Alastair Lawson Tancred is the communications lead for the Food and Agriculture Organization in Somalia. Prior to that he worked for UNICEF as a communications manager in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (mostly working on mass displacements and Gender Based Violence) and in Bangladesh, where he worked on the Rohingya refugee crisis. From 1997 to 2018 he was was a BBC journalist, working for the South Asia Regional Unit of the BBC World Service, before serving as the BBC Correspondent in Dhaka (2001 to 2004) and Colombo (1999-2000). Towards the end of his career at the BBC, Alastair worked as a Senior Broadcast Journalist on the international pages of the BBC News website where he wrote, commissioned and edited news and features in addition to carrying out numerous journalism training classes in different parts of the world.  

Alastair also worked as communications lead for the UK-based British American Security Information Council (BASIC) immediately before joining the FAO.