Executive Director

Cynthia Z.F. Clark

Dr. Clark comes to COPAFS from a distinguished career in official statistics. In her most recent position as Administrator of the National Agricultural Statistics Service (NASS) in the U.S. Department of Agriculture, she led a program that fundamentally transformed how and where the agency does its business. Prior to joining NASS, Dr. Clark served for three years as Executive Director for Methodology and Quality at the U.K. Office for National Statistics, and for eight years as Associate Director for Research, Methodology, and Standards at the U.S. Census Bureau. In both organizations she directed research across the full range of economic and demographic surveys, censuses, and estimating programs, improved program methodology, and instituted standards for quality management for these programs.
 

A longtime leader in the official statistics community, Dr. Clark is an elected fellow of the American Statistical Association, and past chair of its Government Statistics Section and Privacy and Confidentiality Committee. She is a fellow of the Royal Statistical Society, an elected member of the International Statistical Association, and currently serves on the Statistics Canada Methodology Advisory Committee. In 2011, Dr. Clark was a recipient of the Presidential Meritorious Rank Award. At the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine, Dr. Clark served on the Committee on National Statistics (CNSTAT) Panels on Re-engineering Census Bureau Annual Economic Surveys and the Agricultural Resource Management Survey. Dr. Clark holds a bachelor’s degree in mathematics from Mills College, a master’s degree in mathematics from the University of Page 2 Denver, and a master’s and doctoral degree in statistics from Iowa State University, from which she received its Distinguished Alumnae Award in 2014.

Email address: cynthia.clark@copafs.org