Director, Cocoa Partnerships,, Hershey Company
Tim McCoy is WCF’s vice president for member & external relations, and serves as a member of the organization’s Senior Leadership Team. He is responsible for all public-facing strategic global communications efforts, including vis-à-vis members, media, donors, governments and other key stakeholders, and manages reputational risk engagement on behalf of the chocolate and cocoa industry. Tim also drives WCF’s efforts to recruit new members and retain existing members. He additionally serves as the operational focal point for WCF engagement with other chocolate and cocoa industry associations and organizations in Europe, Japan, North America and Southeast Asia, as well as multilateral organizations and U.S. government agencies. Tim holds primary responsibility for ensuring the success of WCF’s annual Partnership Meeting, the only industry-led global conference on cocoa sustainability. Joining WCF in 2012, Tim served as WCF’s acting president from January – July 2016. He brings more than 25 years’ experience in international affairs and political and economic development programs, primarily in Africa. Tim previously was vice president for business development at the Corporate Council on Africa (CCA), where he organized trade and investment missions to and from Africa, managed USAID-funded projects to build trade capacity of African small businesses and served as principal liaison for CCA to several U.S. government foreign affairs agencies and to various Congressional offices. While at CCA, Tim was seconded to serve as trade advisor to the secretary general of the Common Market for Eastern and Southern Africa, based in Lusaka, Zambia, where he effectively led efforts to address barriers to the export of African farm products to the United States. In the 1990s, he designed and implemented a range of activities at the National Democratic Institute for International Affairs, including election observation missions, in-country technical assistance projects and training of newly-elected officials, to support nascent pro-democracy movements across sub-Saharan Africa, with a focus on francophone Africa. He was an observer of the historic 1994 elections in South Africa. Tim holds a BA in political science and French from the University of Tennessee (USA), and attended Victoria University of Wellington (New Zealand). He has visited nearly 60 countries around the world and is fluent in French.