John O’Connell has 18 years of experience designing and managing donor-funded programs across various funding agencies including the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID), the U.S. Department of Agriculture, and the U.S. Department of Defense. Since 2012, he has specialized in the design and implementation of economic growth and agricultural market systems activities worldwide, including facilitating innovative public-private partnerships with multinational companies including Land O’Lakes, Corteva, and Ferrero.

He joined DAI in 2024 after eight years at Land O’Lakes and its affiliated nonprofit Venture37 where he served as the Director of Strategic Growth and Partnerships. In this leadership capacity, John focused on organizational strategy, business development, and promoting Venture37 as a thought leader to core U.S. government and non-U.S. government clients. Prior to that, he was the Director of Programs for Cultivating New Frontiers in Agriculture, where he oversaw a multi-donor portfolio of agricultural and economic growth programming throughout Eastern Europe and the Caucasus. Recently, he has successfully designed activities for donors in the areas of resilient agriculture, trade facilitation, market systems development, and food regulatory reform. Over the course of his career, John has been engaged as a speaker in a variety of panels and roundtables including COP27 in Sharm el Sheikh (climate finance), the Concordia Annual Summit in New York (private sector engagement), and USAID’s global Fall Armyworm Symposium.

• M.P.P., economic development, University of Minnesota Humphrey School of Public Policy
• B.A., political science, University of St. Thomas