Featured Panelists
Dozens of public figures are scheduled to appear at the 2008 International Leaders Forum, and to share their expertise on American domestic politics and world affairs. For information on each of our panelists, follow the links below.
Ben Affleck (Actor/Writer/Director) recently received the 2007 Best Directorial Debut award from the National Board of Review for his directorial debut with GONE BABY GONE.
He first came to prominence in 1997 with the acclaimed “Good Will Hunting,” which he starred in and co-wrote with Matt Damon. For their work, they won an Academy Award® for Best Original Screenplay, as well as the Golden Globe Award and Humanitas Prize.
He has since starred in films including John Madden’s Academy Award® winning “Shakespeare In Love,” Michael Bay’s “Pearl Harbor,” Roger Michell’s “Changing Lanes” and Kevin Smith’s “Jersey Girl.” Affleck was most recently seen in Joe Carnahan’s stylish thriller “Smokin Aces” and in the critically acclaimed “Hollywoodland,” in the role of George Reeves, for which he garnered numerous accolades including the Venice Film Festival’s coveted Golden Lion Award for Best Actor in 2006 and a 2007 Golden Globe nomination. He next stars in the upcoming Universal Studios motion picture, “State of Play” with Russell Crowe, Helen Mirren and Rachel McAdams, scheduled to be released in 2009.
Some of his additional film credits include Ben Younger’s “Boiler Room,” Richard Linklater’s “Dazed and Confused,” the screen adaptation of Marvel Comics’ “Daredevil,” “The Sum of All Fears,” “Armageddon” and “Forces of Nature.”
In addition to being a successful actor, writer and director, Ben is a longtime political activist and strong supporter of many charitable organizations. Ben is a passionate advocate who travels around the world independently to gain a deeper understanding of the complexity of issues facing Africa today. In the last year alone he has made three separate trips to numerous countries on the African continent with a focus on the Great Lakes region.
Abdulkarim Al Eriyani is the former Prime Minister of Yemen (1980-1983, 1998–2001) and current member of the Club de Madrid. Prime Minister Al-Eriany is a political advisor to the President of Yemen. He also presently serves as Secretary General to the General People’s Congress Party (GPC). A distinguished career in government has seen him appointed Vice Prime Minister and Minister of Foreign Affairs (1997-1998, 1984-1993), as well as Minister of Development Planning (1993-1994). He has held positions in many Yemeni organisations dedicated to promoting development and solidarity in Yemen since the late 1960’s. He is also co-chair of the Club of Madrid’s Freedom of Association in the Middle East project.
Madeleine K. Albright is a Principal of The Albright Group LLC and Chair and Principal of Albright Capital Management LLC, an investment advisory firm focused on emerging markets.
Dr. Albright was the 64th Secretary of State of the United States. In 1997, she was named the first female Secretary of State and became, at that time, the highest ranking woman in the history of the U.S. government. As Secretary of State, Dr. Albright reinforced America’s alliances, advocated democracy and human rights, and promoted American trade and business, labor, and environmental standards abroad. From 1993 to 1997, Dr. Albright served as the U.S. Permanent Representative to the United Nations and as a member of the President’s Cabinet.
Dr. Albright is the first Michael and Virginia Mortara Endowed Distinguished Professor in the Practice of Diplomacy at the Georgetown University School of Foreign Service. She chairs both the National Democratic Institute for International Affairs and the Pew Global Attitudes Project, and serves as president of the Truman Scholarship Foundation. She also co-chairs the United Nations Development Programme’s Commission on Legal Empowerment of the Poor, serves on the Board of Directors of the Council on Foreign Relations, the Board of Trustees for the Aspen Institute and the Board of Directors of the Center for a New American Security. Dr. Albright earned a B.A. with honors from Wellesley College, and Master’s and Doctorate degrees from Columbia University’s Department of Public Law and Government, as well as a certificate from its Russian Institute.
Nancy Birdsall is the founding president of the Center for Global Development. Prior to launching the center, Birdsall served for three years as Senior Associate and Director of the Economic Reform Project at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. Her work at Carnegie focused on issues of globalization and inequality, as well as on the reform of the international financial institutions. From 1993 to 1998, Birdsall was Executive Vice-President of the Inter-American Development Bank, the largest of the regional development banks, where she oversaw a $30 billion public and private loan portfolio. Before joining the Inter-American Development Bank, Birdsall spent 14 years in research, policy, and management positions at the World Bank, most recently as Director of the Policy Research Department.
Ms. Birdsall is the author, co-author, or editor of more than a dozen books and monographs. She has also written more than 75 articles for books and scholarly journals published in English and Spanish. Shorter pieces of her writing have appeared in dozens of U.S. and Latin American newspapers and periodicals. She holds a Ph.D. in Economics from Yale University.
Kjell Magne Bondevik is the former Prime Minister of Norway (1997-2000, 2001-2005), current member of the Club de Madrid and President of the Oslo Center for Peace and Human Rights. Prime Miniser Bondevik was a Member of the Storting (Norwegian national assembly) from 1973 - and currently is a Member of its standing committee on Foreign and Defence Affairs. Minister for Foreign Affairs (1989-1990), Minister for Church and Education (1983-1986), Deputy Prime Minister (1985-1986), and State Secretary at the Office of the Prime Minister (1972-1973). He was Parliamentary Leader for the Christian Democratic Party (1981-1983, 1986-1989, 1993-1997, 2000-2001) and former UN Special Humanitarian Envoy to the Horn of Africa. Currently he is President of the Oslo Center for Peace and Human Rights and he leads a project jointly with the Club of Madrid on Leadership for interreligious Dialogue.
Tom Brokaw, one of the most trusted and respected figures in broadcast journalism, became the moderator on “Meet the Press” in June 2008. He will hold this position through the 2008 presidential election. Brokaw will continue to report and produce long-form documentaries and provide expertise during election coverage and breaking news events for NBC News as a special correspondent.
On December 1, 2004, Brokaw stepped down after 21 years as the anchor and managing editor of "NBC Nightly News." He has received numerous honors, including the Edward R. Murrow Lifetime Achievement Award, the Emmy Award for Lifetime Achievement, and he was inducted as a fellow into the prestigious American Academy of Arts and Sciences. In addition, Brokaw has received the Records of Achievement Award from The Foundation for the National Archives; the Association of the U.S. Army honored him with their highest award, the George Catlett Marshall Medal, first ever to a journalist; and he was the recipient of the West Point Sylvanus Thayer Award, in recognition of devoted service to bringing exclusive interviews and stories to public attention. His insight, ability and integrity have earned him a dozen Emmys and two Peabody and duPont awards for his journalistic achievements. In 2003, "NBC Nightly News" was honored with the prestigious Edward R. Murrow Award for Best Newscast, representing the program's fourth consecutive win in this category.
Over the years at NBC while anchoring "NBC Nightly News" and "Today," Brokaw also reported on 25 documentaries on subjects ranging from race, AIDS, the war on terror, Los Angeles gangs, Bill Gates, literacy, immigration and the evangelical movement.
