Luke is an agricultural and applied economist with 29 years of extensive development experience working in Nepal and South Asia. He has expertise in market development/value-chain approaches, public-private partnerships, agricultural research, policy analysis/reform, and program development. His passion for working in developing countries, and especially with Nepal, began when he served there as a Peace Corps volunteer in the 1990s. Prior to joining iDE, Luke worked from 1998 to 2008 for Winrock in several roles, including South Asia agriculture program coordinator. Luke has led iDE’s Nepal efforts since 2008, developing successful market-based interactions, including the commercial pocket approach, to enable small-scale farmers to take advantage of high-value agricultural opportunities to substantially increase their incomes. He was the team leader for the USAID Nepal Smallholder Irrigation Market Initiative (SIMI), which has become a model for USAID’s Feed the Future and other programs in Nepal. Luke is proud of iDE’s climate-change adaptation program in Nepal, which is increasing the income of nearly 300,000 smallholders thru climate-smart agriculture. He has a Ph.D. In Applied Economics from Virginia Tech and a Master’s Degree in Agricultural and Natural Resource Economics from the University of Maine.

Read about iDE in Nepal.