a donor consortium.Evaluated a small grant program run by an international NGO.

Beijing, China

• Grew from 10 staff in a single office with annual budget of $1 million to 70 staff with a budget of $6 million/year and seven field offices.
• Responsible for strategy, staffing, fundraising, government relations, liaison with the WWF network and other organizations, and relationships with the media and public.
• Established human resources, finance and communications systems.
• Catalyzed establishment of over a million hectares of forest protected areas and 420,000 hectares of Forest Stewardship Council certified forests.
• Built effective ecoregional conservation programs in the forests of the Upper Yangtze and the freshwater systems of the Central Yangtze. (Landscape-scale planning, linked protected area systems, working landscapes.
• Increased effectiveness and fairness of major governmental habitat restoration programs.

Beijing, China

• Responsible for Environment and Development grantmaking program.
• Awarded a total of over $5 million in grants.
• Supported capacity building, research and field projects to promote community based forest and biodiversity management.
• Invested in introducing concepts and approaches that were new to China at the time, including: common property systems, participatory rural appraisal, indigenous knowledge, ethnobotany, development finance, and gender.
• Provided founding grant to China Development Brief, a key information source on development, environment, civil society and human rights issues in China.
• Made founding or early grants to China’s earliest environmental NGOs (Global Village, Friends of Nature)

Washington, DC; Beijing, China

• Facilitated development of a coordinated approach among North American zoos to the controversial issue of giant panda loans and conservation.
• Worked closely with zoo biologists on a written conservation plan.
• Managed AZA’s engagement with Chinese partners, including negotiation between US and Chinese zoo officials and support for zoo- and field-based panda conservation projects in China.
• Mandarin Chinese interpretation and translation.

Berkeley, California; China

• Advised IRN on strategies for opposing the Three Gorges Dam.
• Carried out field research in China, collected primary data (written and oral), and prepared a detailed assessment of the political and technical status and options surrounding the proposed dam.

• Served in a variety of roles including environmental education, translation and field research.
• In 1990-91 conducted field research in Tibet as part of the first definitive study of the population, ecology and conservation status of the black-necked crane. (Grus nigricollis)

Ms, Development Sociology

Bachelors, Chinese, Ecology, Geography