Cornelia Butler Flora is the Charles F. Curtiss Distinguished Professor of Agriculture and Sociology at Iowa State University and Director of the North Central Regional Center for Rural Development, located at Iowa State University. Previously she was holder of the Endowed Chair in Agricultural Systems at the University of Minnesota, head of the Sociology Department at Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University, a University Distinguished Professor at Kansas State University, and a program officer for the Ford Foundation. A past president of the Rural Sociological Society and the Society for Agriculture, Food and Human Values, she is author and editor of a number of recent books, including Interactions Between Agroecosystems and Rural Communities, Rural Policies for the 1990s, and Sustainable Agriculture in Temperate Zones. Her most recent accomplishment is the publication of her newest book, Rural Communities: Legacy and Change, Second Edition.

Her current research addresses alternative strategies of community development and community-based natural resource management. Her Bachelor of Arts degree is from the University of California at Berkeley in 1965 and her M.S. (1966) and Ph.D. (1970) degrees are from Cornell University, where she received the 1994 Outstanding Alumni Award from the College of Agriculture and Life Science. She was president of the Boards of Directors of the Henry A. Wallace Institute of Alternative Agriculture and is currently serving on the boards of several organizations, CONDESAN (The Consortium for the Sustainable Development of Andean Ecoregion), the Midwest Assistance Program, the Northwest Area Foundation, Winrock International, and the National Community Forestry Center. She is the current president of the Community Development Society. The U.S. Secretary of Agriculture recently appointed her to the National Agricultural Research, Education and Economics Advisory Board.