Chavonda Jacobs-Young is an American government executive who serves as the Administrator of the U.S. Department of Agriculture's Agricultural Research Service. The Agricultural Research Service is the USDA's chief, in-house scientific research agency with 1,800 scientists and 90 laboratories throughout the world. Jacobs-Young has been the administrator since February 2014. In 2001 Jacobs-Young became the first African-American woman to earn a Ph.D in paper science.