 Hello, my name is Bruce Scott, and I'm the Director of Partnership and Communication at the International Livestock Research Institute based in Nairobi, Kenya. My first visit to Ilri was the official opening of the International Laboratory for Research on Animal Diseases, ILRAD, in March 1978. And I was invited because I represented a donor agency to ILRAD, the International Development Research Center, IDRC. And the opening was presided over by the then Vice President of the Republic of Kenya, who then became President Daniel Arab Moi. And I remember thinking to myself, what a dynamic, creative and innovative leader Kenya was about to assume when he took over as President. I joined Ilri as a staff member in 1999, having come from being Deputy Director General for the International Center for Research in Agroforestry, ICRAF, having spent 12 years there. So I came across town from ICRAF headquarters to Ilri headquarters. And my first position at Ilri was the Director of Corporate Services. And so I was responsible for finance, administration, operations, human resources, Board of Trustees functions, IT, et cetera. Currently I'm Director of Partnership and Communications. When we, in 2002-2003, we developed a new amended strategy for Ilri under the leadership of Carlos Serre. And after the Board had adopted the strategy Pathways out of Poverty, Carlos and his senior team put together a new management structure. And part of that change in the structure was to have a division which was responsible for our external relations, which we called Partnerships and Communications. And I believe for the first time at Ilri we were able to bring together all of the disparate units that were dealing with elements of partnership, resource mobilization, communications, IT, all under one umbrella. And I think since then we've been much more cohesive, much more cohesive in terms of the communications, the messaging, the public awareness activities, our knowledge management activities, having it all under one directorship that we had been in the past. I think some of the main changes that I've observed over the last ten years, and these were, they weren't haphazard, they were quite deliberate. First of all, I guess from an external point of view, Ilri's, the funding of, the structure of funding to Ilri changed, as it did for many centres and for the CGIR as a whole. But we went from an institute which was reliant upon unrestricted funds to one which was dependent upon restricted grants. So we had to change gears over the last ten years quite dramatically in terms of how we went about raising funding, and then how we utilized those funds. And it wasn't just in terms of building our relationships with our principal investors and partner, development partners, but also a dramatic change within the staffing of the institute in terms of the responsibility that all staff had in terms of raising funds to ensure that we could do good, high quality research and science to benefit the poor. The second major shift that I've seen over the last ten years is an institute that has moved from being supply driven, in other words, we were determining what was needed in terms of good science and good research, to one, an institute which is much more responsive to demands to trying to address development problems and looking at how science can in fact contribute to solving those problems. I think in that process we shifted from an institution which was only focused on outputs and most of those were in the form of written publications to an institute which is much more concerned with outcomes of its work, the impact of its work, trying to assess that, to monitor it, to evaluate it, and try to draw lessons from the work that we're doing in terms of how we can improve the evidence based of our work. Now that had also a major shift in terms of how Illry went about doing its work, and whereas when I first joined Illry I would say a large percentage of the activities that Illry was involved with were actually contained within the confines of the institute to one in which today a hundred percent of all of our activities are done in partnership with other institutions, ranging right across the board from community and farmer groups to advanced research institutions. That has also had a major implication in terms of how we go about our work and ranges from all of the needs, it really becomes a shift in the way you manage research, it's not just a question of signing a memorandum of understanding but it's really a psychological shift for individuals as well as for the institution to realize that we are doing things together with others in situations where we're not necessarily in control of what is happening within the confines of our partners etc. So that's been a significant shift in the way we manage research. And we're far from perfect at it. I think we're conscious and aware of the importance of it and I think we need to keep working very hard to improve the efficiency of how we work with our partners to make sure that we're more effective in the work that we're conducting. Another important shift that I've observed and witnessed is I would say that Illry has become much more visible in terms of the work that we do, the impact that we're having. And we've done that in a very conscious and systematic way to improve our external, particularly our external communications, our public awareness, our knowledge management activities. We've really tried to shift the paradigm whereby we're making our information, our knowledge travel and travel in areas and in speeds that we could never have dreamt would happen ten years ago. Of course a lot of this is the result of our connectivity and also all sorts of new social media tools that are available to everyone but which Illry has been able to utilize and capitalize in terms of ensuring that we're much more accessible, much more visible to literally hundreds of thousands of people whereas in the past when we relied upon the print form of communication we were really limiting ourselves to thousands of people as opposed to hundreds of thousands of people. That's been a major change and shift in terms of ensuring that the work that Illry is doing is better understood and made available on a much wider basis throughout the world. I just wanted to mention one other issue in terms of the how we work which I think is also very important. Over the last ten years under Carlos's leadership we've really shifted our paradigm from doing the work to making sure the work gets done. And part of that shift was by establishing a number of platforms where we're able to invite in a range of different partners to use our facilities for their own purposes and not necessarily for furthering the objectives and mission of Illry. The best known platform that we're we have underway right now is the Biosciences for Eastern and Central Africa which really is an opportunity to provide the best scientific biosciences facilities certainly in this region to a large range of different partners. But we have other platforms that we're involved with in terms of managing. We have a regional program that looks at a whole range of food security issues which is referred to as resax well beyond the livestock issues but including livestock issues. We've actually transformed our campus in Ethiopia which is a principal site for Illry from one campus which was really just self-contained Illry activities to a multi-user campus and so we now have eight or nine other organizations which are sharing our facilities. Many of them other CGIR centers. It's that platform has enabled scientists from a community of scientists really to work much more closely together from a whole range of different disciplines. I don't think Illry would have made as many advances on the issues of livestock and water if we had not been cohabiting on the Addis Ababa campus with the International Water Management Institute in me as an example. We've also transformed the headquarters campus here in Nairobi to really a hub for excellence in biosciences as it applies to agriculture. And so we have a number of other institutions on this campus that we're hosting such as the African Agriculture Technology Foundation, AATF, the International Institution for the Acquisition of Agricultural Biotechnology, ESA. We have the International Potato Centers biotechnology program based here and then a whole range of users who are using the back of facilities both CGIR centers as well as others. So the nature of both campuses over the last ten years has changed from one which was really a, if you wish, an Illry tower, not necessarily Ivory Tower, but an Illry tower to one which there's a whole range of different partners, institutions, and as a result of that tremendous more vibrancy in terms of the scientific enterprise which is taking place here. And I think as a result of all of these different factors I think Illry's international reputation has moved from one which was doing interesting and good science to an institution which is relevant and really a hub for attracting a range, advancing the whole, all of the issues related to agriculture sciences to solve development problems. In five years from now I think Illry has an important role and contribution to make in continuing to advance the issues of livestock as it relates to agriculture. It relates to development and be seen as the go-to place to get a better understanding of what the issues are, how one can solve certain problems as from a livestock perspective. So I would like to see Illry being recognized and known as the premier livestock institute in the world which has information and knowledge based on strong scientific evidence that can lead to strong development solutions to these problems. I personally believe that Illry should be playing a much stronger advocacy role on the debates of the industry. It relates related to development, to sustainable development on environmental issues, on climate change issues, etc. Because I think we do have a significant amount of information, knowledge that people are in fact interested in and increasingly looking to us to provide that information, those solutions, etc. And thirdly, I think I would like to see Illry be much more prominent on some of the international global debates related to whether it's environment development or what have you and be much more aggressive and as I said visible. And finally, I think it's important that Illry continue to develop and be known to have the experts in a number of specialized fields. And it would be nice if we did have in fact some very significant scientific breakthroughs that not only affect agriculture but affect the development process as a whole. So I think those are a number of the things that I would feel extremely proud of in five years if we would be able to achieve and be recognized for some of these.