Sweetwater International is pleased to announce that Kathleen Truman is the new Vice President of Government Relations.  Ms. Truman joined Sweetwater International in Fall of 2005 and worked on government relations on a part time basis.  Ms. Truman joins Sweetwater after being employed with the State of Utah where she worked with rural Utah ranchers on strategies to develop heritage tourism and had oversight on a grant from the USDA Value Added Producer Program for a feasibility study on producing natural beef products by central Utah ranchers for the markets on the Wasatch front. 

Ms. Truman has a Ph. D. degree in Social Anthropology from the University of California, Riverside as well as postdoctoral work on Sustainable Agriculture at UCR.  While associated with UCR, Ms. Truman was co-director of a natural resources management and sustainable development project in Yucatan, Mexico supported by the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation. 

This past summer, Ms. Truman was instrumental in securing a USDA federal grant for Sweetwater International, Sweetwater International Development Initiative, Utah State University and Sweetwater Pakistan to create and implement a dairy herdsmen program in Pakistan, one of the first in its country’s history.  Ms. Truman will be working with and consulting with local, national and international governments to help improve their water and soil quality.   Ms. Truman will continue to work with the US government in securing new opportunities for Sweetwater International to aid the developing world.