Karol Boudreaux

Ms. Boudreaux is a lawyer and land tenure and resource rights expert with two decades of experience in the field and as a researcher. Throughout her career she has supported improvements to the land tenure and resource rights of people and communities around the world, with a strong focus on sub-Saharan Africa. Her research concentrates on analyses of property and land tenure systems, natural resource management, and varieties of entrepreneurship. She has conducted field research in ten African countries and have published more than 30 articles and a monograph on property rights, in addition to many opinion editorials. Ms. Boudreaux is lead author of USAID’s Operational Guidelines for Responsible Land-Based Investments, a new tool for private sectors investors in the commercial agriculture sector. Ms. Boudreaux served as USAID’s Africa Land Tenure Specialist from 2011-2013 and routinely conducted country-level land tenure assessments, provided specific policy guidance on land and natural resource management programing and supported the US Government’s negotiating efforts in developing the Voluntary Guidelines on the Responsible Governance of Tenure of Land, Fisheries and Forests. Before joining USAID, Karol was an instructor and assistant dean of George Mason University’s School of Law. She serves on the Advisory Council of the ABA’s Business and Human Rights Working Group and as an expert in the Expert Working Group of the Global Land Indicators Initiative of the Global Land Tools Network and UN-Habitat and she served on the Advisory Council of the IFC’s Benchmarking the Business of Agriculture project.