Jeff Haskins

In Memoriam

Jeff Haskins passed away on July 14, 2012. He will always be remembered as part of our Burness family. Read our remembrance post to Jeff here.

Jeff Haskins was the director of the Nairobi office for Burness. As part of his work, Jeff provided communications and media relations advice to international organizations, which regularly resulted in substantive, high-profile coverage of their work in media outlets around the world. He was an expert communications strategist on agricultural development issues and climate change in particular. He staffed high-level meetings across Africa and Europe on global development issues.

Jeff oversaw media campaigns across Asia, Europe, the United States, and sub-Saharan Africa. He co-led the media relations operation for the opening of the Svalbard Global Seed Vault. Almost two dozen media outlets—ranging from CNN to the International Herald Tribune and Financial Times—attended the opening ceremony, which took place in the Vault on the side of a mountain in the Arctic Circle.

During his nine year tenure at Burness, Jeff worked primarily in agriculture, environment, and development issues for a wide range of organizations, including the Alliance for a Green Revolution in Africa (AGRA), the Global Crop Diversity Trust, almost all centers of the Consultative Group on International Agricultural Research (CGIAR), the Forest Trust (formerly known as the Tropical Forest Trust), and the Rights and Resources Initiative. Jeff was a graduate of St. Lawrence University in New York.