The NBC News anchor also has a distinguished record as a political reporter. He has interviewed every president since Lyndon Baines Johnson and has covered every presidential election since 1968. Brokaw was NBC's White House correspondent during the national trauma of Watergate (1973-1976). From 1984 to 2004, he anchored all of NBC's political coverage, including primaries, national conventions and election nights, and moderated nine primary and/or general election debates.
Complementing his distinguished broadcast journalism career, Brokaw has written articles, essays and commentary for several publications including The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Los Angeles Times, Newsweek, Time, The New Yorker, Men's Journal, Sports Illustrated, Life, National Geographic, Outside and Interview. Since 1998, Brokaw has written five best-selling books, on a variety of topics in American history and politics. His most recent book is titled, BOOM! Voices from the Sixties.
Brokaw began his journalism career in 1962 at KMTV in Omaha, Nebraska. He anchored the late evening news on Atlanta's WSB-TV in 1965 before joining KNBC-TV in Los Angeles. Brokaw was hired by NBC News in 1966 and from 1976-1981 he anchored NBC News' "Today" program.
Kim Campbell is the former Prime Minister of Canada (1993) and current member of the Club de Madrid. In January of 1989 Campbell was appointed Minister of State for Indian Affairs and Northern Development. In February of 1990 she was appointed Minister of Justice and Attorney General of Canada. Then in January of 1993, she was appointed Minister of National Defense and Minister of Veterans´ Affairs. She was the first woman to hold the Justice and Defense portfolios and the first woman to be Defense Minister of a NATO country. On June 13th, 1993 she was elected Leader of the Progressive Conservative Party of Canada and sworn in as Canada’s first female Prime Minister on June 25th, 1993. With the defeat of her government she resigned as Prime Minister on November 4th 1993. During her government Campbell participated in major international meetings including the Commonwealth, NATO, the G-7 Summit and the United Nations General Assembly. Ms Campbell served as Chair of the Council of Women World Leaders from 1999-2003 and as Secretary General of the Club of Madrid from 2004-2006. Ms. Campbell is a Member of the Club of Madrid-UNF ‘Global Leadership for Climate Action’ (GLCA) Initiative.
Eleanor Clift became a Newsweek contributing editor in September 1994. She writes on the Washington power structure, the influence of women in politics and other issues. She is currently assigned to follow the jockeying over policy and politics in the Democratic-controlled Congress, and the emerging contenders for the 2008 presidential nomination in both the Republican and Democratic parties. Clift also writes a weekly column on Newsweek.com entitled "Capitol Letter" where she analyzes the political news of the week.
Formerly Newsweek's White House correspondent, Clift also served as congressional and political correspondent for six years. She was a key member of the magazine's 1992 election team, following the campaign of Bill Clinton from its start to inauguration day. In June 1992 she was named deputy Washington bureau chief.
As a reporter in Newsweek's Atlanta bureau, Clift covered Jimmy Carter's bid for the presidency. She followed Carter to Washington to become Newsweek's White House correspondent, a position she held until 1985. Clift began her career as a secretary to Newsweek's National Affairs editor in New York. She was one of the first women at the magazine to move from secretary to reporter. Clift left Newsweek briefly in 1985 to serve as White House correspondent for The Los Angeles Times. She returned to Newsweek the following year to cover the Iran-Contra scandal, which tarnished the Ronald Reagan White House.
Clift is a regular panelist on the syndicated talk show, "The McLaughlin Group," and a political analyst for the Fox News Network. She is also co-chair of the board of the International Women's Media Foundation.
Clift and her late husband, Tom Brazaitis, who was a columnist for the Cleveland Plain Dealer, wrote two books together, "War Without Bloodshed: The Art of Politics" (Scribner, 1996), and "Madam President: Shattering the Last Glass Ceiling" (Scribner, 2000). "Madam President" is available in paperback (Routledge Press). Clift's most recent book, "Founding Sisters" is about the passage of the 19th amendment giving women the vote (John Wiley & Sons, 2003).
Bill Clinton was born on August 19, 1946, in Hope, Arkansas. As a delegate to Boys Nation while in high school, he met President John Kennedy in the White House Rose Garden. The encounter led him to enter a life of public service. Clinton graduated from Georgetown University and in 1968 won a Rhodes Scholarship to Oxford University. He received a law degree from Yale University in 1973, and shortly thereafter entered politics in Arkansas.
He was defeated in his campaign for Congress in Arkansas's Third District in 1974. The next year he married Hillary Rodham, a graduate of Wellesley College and Yale Law School. In 1980, Chelsea, their only child, was born. Clinton was elected Arkansas Attorney General in 1976, and won the governorship in 1978. After losing a bid for a second term, he regained the office four years later, and served until his 1992 bid for the Presidency of the United States.
Elected President of the United States in 1992, and again in 1996, President Clinton was the first Democratic president to be awarded a second term in six decades. Under his leadership, the United States enjoyed the strongest economy in a generation and the longest economic expansion in U.S. history. President Clinton’s core values of building community, creating opportunity, and demanding responsibility resulted in unprecedented progress for America, including moving the nation from record deficits to record surpluses; the creation of over 22 million jobs—more than any other administration; low levels of unemployment, poverty and crime; and the highest homeownership and college enrollment rates in history.
President Clinton’s accomplishments in the White House include increasing investment in education, providing tax relief for working families, helping millions of Americans move from welfare to work, expanding access to technology, encouraging investment in underserved communities, protecting the environment, countering the threat of terrorism and promoting peace and strengthening democracy around the world. His Administration’s economic policies fostered the largest peacetime economic expansion in history. President Clinton previously served as the Governor of Arkansas, chairman of the National Governors’ Association and Attorney General of Arkansas. As former chairman of the Democratic Leadership Council, he is one of the original architects and leading advocates of the Third Way movement.
Since 2001, President Clinton has dedicated himself to philanthropy and continued public service through the William J. Clinton Foundation, which is focused on finding practical and measurable solutions to address pressing challenges at home and abroad. In addition to his Foundation work, President Clinton joined with former President Bush to help with relief and recovery following the tsunami in the Indian Ocean, and to lead a nationwide fundraising effort in the wake of Hurricane Katrina. He also served as U.N. Special Envoy for Tsunami Recovery from 2005 to 2007.
Antonia Cortese is the newly elected AFT secretary-treasurer. From 2004 until her election as secretary-treasurer, she served as AFT executive vice president. From 1974 to 2004, Cortese served as a vice president of the American Federation of Teachers. For more than three decades (1973 - 2004), she was a leader of the New York State United Teachers (NYSUT), which now represents more than 600,000 people in New York's public schools, colleges, universities and health facilities. She previously was vice president of the New York State AFL-CIO and a vice president of NYSUT's predecessor, the New York State Teachers Association.
As AFT executive vice president, Cortese oversaw the union's education policy, which included chairing the AFT task force on the No Child Left Behind Act. She also co-chaired the task force that produced "Building a Profession: Strengthening Teacher Preparation and Induction," a report of the K-16 Teacher Education Task Force.
