Carmen Jaquez is the Horn of Africa Director, Evidence & Learning for Resilient Dryland Production Systems based in Nairobi Kenya. She has been in this role since March 2023. Carmen joined Mercy Corps in 2017 as the Senior Advisor for Livestock & Agriculture within the global Technical Support Unit based at the MC Headquarters in USA. In her current role, she leads the development and execution of the Regional Research and Learning Agenda for livestock systems and agricultural-based livelihoods and the market systems that support rural livelihoods in fragile contexts and protracted crises. She is passionate about multi-sector approaches and nature-based solutions to reduce costs of production and risk. Carmen supports the execution of the agency’s regional livestock strategy and collaborates across teams to facilitate program-level learning and generating evidence on the role and contribution of livestock to household resilience, inclusive market systems, climate change adaptation, and increasingly, climate change mitigation. Prior to joining Mercy Corps, Carmen was the Practice Area Manager for Dairy, Livestock and Environment for Land O’Lakes, International Development Division (now Venture37) based in Nairobi, Kenya. In her 10 years at Land O’Lakes (2007-2017), Carmen was based in Land O’Lakes’ offices in Nairobi Kenya, Washington DC and Kigali Rwanda and supported programming across East, Southern and West Africa. She studied Fisheries & Wildlife Management and Biology (ecology) at the University of Missouri and Applied Economics and Ecological Economics at the University of Vermont.