PBEC: Executive Profiles: Ray Cesca

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[ Cesca ] F O O D P R O D U C T S
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C H A I R
Ray Cesca
President
GAEA International

Ray Cesca is President of GAEA International, a new Illinois-based consulting firm.

Most recently, Cesca was Managing Director of World Trade for McDonald's Corporation. As such, he was responsible for reducing or eliminating barriers to trade among the 115 countries in which McDonald's operates, and leveraging the system assets to optimize its global supply resources. He helped craft world trade strategies that are used in emerging world trading blocks and negotiated with governments to make a borderless environment within the McDonald's system. He was also responsible for Purchasing and Quality Assurance for New Country Development. He held the position from 1995 until leaving McDonald's in late 1999.

Cesca serves on the Board of Trustees for the National Policy Association and on its Executive Committee of the Food and Agriculture Committee. He is a charter member of the Trade, Development and Global Issues SubCommittee. He is also active in the new American Realities, a private sector group that promotes a more competitive U.S. economy.

He is also a leader in the U.S. ASEAN Council, an association that promotes improved U.S. business relations within the Association of Southeast Asian Nations. He is chairman of the Food and Agricultural Committee that promotes agricultural efficiencies and trade within the region.

He helped create a high-level agricultural policy-working group in the powerful United States Council for International Business, the sole U.S. representative to the ICC and OECD.

He is also a Board Member of the U.S. India Commercial Alliance, an association created by the U. S. Secretary of Commerce, William Daley to strengthen business ties between the two nations.

Cesca is the recipient of the Corporate Conservation Leadership Award for his ongoing efforts in the Amisconde initiative, a bi-national sustainable economic and social development project in Central America. The initiative created a prototype of how business, NGO's and Academia can work together in support of conservation.

He is also a member of the Board of Advisors of the World Agricultural Forum and Mars Hill College, North Carolina, and a Board Member of Farm Journal International, a new and developing global agricultural magazine.