At NYSUT, Cortese was responsible for the union's nationally respected Division of Research and Educational Services and supervised the union's award-winning newspaper.
Among her many professional activities, Cortese-with New York University professor Diane Ravitch-co-chairs Common Core, a group promoting a rich liberal arts education for all students. She serves on the board of the Learning First Alliance, a national coalition of major education organizations; co-chairs the Child Labor Coalition; serves on the Freedom House board of trustees; and was recently elected to the United Way of America board of trustees.
Cortese has been appointed to the American Bar Association's Commission on Civic Education and Separation of Powers. She is a member of Strategic Management of Human Capital, an organization that seeks to advance best practices in human resources to bolster teacher effectiveness and improve student achievement. And she is a liaison to Special Olympics, the AFT's designated charitable foundation.
Previously, Cortese served on the executive committee of the National Board for Professional Teaching Standards, which develops and administers assessments leading to the certification of accomplished teachers. She also was an appointee of the U.S. Department of Education to the National Assessment Governing Board, which oversees the National Assessment of Educational Progress.
Cortese, a graduate of Syracuse University, began her education career in her native Rome, N.Y., as a fourth-grade teacher and school social worker. Her union involvement originated as a building representative for the Rome Teachers Association, and she later served as secretary, vice president, and two terms as president.
Gregory B. Craig received a J.D. from Yale Law School in 1972, a Diploma in Historical Studies from Cambridge University in 1968 and an AB, magna cum laude, from Harvard College in 1967, Phi Beta Kappa. He also received “The John Harvard Fellow” Lionel DeJersey Harvard Fellowship in 1968.
A trial lawyer with extensive experience in a wide variety of cases, Greg Craig has successfully defended individuals and entities in a number of high-profile criminal and civil proceedings.
In 2000, Mr. Craig successfully represented Elian Gonzalez’s father, Mr. Juan Miguel Gonzalez, in administrative and court proceedings involving Mr. Gonzalez’s effort to regain custody of his son, Elian. Mr. Craig also represented the UN Secretary General Kofi Annan in connection with the Volcker Commission's investigation of the Oil-for-Food Programme at the U.N.
During the last fifteen years, Mr. Craig has represented a variety of foreign individuals and entities who have required advice and assistance with various U.S. government agencies, to list just a few: the Consular Bureau in the State Department, the Immigration and Naturalization Service, the Office of Foreign Asset Control in the Treasury Department, and the Securities and Exchange Commission. Mr. Craig has represented numerous American corporations and corporate executives who have been the subjects of grand jury investigations and/or who have also been charged with criminal offenses.
In 1990, Mr. Craig represented Senator Edward M. Kennedy as a witness in the trial of his nephew, William Kennedy Smith, in Palm Beach, Florida. In 1977, he represented the first FBI agent ever to be indicted, who was accused of illegal wiretapping, breaking and entering, and mail opening in connection with the FBI investigation of the Weather Underground. That same year, working with Edward Bennett Williams, Mr. Craig represented a former Director of Central Intelligence, who was under grand jury investigation for perjury in his 1973 testimony before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. In 1975, he represented an individual charged with arson in a six week trial in federal court in Connecticut.
In September 1998, President Clinton appointed Mr. Craig to be Assistant to the President and Special Counsel in the White House where Mr. Craig served as quarterback of the President’s team that was assembled to defend against impeachment. Mr. Craig was also a member of the President’s trial team in the United States Senate and presented the President’s defense with respect to Count One during that trial.
In 1997, Secretary of State Madeleine Albright appointed Mr. Craig to be one of her senior advisors, and he served the Secretary as her Director of Policy Planning during the years 1997 to 1998. For five years (1984-88), he served as Senator Edward Kennedy’s Senior Advisor on Defense, Foreign Policy and National Security issues. More recently Mr. Craig serves as foreign policy adviser to presidential candidate Barack Obama.
Mr. Craig also has taught trial practice at both Yale Law School (1975-76) and Harvard Law School (1981-84).
John J. Danilovich began his duties as Chief Executive Officer for the Millennium Challenge Corporation on November 7, 2005, continuing a distinguished career of more than thirty years in both the public and private sectors.
Prior to his appointment by President Bush as CEO, Ambassador Danilovich served as the American Ambassador to the Republic of Costa Rica and to the Federative Republic of Brazil.
Ambassador Danilovich has been a businessman and private investor with a strong background in foreign affairs. A native Californian and resident of London for many years, he was active in the international shipping business for over two decades and served as director of companies in the shipping, property, publishing and investment fields.
Ambassador Danilovich served on the Board of Directors of the Panama Canal Commission from 1991 though 1996 and chaired the Commission’s Transition Committee prior to the transfer of the Canal to the Panamanians. Ambassador Danilovich has been a Director of the Stanford University Trust, a Trustee of the American Museum in Britain, a Director of the U.S.-U.K. Fulbright Commission, and has served in leadership positions for several charitable organizations.
The Ambassador graduated from Stanford University with a bachelor’s degree in Political Science, and received a master’s degree in International Relations from the University of Southern California (London). Ambassador Danilovich is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations, an Associate Fellow of Pierson College (Yale University), a Knight of Malta and the recipient of several national and international awards including the Choate Alumni Seal Prize.
Richard J. Danzig served as Secretary of the Navy in the Clinton administration from November 1998 to January 2001 and was Undersecretary of the Navy from November 1993 to May 1997. He is currently an advisor to Senator Barack Obama's 2008 presidential campaign. Danzig was born in New York City, attended the Bronx High School of Science, and received a B.A. degree from Reed College, a J.D. degree from Yale Law School, and Bachelor of Philosophy and Doctor of Philosophy degrees from Oxford University, where he was a Rhodes Scholar. Upon his graduation from law school, Danzig served as a law clerk to United States Supreme Court Justice Byron White.
Between 1972 and 1977, Danzig taught contract law at Stanford and Harvard universities. He also was awarded a Prize Fellowship of the Harvard Society of Fellows, and a Rockefeller Foundation Fellowship. From 1977 to 1981, he served in the Office of the Secretary of Defense, first as a Deputy Assistant Secretary and then as the Principal Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for Manpower, Reserve Affairs and Logistics. In 1981, he was awarded the Defense Distinguished Public Service Award.
From 1981 to 1993, Danzig was a Washington, D.C. partner of the national law firm of Latham & Watkins. He was also a Director of the National Semiconductor Corporation, a Trustee of Reed College, and interim Director of Litigation and then Vice Chairman of the International Human Rights Law Group. During this time, Mr. Danzig was the co-author of the book, National Service: What Would It Mean? The book is credited with contributing to the development of America's present civilian National Service system.
Danzig was sworn in as the 71st Secretary of the Navy on November 16, 1998. He served as Under Secretary of the Navy between November 1993 and May 1997. In the period between these two jobs, he and his wife, Andrea, lived in Asia and Europe while Danzig served as a Traveling Fellow of the Center for International Political Economy and as an Adjunct Professor at Syracuse University's Maxwell School of Citizenship and Public Affairs. Danzig has two adult children, David and Lisa. He is currently a defense policy advisor to Barack Obama.
