atherine Bertini, B.A.’71, received a dubious present for her 50th birthday on March 30 last year: United Nations Secretary General Kofi Annan named her as a special envoy to the Horn of Africa and charged her with averting a famine in the drought-ravaged region. As executive director of the U.N.’s World Food Programme, the largest food-aid agency in the world, Bertini was a natural choice.

“At first, I wasn’t sure that it was a present, but it was,” said Bertini, who earned a bachelor’s degree in political science from the University at Albany and launched her political career as president of the campus Young Republicans three decades ago. “I was able to see, firsthand, the devastation and understand the people’s needs, not just for food, but for medicine, water, livestock development.” After visiting the region and assessing what needed to be done, Bertini and her team made an appeal to the international community that staved off a famine. It turned out to be the best-funded U.N. appeal in the world in 2000.

From the WFP’s headquarters in Rome, Italy, Bertini carries out her agency’s dual mandate to prevent starvation in crises and to promote long-term development aimed at breaking the deeply rooted hunger-poverty cycle. She is the first American and the first woman to serve as CEO of the WFP, which has a $1.88 billion budget and is responsible for feeding nearly 90 million people each year, mostly in disaster zones like Ethiopia, Somalia and India. It is the kind of job, she says, that is occasionally heart-breaking, but also exceptionally satisfying.

“It would be impossible to invent a more rewarding job in a bureaucracy anywhere in the world,” she says. “We help people stay alive every day, children to grow, and women to improve their lives through food aid.” She gauges her success by the numbers — of people served by WFP programs, communities returning to normal after a disaster, women involved in their communities, children in school, especially girls, and countries that “graduate” from the food recipient column to self-sufficiency — most recently, Vietnam, Tunisia, Mexico and Botswana.

Bertini visits a feeding center for malnourished children in Mozambique.

n the nine years since Bertini’s appointment, she has underscored the seminal role of women in food aid and worked to funnel more food directly to them.

“In all cultures of the world, almost all household cooks are women. So when we get food to women, we are helping to meet the WFP’s objective, which is to end hunger, and helping to empower the women,” Bertini explained.

Reared in Cortland, N.Y., she thought about becoming a music teacher before finally settling on a career in government service. “I applied to Albany because it had a good political science department, and I thought that, in Albany, I could be educated about government both in school and out of school,” Bertini recalled in an e-mail interview from her office in Rome last winter.

As an undergraduate, she said, “I don’t think studious could be a word that would have described me. I was not an “A” student. The first semester of my freshman year, I did poorly academically, and my parents were not pleased, but after that, my academic performance improved.”

Bertini remembers political science Prof. Joseph F. Zimmerman’s classes in state and local government as “very practical, down-to-earth and extremely useful. He really helped me to understand the workings of government.” She also recalls Prof. Harry Price, “[who] just made New York State history absolutely come alive … and supported my interest in New York government.”

Bertini served as a legislative aide for Tarky Lombardi, her hometown state senator from central New York. She was also active in student government and class and quad events, was a member of Chi Sigma Theta sorority, and played the clarinet in a University wind ensemble.

As a senior, she worked full time in the last gubernatorial campaign of Nelson A. Rockefeller, then went to work in the governor’s office. After less than a year, she was named director of youth activities for the New York Republican State Committee, then worked in the same job for the Republican National Committee in 1975-76.

In 1977, Bertini entered private industry as manager of public policy — supervising government relations, philanthropic activities and public affairs — for the Container Corporation of America in Chicago. “It was a great job, and while I did it, I learned a lot about the private sector and about management,” she said.

After 10 years with Container Corp. and a fellowship at the John F. Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University, Bertini decided to return to government. Her first assignment during the Reagan administration was to run the Aid to Families with Dependent Children program at the U.S. Department of Health and Human Resources. From there she moved to the Department of Agriculture as assistant secretary of agriculture for Food and Consumer Services, with responsibilities for 13 food assistance programs benefiting 25 million children in 90,000 schools.

er current position leading the WFP, Bertini says, is “still as exciting and rewarding as it was the day I arrived.” But she credits her early experience at UAlbany for giving her a strong start.

In Albany, “it was critical for me to be in a place where I could learn about government, both academic and practical experience, and it was also very critical for me, now looking back at my career, to be involved in party politics at a young age, because we learned a lot about how to operate within the system,” said Bertini, who received a distinguished alumnus award from the University in 1987.

“I also learned the benefit of having a lot of close friends and how important it was … to keep up that network because it’s important for your personal well-being … your career aspirations and your day-to-day life. Those friendships are lifelong.”

Free-lance journalist Stephen H. Goldstein, B.A.’73, M.A.’86, works in Washington, D.C. Thomas Haskell is an international photographer who is married to Catherine Bertini. He has donated many of his pictures to the WFP.