New head for NAPPO

Dr Stephanie Bloem has been appointed the new executive director of the North American Plant Protection Organization (NAPPO) and will assume her duties on 01 July 2015. She will manage the NAPPO Secretariat s human and financial resources while leading the fulfilment of the NAPPO Executive Committee s strategic plan and priority goals for North America.

The Secretariat of the IPPC congratulates Dr Bloem on her appointment and looks forward to a continued close working relationship.

Dr Bloem has a licentiate degree in biology from Del Valley University in Guatemala City, Guatemala, and a doctorate in entomology from the University of California at Davis. She is bilingual (English and Spanish), and she is a member of the IPPC s Technical Panel for the Glossary of Phytosanitary Terms.

In her current position as a risk analyst at Plant Protection and Quarantine s Plant Epidemiology and Risk Analysis Laboratory (PERAL) in Raleigh, North Carolina, Dr Bloem provides analytical support for the development of pest risk analysis documents for the export and import of agricultural commodities. Before she joined APHIS, Dr Bloem conducted basic and applied research in sterile insect technique, area-wide pest management, and quality control for fruit flies and various moth pests. The results of her work have been published in more than fifty scientific journals, book chapters, and proceedings. As PERAL s training specialist, she has organized and delivered training, capacity-building, and mentoring programs in Africa, Asia, Europe, and North, Central, and South America.