Amanda Grossi
Senior Staff Associate
Amanda Grossi is a Senior Staff Associate and Officer of Research at the International Research Institute for Climate and Society (IRI), part of the Columbia Climate School in the City of New York. Within the World Bank Accelerating the Impacts of CGIAR Climate Research for Africa (AICCRA) project, she currently serves as IRI’s Senior Regional Manager for Africa where she manages and coordinates the IRI’s activities at the country-level in Ethiopia, Kenya, Zambia, Senegal, Mali, and Ghana. In this role, she provides critical support to the development and delivery of capacity building initiatives and digital innovations, including those associated with the IRI’s Enhancing National Climate Services (ENACTS) approach.
Amanda has worked on a wide array of projects and initiatives with organizations such as the World Agroforestry Center (ICRAF), the Earth Institute Agriculture and Food Security Center, the Clinton Foundation, Plan International, BYkids, Building Tomorrow, Trees for the Future, and Cultivating New Frontiers in Agriculture (CNFA) in various research, business development, and communications capacities. However, her passion and focus have always been on the rural communities and people who initially sparked her interest in development during her time as a Peace Corps volunteer in Senegal’s Peanut Basin, especially children and youth. Because of the AICCRA project’s focus on youth and building the foundational capacity of future researchers, practitioners, scientists, and policymakers at the university level to manage climate risk, Amanda believes the AICCRA project is making a sustainable and long-awaited contribution to a climate-smart future for Africa. And while there are many aspects to the project, she is most excited about the long-term impacts that skills-based curricula integrating the best-available climate information into decision-making processes will make.
Amanda received her Masters of Public Administration in Development Practice from Columbia University’s School of International and Public Affairs—a program emphasizing holistic, multidisciplinary, and systems-level approaches to international development—in 2016. She also holds a B.S. in Environmental Science and a B.A. in Political Science from the University of California Los Angeles (UCLA). She has lived and worked for over six years in various places across East and West Africa, including Senegal, Uganda, Kenya, Tanzania, and Ethiopia, and now applies this perspective and experience in her role spanning both sides of the continent.