Farrah Barrios serves as the Director for Global Food Security and Development Planning for the Development, Global Health, and Humanitarian Response Directorate at the National Security Council (NSC) of The White House. In this role, she directs the interagency on global food security assistance and has helped to steer policy and nearly $6 billion in assistance this year through international fora like G7, United Nations General Assembly, and the G20. Prior to NSC, she served as the Staff Chief focused on all food and nutrition, global food security, international trade, and credit programs totaling over $86 billion in the Office of Budget and Program Analysis at the U.S. Department of Agriculture. She has also served in the Obama Administration for four and half years as a Senior Budget Advisor at the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) in the Office of the Administrator, where she helped fund and create Feed the Future, the U.S. government flagship global food security program. She has also held senior positions an international economist at the Millennium Challenge Corporation (MCC), at the U.S. Treasury Department, the International Monetary Fund (IMF), The Federal Reserve Board of New York, the private sector and led microfinance programs in Cambodia, East Timor-Indonesia, and Laos and has traveled to over 110 countries. Ms. Barrios is a native Spanish speaker, who is also fluent in Japanese, and proficient in Arabic.
She is an economist and an Adjunct Professor at Trinity University, who has taught courses in Management and Leadership, International Trade, Macro-and Microeconomics for over 10 years. She is also a published researcher with the Johns Hopkins Carey Business School. She holds an M.A. in International Relations and Economics from Johns Hopkins University’s School of Advanced International Studies (SAIS), and Wharton Business School at University of Pennsylvania as well as her B.S. in Political Science and Economics from Plattsburgh State University in New York. She lives in Washington, D.C., but grew up in New York City by supportive parents from Dominican Republic and Puerto Rico.
Website: The White House