Kimberly Flowers

international development consultant

Kimberly Flowers has nearly 25 years of experience in international development, public policy, and strategic communications. She is currently consulting on USAID programs in Africa that are working to improve food security through private trade and investments. Previously she served as the executive director of the Goldfarb Center for Public Affairs at Colby College. In 2015 she was named the first director of the Global Food Security Program at the Center for Strategic & International Studies (CSIS), where she also founded and directed the Humanitarian Agenda program. Her work at CSIS predominately addressed the effectiveness of U.S. foreign assistance programs and policies that impact global poverty, hunger, and malnutrition. While at CSIS, she led a high-level congressional task force on humanitarian access, conducted field research in more than a dozen countries, and led multiple U.S. congressional staff delegations overseas. Prior to joining CSIS, Flowers was the communications director for Fintrac, an international development company focusing on hunger eradication and poverty alleviation through agricultural solutions. From 2005 to 2011, she worked for USAID, serving overseas as a development, outreach, and communications officer in Ethiopia and Jamaica; supporting public affairs in Haiti after the 2010 earthquake; and leading strategic communications for the U.S. government’s global hunger and nutrition initiative Feed the Future. Flowers began her international development career in 1999 as a Peace Corps volunteer in Bulgaria, where she founded a young women’s leadership camp that continues today. She frequently speaks and moderates on food and nutrition security, including moderating the 2019 World Food Summit in Copenhagen and delivering the 2016 McGovern Lecture at FAO in Rome. She graduated magna cum laude from William Jewell College and studied at Oxford University.