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Sudan Update with Lauren Landis, State Department Sudan Programs Office

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Lauren Landis Date: Thursday, 20 December 2007 Time: 9:00 a.m. EST (1400 GMT) View Webchat Transcript

Sudan has been embroiled in conflict for more than twenty years. The historic signing of the Comprehensive Peace Agreement between the National Congress Party in Khartoum and the Sudan People's Liberation Movement finally brought some peace between the north and the south. For the last several years, however, the world has been watching as the Darfur crisis has unfolded and north/south relations are still tense.

Please join Lauren Landis, Senior Adviser for the State Department's Sudan Programs Group, on Thursday, December 20 at 9:00 EST (14:00 GMT) as she discusses current situation in Sudan and what role the United States Government is playing there.

Guest Biography: Lauren Landis began her position as Senior Representative to Sudan in the U.S. Department of State African Affairs bureau (Sudan Programs Group) in August 2006. Prior to this position, Ms. Landis was named as the Director of the Office of Food for Peace at the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) in January of 2002. As FFP Director, she annually managed $1.5 billion of food commodities that are programmed in over 100 countries worldwide to fulfill FFP’s mission of reducing hunger and malnutrition. During Ms. Landis’ tenure at FFP, the office developed new methods to address food insecurity around the world, including establishing an overseas pre-positioning facility and rewriting regulations, guidelines, and procedures to allow the office to quicken its response to emergencies. During her tenure, FFP focused much of its resources on averting famine in Ethiopia, southern Africa, and Darfur.

From 1995 to 2001, Ms. Landis served as the Director of Emergency Response and Food Security at Save the Children Federation, Inc., a leading development and humanitarian U.S. Private Voluntary Organization. Prior to this she worked at InterAction, a coalition of U.S. non-profit organizations.

Ms. Landis has previously worked at USAID as Emergency Operations Coordinator in Somalia and as a Disaster Operations Specialist in Washington, DC. She is an alumna of Mount Holyoke College, where she majored in International Relations.