Appointed acting administrator on May 15, 2011, Suzanne Heinen has served more than 25 years with the Foreign Agricultural Service (FAS), the lead agency in international activities to develop foreign markets for U.S. agriculture. FAS is primarily responsible for helping American food producers increase their sales in foreign markets by collecting, analyzing and publishing data on world agricultural production, prices, policy, and trade competition and administering USDA’s export credit guarantee and food aid programs, which basically pay other countries to buy U.S. food products.

 

Born in July 1953 in Michigan, Heinen earned a B.S. in Forest Management from the University of Michigan circa 1975 and an M.S. in Resource Development and Economics from Michigan State University.

 

In her quarter-century as a Foreign Service officer, Heinen has served at FAS posts around the world, including Guatemala, Russia, China and Mexico. She served as Minister-Counselor for Agriculture at the U.S. Mission to the United Nations Agencies for Food and Agriculture in Rome, Italy, starting in 2008. The forced resignation of FAS Administrator Michael Michener in December 2009 led to Michener being given Heinen’s job in Rome, while she returned to Washington in January 2010 and was assigned to the Office of Global Food Security until being named FAS general sales manager and associate administrator on February 1, 2011.

 

In Washington, she has also served as FAS Deputy Administrator for International Cooperation and Development, as Assistant Deputy Administrator for Foreign Agricultural Affairs, and in various positions in international trade policy, working on multilateral and bilateral issues, particularly sanitary and phytosanitary agreements.

-Matt Bewig