Tom Daschle is a Distinguished Fellow at the Center for American Progress, Co-Chair of the ONE Vote ’08 Campaign and member of the National Democratic Institute Board of Directors.
Born in Aberdeen, South Dakota, Tom Daschle graduated from South Dakota State University in 1969. Upon graduation, he entered the United States Air Force where he served as an intelligence officer in the Strategic Air Command until mid-1972.
After serving on the staff of Senator James Abourezk, Daschle was elected to the U.S. House of Representatives in 1978, serving eight years. In 1986, he was elected to the U.S. Senate. In 1994, Senator Daschle was elected by his colleagues as their Democratic Leader. Senator Daschle is one of the longest serving Senate Democratic Leaders in history and the only one to serve twice as both Majority and Minority Leader.
Today, Senator Daschle is a Special Policy advisor to the law firm of Alston & Bird where he provides strategic advice on public policy issues such as climate change, energy, health care, trade, financial services and telecommunications. He is also a Visiting Professor at Georgetown University and a public speaker.
In 2007, he joined with former Majority Leaders George Mitchell, Bob Dole and Howard Baker to create the Bipartisan Policy Center. He is also Co-Chair of the ONE Vote ’08 Campaign, along with former Senate Majority Leader, Bill Frist.
Senator Daschle has published articles in numerous newspapers and periodicals and is the author of two books, Critical: What We Can Do About the Health-Care Crisis, and Like No Other Time. He also serves on the boards of multiple foundations and businesses. He is married to Linda Hall Daschle and has three children and four grandchildren.
E. J. Dionne began his twice-weekly op-ed column for The Washington Post in 1993. In 1996, it was syndicated by The Washington Post Writers Group, and he now appears in more than 100 newspapers in the United States and abroad.
Dionne joined The Post in 1990 as a reporter covering national politics. His best-selling book, “Why Americans Hate Politics” (Simon & Schuster), was published in 1991. The book, which Newsday called “a classic in American political history,” anticipated all the major themes of the 1992 campaign. It won the Los Angeles Times Book Prize and was a National Book Award nominee.
Dionne also spent 14 years with The New York Times, reporting on state and local government, national politics, and from around the world, including stints in Paris, Rome and Beirut. The Los Angeles Times praised his coverage of the Vatican as the best in two decades.
Dionne has been a frequent commentator on politics for National Public Radio, CNN and NBC’s “Meet the Press.” His second book, “They Only Look Dead: Why Progressives Will Dominate The Next Political Era” (Simon & Schuster), was published in February 1996. The New York Times Book Review called it “a luminously intelligent and quietly passionate polemic that deserves to alter the terms of American political debate.”
In 1998, Dionne edited “Community Works: The Revival of Civil Society in America” (Brookings Institution Press) and has co-edited “What’s God Got To Do With the American Experiment?” (Brookings Institution Press, 2000) with John J. DiIulio Jr. His third book, “Stand Up Fight Back: Republican Toughs, Democratic Wimps, and the Politics of Revenge” (Simon & Schuster) was published May 2004.
His most recent book is "Souled Out: Reclaiming Faith and Politics After the Religious Right" (Princeton University Press, January, 2008). The New York Times Book Review described it as "a deeply personal and searchingly intelligent reflection on the noble history, recent travails and likely prospects of American liberalism."
In 1996, in selecting Dionne as recipient of its annual Carey McWilliams Award to honor a major journalistic contribution to the understanding of politics, the American Political Science Association said: “We honor Mr. Dionne as one of Washington’s finest journalistic thinkers and for his insightful daily contributions to the political discourse of our nation. ... His tireless efforts uplift the public ... in a time that cries for reasoned debate, not more negative ads, rumor or simplistic sound bites.” In 1997, he was named among the 25 most influential Washington journalists by the National Journal and among the capital city’s top 50 journalists by the Washingtonian magazine.
Dionne grew up in Fall River, Mass. He graduated summa cum laude with a B.A. from Harvard University in 1973 and received his doctorate from Oxford, where he was a Rhodes Scholar. In 1994-95, he was a guest scholar at the Woodrow Wilson International Center. In May 1996, Dionne joined The Brookings Institution as a senior fellow in the Governance Studies Program, then known as Governmental Studies. He began teaching at the Georgetown Public Policy Institute as University Professor in the Foundations of Democracy and Culture in the fall of 2003.
He lives in Washington, D.C., with his wife Mary Boyle, and their three children.
Richard Durbin (US Senator, D-Illinois) was elected by his fellow Democratic senators in December 2006 to the post of Assistant Majority Leader, also known as Majority Whip. It is the Senate’s second highest ranking position. In 2004, Durbin was elected as Minority Whip. Durbin's election to leadership marked only the fifth time in history that an Illinois senator has served as a Senate leader.
Durbin, a Democrat from Springfield, is the 47th U.S. Senator from the State of Illinois and the first Illinois senator to serve on the U.S. Senate Appropriations Committee in more than a quarter of a century. He is the state’s senior senator and convenor of the bipartisan Illinois delegation.
Elected to the U.S. Senate on November 5, 1996 and re-elected in 2002, Durbin fills the seat left vacant by the retirement of his long-time friend and mentor, U.S. Senator Paul Simon.
In 1999, Senate Democratic Leader Tom Daschle (D-SD) appointed Durbin to the Senate’s leadership team, Assistant Democratic Floor Leader. In 2000, Durbin served as Co-Chairman of the Democratic Platform Committee and also was Co-Chairman of the Atlantic Conference sponsored by the Chicago Council on Foreign Relations. He is a founding member of the Senate Global AIDS Caucus.
Improving Health Care: The House author of landmark legislation to ban smoking on commercial airline flights, Durbin has worked in the Senate to protect children from the harm caused by tobacco. For his work, he was awarded the Lifetime Achievement Award by the American Lung Association.
Protecting Consumers: Consumer protection is high on Durbin’s list of priorities. Continuing an effort spurred by a meeting with the mother of a Chicago six-year-old who died after eating contaminated hamburger, Durbin led the effort to modernize the fragmented federal food safety system under a single food-safety agency.
Leading Gun Safety Efforts: Durbin has worked for gun safety legislation to keep guns out of the hands of children. He introduced bipartisan legislation to hold adults responsible if they fail to lock up their firearms and the weapons are subsequently taken by a child and used to kill or injure another person.
Fighting for Farmers: Durbin has been a champion of Illinois farmers and has worked to promote ethanol use. In 1998, he secured passage of a provision extending the ethanol tax incentive to 2007. In 2000, he worked with other members of the Illinois delegation for funding for the construction of an ethanol research pilot plant near the Southern Illinois University-Edwardsville campus, a project he has promoted since the early 1990s. The full deductibility of health insurance costs for the self-employed – including farmers – has been a career-long battle for Durbin, ending in a victory in 2003.
