Kathleen (Katya) Doherty has more than 20 years of international development experience in agribusiness marketing, agricultural development and food security programming, and is a member of the Horticulture Innovation Lab's International Advisory Board.
Doherty currently serves as Principal, Program Development, for Cultivating New Frontiers in Agriculture (CNFA), a Washington, DC-based international agricultural development organization that specializes in the design and implementation of sustainable, enterprise-based agricultural initiatives. Doherty plays a key role in supporting CNFA’s business development and implementation efforts as well as designing and strengthening CNFA’s agricultural market systems activities.
Doherty has an extensive history with CNFA. From 2005-2015, she led and advised successful business development initiatives for programs funded by USAID, the Millennium Challenge Corporation and other non-U.S. government donors. Her achievements included expanding CNFA’s input supply and agrodealer programs to eight countries across Africa (Tanzania, Mozambique, Zimbabwe, Ghana, Mali, Burkina Faso, Niger and Nigeria) with support from AGRA and USAID, and leading technical design and proposal development efforts that facilitated CNFA’s first projects in Georgia, Pakistan and Haiti.
From 2015 to 2022, Doherty worked for CNFA as a consultant, providing technical support to the $24 million USAID Agriculture Program in Georgia, the $15 million USAID Private Sector Activity in Azerbaijan, the $24 million USAID Resilient Communities Program in Georgia and the $12 million USAID Farmer-to-Farmer Program, specifically in Moldova. During these assignments, Doherty focused on developing high-value agriculture value chain assessments, supporting program development efforts and contributing to work planning and reporting.
Earlier in her career, Doherty worked for the Pragma Corporation, first managing teams of local consultants in Central Asia to provide business advisory services to small and medium enterprises on the USAID Enterprise Development Project, and later working as an agribusiness trade and marketing specialist in Azerbaijan on the USAID Rural Enterprise Competitiveness Program.
Doherty holds a Bachelor of Arts from Colgate University and a Master of Business Administration from Pennsylvania State University. She spent 12 years living and working in Central Asia, the Caucasus and Russia and is proficient in Russian, with a basic knowledge of Portuguese and Spanish.