James A. Greene

Jim Greene died peacefully on November 4, 2020 at the age of 90 after a short battle with Covid-19. A 1951 graduate of Duke University, where he also played Varsity Basketball, he began his career as a journalist with Newhouse Newspapers in New York. He later accepted an appointment to the University of California-Berkeley, where he taught political science while also pursuing a doctorate in Southeast Asian international relations. In 1956 he joined The Asia Foundation in San Francisco and was posted in Sri Lanka through 1960. He subsequently managed the Foundation’s first New Delhi, India office for four years before joining the Foreign Service of the U.S. Agency for International Development. In 1968 he was assigned to the Agency’s first regional mission in East Africa, with responsibility for the programs in Kenya, Tanzania and Uganda. In 1973 he received a sabbatical fellowship to the Center for International Affairs at Harvard University, where he taught a course in development economics. In 1976, the World Bank retained Jim to operationalize its emerging interest in lending for nutrition. Over the next 20 years, he worked in over 15 countries, including Sri Lanka, India, Pakistan, Kenya, Colombia, Brazil and Lesotho, with oversight of a $2 billion lending portfolio.

After retiring from the World Bank, he consulted internationally on nutrition-related issues and founded Mayfly Enterprises, where he manufactured and marketed unique fishing flies under the brand name of Waterwisp. He was also a Director of Trout Unlimited, where for 12 years he coordinated Trout in the Classroom, an environmental program which started in three Montgomery County schools but that has now blossomed to approximately 100 schools. For that work, he received Trout Unlimited national’s highest volunteer award. Moreover, Jim is best known for his great sense of humor, charm, grace, generosity, love of family, and unwavering passion for fly fishing and folk music. Jim is survived by his wife Rosalyn Bass; sons Adam and Josh Greene; daughters-in-law Carolyn Rooney and Heather Robinson, grandchildren Eric, Sylvia, Amanda and Charlotte Greene; and Michael Hayes. Services are scheduled for a later date.

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