Working for a Fair Tax Code: Durbin’s tax cut agenda includes tax credits for small businesses buying health insurance for their low-income workers, estate tax relief for family-owned small businesses and farms, tax incentives to promote charitable giving, and tax credits for long-term care insurance, child care and college tuition.
Obiageli “Oby” Ezekwesili has been the World Bank Vice President for the Africa Region since May 01, 2007. Oby joined the Bank from her most recent position as Minister of Education in the Government of Nigeria and with a rich mix of experiences in the private sector and civil society. Ms. Ezekwesili began her career as an auditor and management consultant with focus on financial planning, SME financing, audit and regulatory compliance in Delloitte & Touche.
She served as one of the founding Directors of Transparency International as Director for Africa from 1994-1999. She worked with Professor Jeffery Sachs as the Director of the Harvard - Nigeria Economic Strategy program between 2000 and 2002 during which time she was also appointed as an aide to President Obasanjo. In 2003, she went on to serve as Senior Special Assistant to the President of Nigeria on Budget Monitoring and Price Intelligence. In this capacity, Ms. Ezekwesili spear-headed institutional reforms through the establishment of “Due Process” mechanisms and strategies resulting in markedly reduced procurement costs to Government projects and turnaround time for completion of Government projects while improving transparency.
As Minister of Solid Minerals, Ms. Ezekwesili provided leadership in the drafting and subsequent passage of the Minerals and Mining Act, the establishment of the Nigerian Mining Cadastre Office and the opening of the mining sector to private participation. Ms. Ezekwesili also served as the Chairperson of the Nigerian Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative from 2004 and pioneered the voluntary sign-on of Nigeria to the EITI ++ Principles as well as the first ever process, financial and physical audit of Nigeria’s oil and gas sector.
As a member of President Obasanjo’s Economic Team, Ms. Ezekwesili was responsible for developing the government’s overall comprehensive anti-corruption, transparency and good governance strategy and it was in this capacity that she negotiated the partnership between Nigeria and the G8 known as the “Compact to Promote Transparency and Combat Corruption: A New Partnership between the G8 and Nigeria” signed by Presidents Bush and Obasanjo during the Sea Island meeting of the G8 in June 2004.Ms. Ezekwesili served as Nigeria’s Minister of Education from June 2006 to April 2007 with the task of leading a comprehensive reform program within the education sector. During this period, she restructured and refocused he ministry for the attainment of EfA targets and MDGs. She also introduced the Public Private Partnership models for education service delivery; revamped the Federal Inspectorate Service as an improved quality assurance mechanism and introduced transparency and accountability mechanisms for better governance of the budget. Ms. Ezekwesili commitment to the transformation of Nigeria as one of the 20 largest global economies by 2020 through education led to the launch of the Innovation & Vocational Enterprise Institutions initiatives with focus on human innovation capacity development as well as the launch of the “Adopt-A-School initiative in conjunction with the Nigerian Stock Exchange in January 2007 Ms. Ezekwesili is a Chartered Accountant and holds a Masters in International Law & Diplomacy from the University of Lagos, a Masters in Public Policy & Administration from the Kennedy School of Government, Harvard University and a Bachelors degree from the University of Nigeria. In 2006, Ms. Ezekwesili was given the national award of Commander of the Order of the Federal Republic (CFR). She is married and has three sons.
Frank J. Fahrenkopf, Jr., is president and CEO of the American Gaming Association (AGA). In his role as the chief executive of the AGA, Fahrenkopf is the national advocate for the commercial casino industry and is responsible for positioning the association to address regulatory, political and educational issues affecting the industry.
A lawyer by profession, Fahrenkopf gained national prominence during the 1980s when he served as chairman of the Republican Party for six of President Ronald Reagan's eight years in the White House (1983 to 1989). When Fahrenkopf retired in January 1989, he had served as chairman of the Republican National Committee longer than any person in the 20th century (and second-longest in the history of the party) and led the party through two successful presidential campaigns in 1984 and 1988.
He has been a frequent commentator on political and gaming issues on such network television programs as Crossfire, Inside Politics, Meet The Press, Hardball, Face the Nation, The Today Show, This Week and Good Morning America.
Fahrenkopf continues to serve in a variety of political capacities. He presently is co-chairman of the Commission on Presidential Debates, which conducts the general election presidential and vice presidential debates in presidential election years. He co-founded the commission in 1986 with Democratic National Committee chairman Paul Kirk. He also was a founder of the National Endowment for Democracy, where he served as vice chairman and a board member from 1983 to 1993. Additionally, he serves as a board member of the International Republican Institute (IRI), which he founded in 1984. He served for many years as chairman of the Pacific Democrat Union and vice chairman of the International Democrat Union, a worldwide association of conservative political parties from the United States, Great Britain, France, Germany, Canada, Japan, Australia and 20 other nations.
Prior to becoming the AGA's first chief executive on June 1, 1995, Fahrenkopf was a partner in the Washington, D.C., office of Hogan & Hartson, where he chaired the International Trade Practice Group. Fahrenkopf specialized in regulatory, legislative and corporate matters for multi-national, foreign and domestic clients. His early legal career included 17 years of practice as a trial and gaming lawyer in Nevada, his home state. In that capacity, he represented clients before Nevada gaming regulatory authorities. Fahrenkopf served as the first chairman of the American Bar Association (ABA) Committee on Gaming Law and was a founding trustee and president of the International Association of Gaming Attorneys, a worldwide organization of government gaming regulators and private attorneys acting on behalf of licensed gaming enterprises.
Fahrenkopf has held various positions relating to his legal background. For many years he was a member of the board of trustees of the National Judicial College, the ABA-sponsored judicial education center for federal and state judges; chairman of the Coalition for Justice, a group coordinating the ABA's initiatives to improve the American justice system; and chairman of the Legal Policy Advisory Board of The Washington Legal Foundation. He was a member of the Nevada State Board of Bar Examiners, president of the Washoe County Bar Association and vice president of the Nevada Trial Lawyers Association.
Peter Fenn is President of Fenn Communications Group. Since its founding in 1983, the Group has become one of the nation’s premier political and public affairs media firms. Fenn Communications Group has worked in over 300 campaigns, from President to Mayor, elected more members of the House of Representatives than any other firm, and represented a host of Fortune 500 companies. Peter has consulted overseas for the Agency for International Development and the National Democratic Institute. He’s produced television programs in Russia, Bosnia, Nicaragua and the Dominican Republic and consulted for political parties and candidates in South Africa, Mozambique, Romania, Latvia, Colombia, Northern Ireland, and Hungary.
Prior to forming FCG, Peter was the first Executive Director of the political action committee Democrats for the 80’s, founded by Pamela Harriman and then-Governor Bill Clinton. He also served on the staff of the Senate Intelligence Committee and as Washington Chief of Staff for Senator Frank Church.
During the 2000 campaign, Peter was an advisor to Al Gore and served as a surrogate spokesperson on cable news programs. He performed the same role for John Kerry in 2004.
