Lidwien has 30 years of Banking experience and has been working for various commercial and development banks, including ING, Rabobank and FMO and EIB. She held various commercial and management positions and was mostly active in the international environment, including developing countries. Most recently she was CEO of Rabobank Belgium and before that she was heading the European Project Finance team of that same bank, which was on of the frontrunners in this space. Lidwien is very pleased to have taken on the role of Managing Director (and Board) of Rabo Foundation since last year. A Foundation which will be celebrating its 50 years of existence next year. The main objective of the Foundation internationally is on supporting smallholder farmers, mainly through local partners as f.i. co-operatives or MFIs , and so also a.o. contributing to availability of food. And where earlier they were focussing mainly on increasing yields and income of smallholders, they moved to contributing to addressing the broader and serious challenges in the food value chain.