Steven Lawry

Steven Lawry (New York City) received a PhD in land resources from the Nelson Institute for Environmental Studies in 1988. The same year he joined the research staff of UW-Madison’s Land Tenure Center (LTC) and became LTC’s associate director in charge of Africa programs in 1990. Steven held senior positions in the Ford Foundation from 1992 to 2006, including assistant representative for the foundation’s Office for South Africa and Namibia (1992-1997) and regional representative for the foundation’s Office for the Middle East and North Africa in Cairo (1997-2001).

He was president of Antioch College, in Yellow Springs, Ohio, in 2006 and 2007. He was a senior research fellow at the Harvard Kennedy School’s Hauser Center for Nonprofit Organizations from 2008 to 2013. On leave from the Kennedy School, he headed the USAID-funded Sudan Property Rights Program in 2010 and 2011, based in Juba, assisting the government of South Sudan develop a national land policy. He went on to serve as global practice leader for Land Tenure and Property Rights at DAI, a Washington-based consulting group, from 2011 to 2014.

From 2014 to 2019 Steven served as director of governance research and principal scientist at the Center for International Forestry Research (CIFOR); first at CIFOR’s Indonesia headquarters and later in Washington, D.C. As a scholar, foundation executive, policy advisor, and project manager, Steven has carried out research and published scholarly articles on topics including:

The social and ecological effects of forest rights devolution
The effects of land reform on agricultural investment and productivity and social equity
Tenure and governance factors affecting adoption of forest landscape restoration practices
The outcomes of higher education initiatives intended to foster civic engagement
Impactful approaches to philanthropic giving