Peter has a B.A. from Macalester College and a M.A. in International Relations from the University of Southern California. He appears frequently as a TV commentator on the major networks and on cable news and has a regular program with Pat Buchannan on Saturday mornings on MSBNC.
Joschka Fischer joined the newly-formed Green party in 1982. One year later he was elected to the first Green Party Fraction to serve in the federal German parliament, the Bundestag. In December 1985 he was sworn in as the first ever Green Party Minister in the federal state of Hesse where he held the portfolios of the Environment and Energy. From 1987 to 1991, Fischer was Head of the Green Party Parliamentary Fraction in the State Legislature of Hesse and from 1991 to 1994 he served a second tenure as Hessian Minister of the Environment and Energy and held the additional portfolios of Federal Affairs and Deputy Minister President. Following the re-election of the Green Party to the German Bundestag in 1994, Joschka Fischer became co-chairman of the Greens’ federal parliamentary fraction. In September 1998, the Social Democrats, led by Gerhard Schröder, were able to form a coalition government with the Green Party ending sixteen years of Christian Democratic rule. Joschka Fischer was Minister of Foreign Affairs and Vice-Chancellor of Germany from 1998 to 2005 under the Schröder government.
Since the beginning of September 2006 Joschka Fischer has been a senior fellow at the Liechtenstein Institute on Self-Determination and a visiting professor at Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs, both at Princeton University. He has also spoken at other American universities on various topics in foreign affairs and international relations and is the author of several books.
Geoffrey D. Garin is the president of Peter D. Hart Research Associates, one of the nation's leading survey research firms. He became president of Hart Research in 1984, after having worked in the firm since 1978 as a senior analyst and vice president. Mr. Garin has brought his skill, insight, and innovative approaches as a researcher and strategist to a wide variety of fields – including social and economic policy, consumer marketing, and politics.
Mr. Garin has undertaken landmark policy research for many of the nation’s leading foundations and educational institutions. He has conducted major studies on high school reform and global health issues for the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, as well as research for the Pew Charitable Trusts on foster care, early education, and consumer credit. He has conducted influential studies related to higher education for the University of California system, the College Board, and the Association of American Colleges and Universities. Mr. Garin’s work on health care issues includes research for Stanford University’s Center on Longevity, the Kaiser Family Foundation, the Blue Cross Blue Shield Association, and the Planned Parenthood Federation of America. He has undertaken research studies on foreign policy issues for the United Nations Foundation, and the U.S. Center for Global Engagement, and CARE, among others. Additionally, he conducts the direct marketing research for the U.S. Fund for UNICEF and many other donor-based charitable and advocacy organizations, and has led major research projects for major corporations and trade associations in a variety of sectors.
In politics, Mr. Garin has a well-earned reputation for helping candidates win in difficult circumstances. Mr. Garin has directed the polling and created winning campaign strategies for many of the leading Democrats serving in the U.S. Senate, including Dick Durbin, Dianne Feinstein, Chuck Schumer, Russ Feingold, Robert C. Byrd, Jay Rockefeller, Patrick Leahy, Max Baucus, Kent Conrad, Byron Dorgan, and Bernie Sanders. He is recognized as a leader in helping Democratic campaigns incorporate advanced analytical techniques, including segmentation analysis and predictive modeling. In 2008, he helped direct the strategy team for Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign during its final two months.
Since 1993, Mr. Garin has conducted polling on the attitudes of younger Americans for MTV. On behalf of EMILY’s List, he has directed ongoing research about the political attitudes and values of women. Mr. Garin also has conducted extensive strategic research for the American labor movement, including projects for the AFL-CIO, the American Federation of Teachers, and the Service Employees International Union.
Mr. Garin graduated from Harvard College in 1975. He has appeared on the news programs of every major network, and he has served as on-air analyst for CBS Radio's coverage of the national election returns for every election cycle since 1990. He is married to Deborah Berkowitz, an expert in occupational safety and health, and is the father of two sons, Andy and Danny.
Paul Gigot is the editorial page editor and vice president of The Wall Street Journal, a position he has held since September 2001. He is responsible for the newspaper’s editorials, op-ed articles and Leisure & Arts criticism, and directs the editorial pages of the Journal’s Asian and European editions and the OpinionJournal.com Web site. He is also the host of the weekly half-hour news program, the Journal Editorial Report, on the Fox News Channel.
Mr. Gigot joined the Journal in 1980 as a reporter in Chicago, and in 1982 he became the Journal's Asia correspondent, based in Hong Kong. He won an Overseas Press Club award for his reporting on the Philippines. In 1984, he was named the first editorial page editor of The Asian Wall Street Journal, based in Hong Kong. In 1987, he was assigned to Washington, where he contributed editorials and a weekly column on politics, “Potomac Watch,” which won the 2000 Pulitzer Prize for commentary.
Mr. Gigot is a summa cum laude graduate of Dartmouth College, where he was chairman of the daily student newspaper.
Stanley B. Greenberg is CEO of Greenberg Quinlan Rosner, providing strategic advice and research for leaders, companies, campaigns, and NGOs trying to advance their issues in tumultuous times. Greenberg has served as pollster to President Bill Clinton and Vice President Al Gore, British Prime Minister Tony Blair, South African Presidents Nelson Mandela and Thabo Mbeki, Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak, Bolivian President Gonzalo Sánchez de Lozada, and Austrian Chancellor Alfred Gusenbauer.
Next year, he will bring out his new book, Dispatches from the War Room: Polling and Campaigning for Five Extraordinary Leaders. But he also wrote The Two Americas: Our Current Political Deadlock and How to Break It, described by James Carville as "the most important book on American politics in my memory" and Middle Class Dreams that put the spotlight on “Reagan Democrats” - key to the current U.S. election.
Greenberg works with corporate clients including BP, Boeing, Monsanto, Comverse, and United HealthCare. He has also advised the Business Roundtable, and the Athens Organizing Committee, helping Greece prepare for the 2004 Olympics. Together with Republican polling firm Public Opinion Strategies, Greenberg conducts bi-partisan surveys for National Public Radio on the main issues of the day.
He advised the Nobel-prize winning campaign to ban land mines and directed the year-long "People on War" project for the ICRC - a consultation with people in the principal war zones of the late 20th century. He was also a strategic consultant to the Climate Center of the Natural Resources Defense Council on its multi-year campaign on global warming.
Greenberg is co-founder with James Carville of Democracy Corps - a non-profit initiative providing opinion research and strategic advice to aid progressive organizations. He also served as principal polling advisor to the Democratic Leadership Council during the formative years of change (1988-1994) for the Democratic Party.
Greenberg has been described as "the father of modern polling techniques," “the De Niro of all political consultants," and “an unrivaled international ‘guru’." Esquire Magazine named him one of the most important people of the 21st century. The New York Times writes that Greenberg "acts as a sort of people's truth squad," while The New Republic describes Stan Greenberg’s list of clients as a "who's who in center-left world leaders." The New Yorker reported Ehud Barak’s victory in 1999 as either a "stunning upset for the country's Labor Party or...just another Greenberg client taking his place as the head of state."
