John Currelly

John Currelly is a highly accomplished agronomist with over 50 years of professional experience (including 40+ years in Haiti) in agriculture, agribusiness, business consulting, and development project management. He is currently a principal in Papyrus S.A., a successful project management firm working across the Caribbean and Africa.

Currelly's extensive experience includes leadership roles as Executive Director of Haiti’s largest private sector foundation and as Resident Representative of a highly regarded INGO in Haiti. His time as a project manager with USAID and a decade of private consulting have provided him with a deep understanding of the challenges of development in Haiti. He also co-founded Haiti's first fertilizer bulk-blending plant, demonstrating his hard-earned knowledge of the Haitian private sector. Before moving to Haiti, he was an award-winning farmer, specializing in large-scale commercial crops.

John has a remarkable track record of creating innovative and successful projects that merge private sector impetus with social considerations for the poor. One example is his adaptation of a community-driven development program from Brazil, which became a multimillion-dollar, multi-year program of the Government of Haiti (funded by the World Bank) and is now a cornerstone of their decentralization policy.

His expertise extends to project proposal writing, surveys, job creation, and microfinance. He authored a paper and manual on rapid reconnaissance survey techniques and conducted successful surveys throughout Haiti for the World Bank and USAID. Currelly's professional journey also includes managing annual budgets of $15 million and overseeing permanent staff of over 130, with up to 4,000 part-time employees.

John Currelly brings a wealth of accumulated experience to both the business and development sectors, specializing in integrating the two to forge durable solutions for complex development issues. He is fluent in Haitian Creole and very good in French, in addition to being a native English speaker.