Deborah Wyburn joined the International Livestock Research Institute (ILRI) on 19 January 2015 as instructional design / capacity development specialist.

Wyburn joins ILRI after 20 years of working in international development. An Australian by birth, she started her career as a science teacher before branching out into computing and the private sector. This led her into taking up a position developing national databases for AusAID in Indonesia and from there into a variety of jobs in Sri Lanka, Western Samoa, Bangladesh and Bulgaria. In 2010, Wyburn completed a PhD in education with an emphasis on eLearning. Her field research was conducted in Sri Lanka. Prior to joining ILRI, she worked for four years in Bangladesh bringing ICT into 18,000 secondary school classrooms across the country. She will be based in Addis Ababa.

Shiferaw Tafesse has been appointed capacity development associate in the Capacity Development Unit working specifically for the Ethiopia small ruminants value chain in the CGIAR research program on Livestock and Fish, effective 1 January 2015. Shiferaw holds a MSc degree in environmental science from the Addis Ababa University and a BSc degree in land resources management and environmental protection from Mekelle University.

He has more than ten years working experience on different research and development projects. Before joining ILRI, he worked for ACDI/VOCA as a business development specialist. He also worked for the Ethiopian Agricultural Transformation Agency (ATA) and with the Sasakawa Africa Association (SAA) as senior technical expert and public private partnership and market access program officer, respectively.

Shiferaw has substantial experience in capacity development, agricultural research and extension, cooperatives business development, partnership and stakeholder coordination, gender mainstreaming, value chain development and market linkage among others.