Republican pollster Frank Luntz says "Stan Greenberg scares the hell out of me. He doesn't just have a finger on the people's pulse; he's got an IV injected into it. He's the best."
Greenberg began his work as a pollster in the 1980s and early 1990s conducting surveys for a number of key U.S. campaigns for Senators Chris Dodd, Joe Lieberman, and Jeff Bingaman; Governor Jim Florio and former Ambassador Andy Young; Vice President Walter Mondale; and for the congressional campaigns of Bob Carr, David Bonior, and Rosa DeLauro.
Greenberg founded the company in 1980 after a decade of teaching at Yale University where he received a Guggenheim Fellowship. He was educated at Miami University and Harvard University, where he received his Ph.D.
Richard N. Haass is president of the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR), a position he has held since July 2003. CFR is an independent, nonpartisan membership organization, think tank, and publisher dedicated to being a resource for its members, government officials, business executives, journalists, educators and students, civic and religious leaders, and other interested citizens in order to help them better understand the world and the foreign policy choices facing the United States and other countries. Dr. Haass is the author or editor of ten books on American foreign policy. His most recent book, The Opportunity: America’s Moment to Alter History’s Course, was published by Public Affairs. He is also the author of one book on management: The Bureaucratic Entrepreneur: How to Be Effective in Any Unruly Organization.
From January 2001 to June 2003, Dr. Haass was director of policy planning for the U.S. Department of State, where he was a principal adviser to Secretary of State Colin Powell. Confirmed by the U.S. Senate to hold the rank of ambassador, Dr. Haass also served as U.S. coordinator for policy toward the future of Afghanistan and was the lead U.S. government official in support of the Northern Ireland peace process. For his efforts, he received the U.S. Department of State’s Distinguished Honor Award.
Dr. Haass has extensive additional government experience. From 1989 to 1993, he was special assistant to President George Bush and senior director for Near East and South Asian affairs on the staff of the National Security Council. In 1991, Dr. Haass was awarded the Presidential Citizens Medal for his contributions to the development and articulation of U.S. policy during Operations Desert Shield and Desert Storm. Previously, he served in the U.S. Department of State (1981–85), the U.S. Department of Defense (1979–80), and was a legislative aide in the U.S. Senate.
Dr. Haass also was vice president and director of foreign policy studies at The Brookings Institution, the Sol M. Linowitz visiting professor of international studies at Hamilton College, a senior associate at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, a lecturer in public policy at Harvard University’s John F. Kennedy School of Government, and a research associate at the International Institute for Strategic Studies. A Rhodes Scholar, Dr. Haass holds a BA from Oberlin College and an MA and a PhD from Oxford University. He has received honorary doctorates from Hamilton College, Franklin & Marshall College, and Georgetown University. Dr. Haass was born in Brooklyn, New York, in 1951. He lives in New York City with his wife and two children.
Jerry Hagstrom is a prize-winning journalist, book author and commentator. In the 1980s, Mr. Hagstrom pioneered the coverage of the polling and media consulting industries for National Journal, and his annual listing of candidates and their key polling and media consultants is considered the most authoritative in Washington. He has lectured on modern U.S. political campaigns in 25 countries as the guest of the State Department.
Mr. Hagstrom is the co-author with Neal R. Peirce of The Book of America: Inside Fifty States Today, a book on the politics and character of each of the 50 states, and the author of Beyond Reagan: The New Landscape of American Politics. Mr. Hagstrom was also for 12 years Mr. Peirce's associate on his newspaper column, which is syndicated by the Washington Post Writers Group. He is also the author of "To Be, Not To Be Seen: The Mystery of Swedish Business," published jointly by the George Washington University Business School and Timbro, a Swedish research institution.
Mr. Hagstrom is a graduate of the University of Denver and has been a Loeb Fellow at Harvard University and a research fellow at the Freedom Forum Media Studies Center at Columbia University.
He also writes regularly on agriculture for National Journal’s Congress Daily, DTN, Agweek and the Capital Press, which is based on the West Coast. The American Journalism Review has named Jerry Hagstrom one of its "unsung heroes" of American journalism for "sterling work in the shadows" covering agriculture. In 2000, the National Farmers Union named Mr. Hagstrom Agricultural Communicator of the Year. He has also won first prize in commentary from the National Association of Agricultural Journalists and awards from other journalistic and agricultural groups. Mr. Hagstrom appears frequently on C-SPAN discussing farm issues and has appeared on National Public Radio and the British Broadcasting Corporation's program Farming Today. Mr. Hagstrom's maternal grandparents of Norwegian descent and his paternal grandparents of Swedish descent homesteaded in Burleigh County, North Dakota. Mr. Hagstrom was born in North Dakota where he grew up on the Hagstrom family farm and at Wilton and Bismarck, N.D.
Gary W. Hart, since retiring from the United States Senate, has been extensively involved in international law and business, as a strategic advisor to major U.S. corporations, and as a teacher, author and lecturer. He is currently Wirth Chair Professor at the University of Colorado and Distinguished Fellow at the New America Foundation. For 15 years, Senator Hart was Senior Counsel to Coudert Brothers, a multinational law firm with offices in thirty-two cities located in nineteen countries around the world. He was co chair of the U.S. Commission on National Security for the 21st Century. The Commission performed the most comprehensive review of national security since 1947, predicted the terrorist attacks on America, and proposed a sweeping overhaul of U.S. national security structures and policies for the post-Cold War new century and the age of terrorism. He was president of Global Green, the U.S. affiliate of Mikhail Gorbachev's environmental foundation, Green Cross International. He is a founding member of the Board of Directors of the U.S.-Russia Investment Fund; a former member of the Defense Policy Board; and is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations. He was co-chair of the Council task force that produced the report: "America Unprepared-America Still at Risk", in October, 2002. Senator Hart is currently a member of the National Academy of Sciences task force on Science and Security.
Gary Hart has been Visiting Fellow, Chatham Lecturer, and McCallum Memorial Lecturer at Oxford University, Global Fund Lecturer at Yale University, and Regents Lecturer at the University of California. He has earned a doctor of philosophy degree from Oxford University and graduate law and divinity degrees from Yale University. He was visiting lecturer at the Yale Law School and is the author of fourteen books.
Gary Hart represented the State of Colorado in the United States Senate from 1975 to 1987. In 1984 and 1988, he was a candidate for his party's nomination for President.
Senator Hart was first elected to the Senate in 1974, having never before sought public office, and was re elected in 1980. During his 12 years in the Senate, he served on the Armed Services Committee, where he specialized in nuclear arms control and was an original founder of the military reform caucus. He also served on the Senate Environment Committee, Budget Committee, and Intelligence Oversight Committee. During his Senate years, he played a leadership role in major environmental and conservation legislation, military reform initiatives, new initiatives to advance the information revolution and new directions in foreign policy. He is widely-recognized as among the first to forecast the end of the Cold War.
