M. Mercedes Stickler is an Agriculture Economist at the World Bank, where she works to improve the sustainability and profitability of smallholder agriculture and to secure rural land tenure in Africa and South Asia. Ms. Stickler has over ten years of professional experience in project design and management, research and evaluation, and development partner coordination, including at the United States Agency for International Development (USAID), the World Bank, and the World Resources Institute. She has led land tenure research and operations in more than 10 countries in sub-Saharan Africa, as well as in Cambodia and Myanmar, and has authored and presented numerous papers and a World Bank book on topics including land tenure, agricultural development, and natural resource management in sub-Saharan Africa and Southeast Asia. Ms. Stickler earned her master’s degree from Rhodes University in South Africa with support from a U.S. Fulbright Scholarship and her bachelor’s degree from Northwestern University in Evanston, Illinois.