James Allen IV

Service

I served as a Peace Corps Volunteer in Mali (2010-2012), a land-locked West African country. The experience taught me much about the challenges of implementing development work and about when handouts can be helpful or harmful. I was also to give back a little via a USAID grant that hosted a Dry-Season Tree Planting Workshop and distributed 2,000 trees to 30 associations from 12 different communities. Along with my wife, I also hosted over 50 hour-long radio shows (broadcast biweekly and in native Bambara) and helped our community build a school.

Since 2014, I have also served as a Board Member of African Sky, a small non-profit that works in partnership with Malian communities to do grassroots development work, particularly in education.


Professional Service:

  • Referee: Journal of Human Resources; Food Security; Review of Development Economics; Environment, Development and Sustainability; The Journal of Rural Health; Prentice Hall’s Introduction to Agricultural Economics, Global Edition

  • Doctoral Admissions Committee, Ford School of Public Policy, University of Michigan, 2019-20 and 2021-22

  • Junior Research Task Force, 2nd International Conference on Global Food Security, Cornell, 2015