Gary Hart travels extensively to the former Soviet Union, Europe, the Far East and Latin America. Beginning in 1988, he was active in negotiating ground breaking joint venture agreements in Russia and has published a book on the former Soviet Union entitled Russia Shakes the World: The Second Russian Revolution (1991).
Senator Hart resides with his family in Kittredge, Colorado.
Peter D. Hart has been one of the leading analysts of public opinion in the United States for more than 35 years. Since 1971, he has directed Peter D. Hart Research Associates, which has conducted more than 6,000 public opinion surveys that have included interviews among more than five million individuals. Hart Research also has undertaken more than 5,000 focus group sessions. Mr. Hart currently serves as Chairman of Hart Research and Senior Counselor to the McGinn Group.
Mr. Hart built his reputation on his successful work in politics, working for more than 30 U.S. Senators and 30 Governors, but his focus over the last 20 years has been on public policy, cultural and social issues, and strategic consulting work for corporations. Corporate clients have included Boeing, Time Warner, American Airlines, Coca-Cola, Microsoft, AT&T, and Tiffany and Company. His work in the non-profit field includes research for Habitat for Humanity, the ACLU, The Smithsonian Institution, and the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. Internationally, Mr. Hart has conducted studies in South America, Europe, Asia, and Africa. Over the past decade, Mr. Hart has taught courses in public policy at Duke University’s Sanford Institute of Public Policy, the University of Penn¬sylvania’s Annenberg School for Communication, and at UC Berkeley.
Mr. Hart appears frequently on major television programs that discuss public policy issues, including Meet the Press, The Today Show, and The NewsHour with Jim Lehrer. In 1989, along with Robert Teeter, Mr. Hart was selected by NBC News and The Wall Street Journal to conduct their public opinion polling. 2008 marks the 19th year of this relationship.
Mr. Hart is married to Florence R. Hart and has two children, Elizabeth and Aaron.
Richard C. Holbrooke is a Vice Chairman of Perseus, a merchant bank and private equity fund management company. He most recently served as the U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations, where he was also a member of President Clinton's cabinet (1999-2001). As Assistant Secretary of State for Europe (1994-1996), he was the chief architect of the 1995 Dayton peace agreement that ended the war in Bosnia. He later served as President Clinton's Special Envoy to Bosnia and Kosovo and Special Envoy to Cyprus on a pro bono basis while a private citizen. From 1993 to 1994, he was the U.S. Ambassador to Germany.
During the Carter Administration (1977-1981), he served as the Assistant Secretary of State for East Asian and Pacific Affairs and was in charge of U.S. relations with China at the time Sino-American relations were normalized in December 1978.
After joining the Foreign Service in 1962, he served in Vietnam (1963-1966), including a tour of duty in the Mekong Delta for AID. He worked on Vietnam at the Johnson White House (1966-1968), wrote one volume of the Pentagon Papers, and was a member of the American delegation to the Vietnam Peace Talks in Paris (1968-1969).
He was Peace Corps Director in Morocco (1970-1972), Managing Editor of Foreign Policy (1972-1977), and held senior positions at two leading Wall Street firms, Credit Suisse First Boston (Vice Chairman) and Lehman Brothers (Managing Director). He has written numerous articles and two best-selling books: To End a War, a memoir of the Dayton negotiations, and Counsel to the President, Clark Clifford's memoir, which he co-authored. He writes a monthly column for The Washington Post.
He has received over twenty honorary degrees and numerous awards, including several Nobel Peace Prize nominations. He is the Founding Chairman of the American Academy in Berlin, a center for U.S.-German cultural exchange; President and CEO of the Global Business Coalition, the business alliance against HIV/AIDS; and Chairman of the Asia Society. He is on the Board of Directors of American International Group. NGO board memberships include the American Museum of Natural History, the National Endowment for Democracy, The Africa-America Institute, the Citizens Committee for New York City, the Council on Foreign Relations, and Refugees International. He is on the Advisory Board of USA for UNHCR and he is a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.
Katty Kay is the Washington Correspondent for BBC World News America, where she reports on U.S. news and politics and is spearheading coverage of the 2008 presidential campaign.
Kay's career with the BBC began in Zimbabwe in 1990, filing reports for BBC World Service radio. She then went on to work as a BBC correspondent in London and later Tokyo, until finally settling in Washington in 1996. She's covered some of the biggest stories of the last 15 years - sex scandals in the Clinton administration, two presidential elections, and wars in Kosovo, Afghanistan and Iraq. She also witnessed first-hand the huge change in American policy brought on by the attacks of September 11. Katty was at the Pentagon just 20 minutes after a hijacked airplane flew into the building - one of her most vivid journalistic memories is of interviewing soldiers still visibly shaking from the attack.
Kay is a contributor on Meet the Press, Larry King Live, The Chris Matthews Show, and is a regular guest host for Diane Rehm on National Public Radio.
Paul G. Kirk, Jr., is a founding Board Member of the John F. Kennedy Library Foundation and currently serves as Chairman of the Foundation's Board of Directors. Mr. Kirk is affiliated with Sullivan & Worcester LLP of Boston, Massachusetts, a law firm (with offices in Washington, DC and New York City) of which he was a partner from 1977-1990. He is also Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of Kirk & Associates, Inc., a business advisory and consulting firm located in Boston.
Mr. Kirk is a member of the Board of Directors of The Hartford Financial Services Group, Inc., Rayonier, Incorporated and Cedar Shopping Centers, Inc. He served on the Board of Directors of ITT Corporation from 1989 - 1997 and Bradley Real Estate, Inc. from 1991 - 2000.
Mr. Kirk is also a Trustee of Stonehill College. He is past Chairman of the Harvard Board of Overseers Nominating Committee and presently serves as Chairman of the Harvard Overseers Committee to Visit the Department of Athletics. From 1985 to 1989, Mr. Kirk served as Chairman of the Democratic Party from 1983 to 1985 as its Treasurer. Mr. Kirk served as special assistant for Senator Edward M. Kennedy (D-MA) from 1969-1977.
From 1992 to 2001 Mr. Kirk served as Chairman of the National Democratic Institute (NDI) for International Affairs, a nonprofit organization working to strengthen and expand democracy worldwide. Mr. Kirk was elected Chairman Emeritus of NDI when former U.S. Secretary of State Madeleine Albright succeeded Kirk as Chair of NDI in 2001.
Mr. Kirk is also co-founder and Co-Chairman of the Commission on Presidential Debates (CPD) established in 1987 to sponsor and produce debates for leading U.S. presidential and vice presidential candidates and to undertake research and educational activities relating to the debates. The CPD is a nonprofit, nonpartisan corporation that has sponsored all the general election debates in 1988, 1992, 1996, 2000, and 2004, including the first presidential debate in 2000 hosted by the University of Massachusetts Boston and the John F. Kennedy Presidential Library and Museum.
A leading proponent of public and private partnerships to respond to civic needs and issues, