Roy Stacy
Author
Sessions: Authors Panel (Day 2, Morning)
Author
Sessions: Authors Panel (Day 2, Morning)
I grew up in Hawaii, and witnessed at the age of four the bombing of Pearl Harbor. Following my parents divorce my mother brought me to Oxnard, California, her home town. I loved Hawaii, hated California and was angry that I had been forced to move. This resentment led to several years of increasingly serious juvenile delinquency. At age seventeen and just days after my high school graduation, the Oxnard police gave me a choice between incarceration or the military.
I promptly joined the Air Force. The four years of Air Force service were a discovery. They opened my eyes to the value of education and I discovered that I was smart. But I had a problem. My high school grades were so bad my only chance for a university level education was to excel at a community college and then seek university admission and scholarship support. This is the path I successfully followed, graduating cum laude from The University of California at Santa Barbara followed by a Masters from George Washington University. In 1965 I joined USAID, working in several African countries thru the 1970s, and then in 1981 as Mission Director in newly independent Zimbabwe. In 1986 I transferred to the State Department and served two years as Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for Africa before retirement from the Foreign Service in 1989. In 1990, I began to work at the World Bank, but departed after just three years to accept an OECD offer to live and work in Paris as Director of The Club du Sahel. Returning to Washington DC in 1999 I was asked to lead the USAID funded Famine Early Warning Systems Network (FEWSNET). Six years later, as an independent consultant, I did food security evaluations and program design work in Africa for the Carter Center, UNDP, FAO and WFP before a second retirement at age 80. I now live in beautiful Brittany in western France with my artist wife Jana and two Burmese kittens.
I promptly joined the Air Force. The four years of Air Force service were a discovery. They opened my eyes to the value of education and I discovered that I was smart. But I had a problem. My high school grades were so bad my only chance for a university level education was to excel at a community college and then seek university admission and scholarship support. This is the path I successfully followed, graduating cum laude from The University of California at Santa Barbara followed by a Masters from George Washington University. In 1965 I joined USAID, working in several African countries thru the 1970s, and then in 1981 as Mission Director in newly independent Zimbabwe. In 1986 I transferred to the State Department and served two years as Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for Africa before retirement from the Foreign Service in 1989. In 1990, I began to work at the World Bank, but departed after just three years to accept an OECD offer to live and work in Paris as Director of The Club du Sahel. Returning to Washington DC in 1999 I was asked to lead the USAID funded Famine Early Warning Systems Network (FEWSNET). Six years later, as an independent consultant, I did food security evaluations and program design work in Africa for the Carter Center, UNDP, FAO and WFP before a second retirement at age 80. I now live in beautiful Brittany in western France with my artist wife Jana and two Burmese kittens.
