Ambassador Darci Vetter
Senior Advisor
Darci currently consults with organizations to help them navigate an increasingly complex global policy environment, with a focus on aligning incentives throughout the food and agriculture value chain to support the transition to more resilient food systems.
Darci is a member of the Board of Trustees of the National 4H Council and serves on the Mid-Atlantic selection panel for the Truman Scholarship Foundation. She holds a Master of Public Affairs degree from the School of Public and International Affairs at Princeton, and an undergraduate degree from Drake University. She resides in Washington, DC with her spouse and two teenage children.
Ambassador Darci Vetter is global public policy leader working at the intersection of agriculture, sustainability and international trade. Throughout her career, she has been consistently focused on building more resilient food systems, serving in the public, private or non-profit sector.
Darci served as Chief Agricultural Negotiator at the Office of the U.S. Trade Representative (USTR), a Senate-Confirmed Presidential Appointment. In this role, she negotiated the agricultural package of a 12-nation Free Trade Agreement with countries in the Asia-Pacific, and completed agreements with Brazil, China and other trading partners.
As Deputy Undersecretary at the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA), she oversaw the Foreign Agricultural Service, working to expand market access for U.S. agricultural products worldwide, and directing USDA’s capacity building and food assistance programs.
She has served on the professional staff of the U.S. Senate Committee on Finance, working to secure passage of trade agreements with Panama, Colombia and South Korea, and as a director in both the environment and agricultural affairs office at USTR, where she helped craft a variety of international agriculture and environmental agreements.
After leaving federal service, Darci served in executive roles in both the private and non-profit sectors. She helped to establish the Yeutter Institute for International Trade and Finance, as a Diplomat in Residence at the University of Nebraska, and later as Head of Global Public Policy and Government Relations at the Nature Conservancy, expanding the organization’s policy and public funding focus outside of the United States to better prepare the organization to address the dual crises of climate change and biodiversity loss.
She later joined PepsiCo as Senior Vice President for Global Public Policy, developing enterprise-wide policy positions and engagement strategies on critical issues for the agriculture and food sector, including regenerative agriculture, health and nutrition, advancing renewable energy, and reducing plastic packaging and waste.