management team

Tim Hanstad
RDI President and CEO
Management Team

Tim Hanstad, RDI President & CEO, has led RDI’s institutional growth for much of the past two decades. Tim also has more than 20 years of experience in project management, research, consulting, policy advocacy, training and writing on issues of expanding land access, improving land tenure security, and developing land markets for poverty alleviation and economic growth in developing countries.

Tim has worked in 15 countries in Asia, Eastern Europe, Africa, and Latin America, including four years living in India. His project experience includes work with numerous international donor agencies and foundations such as the World Bank, United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization, United Nations Development Programme, United Nations HABITAT, United States Agency for International Development, DFID, Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, Ford Foundation, Rockefeller Brothers Fund, Omidyar Network, and The John T. Templeton Foundation.

Tim also teaches at the University of Washington School of Law, where he co-directs a graduate program in Law of Sustainable International Development. He holds a J.D. and an LL.M. (both with Honors) from the University of Washington School of Law, and B.A. (magna cum laude) from Seattle Pacific University (1985) in Political Science and History.

A sample of his numerous publications includes:

“Improving Land Access for India’s Rural Poor,” Economic & Political Weekly, (March 8, 2008) (with T. Haque and Robin Nielsen); “Compensation and Valuation in Resettlement: Cambodia, People’s Republic of China, and India,” Asian Development Bank Capacity Building for Resettlement Risk Management (November 2007); “Amending the West Bengal Land Reforms Act: Benefiting the Poor and Marginalized,” Economic Development of West Bengal Vol. II (with Jennifer Brown) (2006); “Small Homegarden Plots and Sustainable Livelihoods for the Poor,” FAO, 2004 (with Robert Mitchell); Legal Impediments to Effective Rural Land Relations in Eastern Europe and Central Asia (World Bank, 1999); “Designing Land Registration Systems for Developing Countries,” American University International Law Review (1998); “Land Reform in the People’s Republic of China: Auctioning Rights to Wasteland,” Loyola of Los Angeles International and Comparative Law Journal, Vol. 19 (1997); “Can China Feed Itself?” Scientific American Nov 1996; Agrarian Reform and Grassroots Development: Ten Case Studies (Lynne Reiner Press, 1990); “Philippine Land Reform: the Just Compensation Issue,” Washington Law Review, Vol. 63 (1988).

 

Lincoln Miller
Chief Operating Officer
Management Team

Mr. Miller oversees all of RDI's program, administrative and fundraising operations. RDI’s unique mission lured him to nonprofit international development after 25 years in the business and government sectors.

Lincoln grew up actively involved in numerous family businesses and in state politics. After a time in state government policy positions, Lincoln embarked on a career in public accounting with Moss Adams LLP, the nation's 12th largest public accounting firm. Subsequent to public accounting, Lincoln held a number of positions in the educational travel industry, first as a general manager and CFO in the start up and operations of a domestic, private train company and then as the vice president of an international luxury tour operator. After the sale of both companies, Lincoln was a founding member in the start up of another successful international tour operator.

Lincoln holds an MBA from the Garvin School of International Management – Thunderbird (1986) and a B.A. in Economics/Mathematics from the University of Wisconsin (1982). He is married with three children and resides in Seattle.

 

Robert Mitchell
Senior Attorney and Program Chair
Management Team

Robert Mitchell worked for several years as a litigator in Seattle before leaving to pursue a long-standing interest in the use of law to address poverty and powerlessness in the developing world. He joined RDI in 1994 after earning an LL.M. in the Law of Sustainable International Development at the University of Washington School of Law under a Ford Foundation fellowship.

Robert has 20 years of legal experience and 14 years experience with matters of land tenure reform and related topics. He currently directs RDI's work in Indonesia, which since 2001 has included a program to advise the National Land Agency in Jakarta. Other recent work includes a four-year project residency in Moldova, where Robert headed the legal team on a land privatization and registration project that assisted former collective farm workers gain private ownership of 2.4 million parcels of land.

Robert has also consulted on land reform, farm reorganization, land registration, and land market infrastructure in Ukraine, Russia, the Kyrgyz Republic, and the Republic of Georgia.

Robert holds a J.D. (1987) and an LL.M. (1993) from the University of Washington School of Law, where he was Managing Editor of Washington Law Review, and a B.A. (1983) in Economics from the University of Utah.

key leadership

Roy Prosterman
RDI Founder and Chairman Emeritus

Founder and Chair Emeritus of the Rural Development Institute and Professor Emeritus of Law at the University of Washington, Roy Prosterman is a pioneering world expert on land reform, rural development, and foreign aid. He has provided advice and conducted research in more than 40 countries in Asia, the former Soviet Union, Europe, the Middle East, and Latin America. Prosterman has received many awards and distinctions, the 2003 Gleitsman International Activist Award, a Schwab Foundation Outstanding Global Social Entrepreneur and most recently, the inaugural Henry R. Kravis Prize in Leadership where he was lauded as “Champion for the World’s Poor” as well as nominations for the The World Food Prize, Hilton Humanitarian Award, Alcan Prize and Nobel Prize. Prosterman is a frequent guest speaker and presenter at world forums on poverty alleviation and is a frequent published author in nonfiction and fiction.

How It All Began

Forty years ago, one man with a simple idea helped to change the world. That man was Roy Prosterman.

At the time, Prosterman was working at a prestigious Wall Street law firm, but was troubled by the violence and unrest he saw in the world—particularly the escalating conflict in Vietnam as thousands of impoverished rural farmers desperate to feed their families joined the Viet Cong.

He had an idea. He realized that giving poor farmers land rights to the land they were farming would transform the lives of these families, the country, and ultimately the world. It was just an idea. Before he know it, Prosterman was standing in a rice paddy in the midst of the Vietnam war testing his idea through legislation—the Land to the Tiller program. That legislation gave land rights to one million tenant farmers, allowed them to feed their families, cut Viet Cong recruitment by 80%, and increased rice production in the country by 30%.

It was also the birth of the Rural Development Institute (RDI), an international nonprofit organization working to secure land rights for the world’s poorest.

About RDI

Today, nearly forty years after Prosterman stood in the rice paddies of Vietnam, RDI has worked in 40 countries throughout the world to secure land rights for more than 400,000,000 people.

Prosterman, now Chair Emeritus of RDI, has helped RDI grow into a global organization with field offices in China, India, and Indonesia, as well as legal aid centers throughout the former Soviet Union. RDI is now sought after by foreign governments, foreign aid agencies, and NGOs alike for its insight and expertise on land issues. This year, as RDI marks the 40th anniversary of its work, RDI is again a nominee for the Nobel Prize and the Alcan Prize for Sustainability, a finalist for the Hilton Humanitarian Prize and a personal invitee to the Clinton Global Initiative.