Assistant Director for Administration and Finance
B. Keith Cole has almost fifteen years experience working in various sectors of the international development arena (education programs, refugee services, and agriculture), both in the US and abroad. Currently he serves as Assistant Director for Administration and Finance at the Norman Borlaug Institute for International Agriculture at Texas A&M, where he provides administrative oversight, financial management, project coordination and compliance, and logistical support for an international contracts, grants, and cooperative agreements portfolio that between 2002 and the present has exceeded $60M. In recent years, this has included projects in Afghanistan, Armenia, Azerbaijan, Ecuador, El Salvador, Ethiopia, Georgia, Guatemala, Indonesia, Iraq, Jordan, Panama, Rwanda, Sri Lanka, Tunisia, and Uzbekistan. He also leads cost proposal development for new initiatives. Principle donors include the U.S. Agency for International Development, U.S. Department of Agriculture, U.S. Department of State, and U.S. Department of Defense as well as occasional foreign governments and the private sector. He also provides project reporting and proposal development support for internationally-related activities of units elsewhere within Texas A&M AgriLife.
Within the refugee field, following field experience working with the American Refugee Committee (ARC) in Bosnia-Herzegovina in 1997, he then served for four years as a board advisor to the finance and fundraising committee of the Rocky Mountain Survivors Center (RMSC) in Denver, CO, an organization that provides mental health services to refugees and asylees who survived torture in their home countries, and frequently spoke to community groups about refugee issues. Currently he serves on the local board of the Brazos Valley Food bank and is an active member of the Houston World Affairs Council.
He completed graduate degrees in international development at the Josef Korbel School for International Studies and international management from the Daniels College of Business, both at the University of Denver. His graduate research focused on the application of continuous process improvement tools to the operations of international nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) in post-conflict countries with a regional focus on Southeastern Europe and the Newly Independent States. Portions of his thesis have been required in graduate classes at the Korbel School. His undergraduate degree in English Literature is from Texas A&M University. He has worked and traveled in 36 countries.
email. bkcole@ag.tamu.edu
phone. +1.979.845.8713