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Dr. Eleftherios Iakovou

Dr. Iakovou is the Director of Manufacturing and Logistics Innovation Initiatives at the Texas A&M Engineering Experiment Station (TEES); the Associate Director of Supply Chain Management and Applied Operations Research at Texas Center for Applied Technology (TCAT) of TEES; and a Professor and a Holder of a TEES Research Professorship at the Department of Engineering Technology and Industrial Distribution at Texas A&M University.

His research areas include: Supply Chain Management, Inventory Management, Intermodal & Maritime Logistics, Green Logistics – Sustainability, Port Management, Global Logistics & Free Trade Facilitation, Manufacturing & Production Systems, Humanitarian Logistics, Emergency Response Management and Innovation, Policy-Making & Strategy Development.

Prior to joining Texas A&M in 2015, Dr. Iakovou served as the Department Head of the Mechanical Engineering Department of the Aristotle University of Thessaloniki. Dr. Iakovou has published more than 230 papers in peer reviewed journals and conference proceedings, as well as two books. He has served as a keynote speaker for a plethora of national and international events, while he has been consulting extensively for a number of governmental and corporate organizations both in the U.S. and in the EU for more than two decades. He served as the Chairman of the Board of Directors and briefly also as its CEO for the Alexandrian Innovation Zone S.A., in Thessaloniki, Greece. For more than ten years, he was the President of the Greek Association of Supply Chain Management (EEL ΒΕ).

Dr. Charalambos Kasimis

Charalambos Kasimis is a Professor of Rural Sociology at the Department of Agricultural Economics and Rural Development of the Agricultural University of Athens. In March 2015, he was appointed as Secretary General of Agricultural Policy and Management of European Funds of the Ministry of Rural Development and Food, in charge of CAP, Rural Development and Fisheries Development Programmes of Greece as well as International Relations.

He has served as the Head of the Department of Agricultural Economics and Rural Development (2013-2014) and as the Director of the Postgraduate Studies MSc. Programme “Integrated Rural Development and Management of Rural Space” (2010-2014). Between September 2014 and March 2015 he was appointed as Deputy Rector of the Agricultural University of Athens. In the period 1986-2003 he served as a member of staff at the Department of Economics of the University of Patras and between 1995 and 2000 as the Director of the Institute of Urban and Rural Sociology at the National Centre for Social Research. For a number of years, he served as a member of the Executive Committee of the European Society for Rural Sociology and between 2013 and 2015 as President.

His academic interests focus on issues of rural transformation and development in Greece, the Balkans and the Mediterranean region and more particularly on family farming, employment and rural community change. Migration and, more precisely, the implications of international migration on rural regions have become one of his main research topics in the past years. Recently, he has been dealing with the study of the implications of the economic crisis upon the rural areas and the ‘return to the land’ movement in Greece.

Since 2016 Charalambos Kasimis is a member of the Governing Board of International Center for Advanced Mediterranean Agronomic Studies (CIHEAM).

Dr. Philip Papadopoulos

Dr. Philip Papadopoulos holds a PhD from London School of Economics and is currently the Director of the Strategic Project Management Office of the American Farm School (AFS). In this capacity he is responsible for the Agrifood Entrepreneurship Centres run by AFS in the cities of Thessaloniki and Kalamata, and oversees training and consultancy projects in over thirty locations throughout Greece. Building and managing multi-actor alliances between research institutes, civil society institutions and the real economy is one of his core activities.

His fields of interest include Consumer Behavior related to the Mediterranean Diet, Alternative Tourism, Food Anthropology, Entrepreneurship, E-commerce, Organizational Culture & Climate, Leadership and Management, including motivation and performance management.

Ms. Effie Lazaridou

Effie has been appointed Managing Director of the ‘Recharging the Youth: New Agriculture for a New Generation’ program in June 2018. This is an innovative multi-year project implemented in Greece through the generous support of the Stavros Niarchos Foundation and led by Rutgers – The State University of New Jersey, in partnership with the Agricultural University of Athens and the American Farm School,.

Effie is a brand and marketing strategy expert, specializing in the Agrofood, Culture and Tourism sectors, with a proven track record of successfully delivering complex international initiatives. Among others, she led landmark projects of national importance, such as Destination Greece’s brand and marketing strategy, the largest communication consultancy project ever initiated in the country, and Greece’s Wine Sector’s first ever international branding & strategic marketing plan. She also directed numerous challenging projects for multinationals, cooperatives, and SMEs in South Eastern Europe.

Effie has a diverse academic background in Chemical Engineering, Music, Cultural Management and Marketing. She is also a certified business coach and trainer, an Associate of the Chartered Institute of Marketing London and an Associate Certified Coach by the International Coach Federation. In 2017 she was selected as mentor at the Cherie Blair Foundation for Women’s Mentoring Women in Business Program.