Normita Ignacio 

Executive Director

A graduate of Bachelor of Science in Agriculture, with a major in Horticulture, from the University of the Philippines Los Baños (UPLB), and holding an advanced degree in Development Management from the Asian Institute of Management, Executive Director (Dir.) Normita Ignacio started her career as a Researcher at the UPLB. She was a member of the multi-disciplinary team that worked on medicinal plants from 1983 to 1991. She worked at the International Institute for Rural Reconstruction (IIRR) from 1991 to 2003 as Technical Specialist, providing leadership on sustainable agriculture and food security programs of IIRR. 
 
In 2003, Dir. Ignacio became the Program Coordinator of the SEARICE program called Community Biodiversity Development and Conservation and Biodiversity Use and Conversion in Asia Program (CBDC-BUCAP). The latter was a regional program which built the capacity of farmers to  manage, conserve, improve and utilize plant genetic resources (PGRs). Under Dir. Ignacio’s leadership, CBDC-BUCAP became one of the most successful programs of SEARICE.
 
In 2011, she became the Executive Director of SEARICE. Since then and until now, her leadership has helped SEARICE to grow into one of the world’s leading non-government organizations that pursue and advocate agrobiodiversity conservation and sustainable food systems through agroecology.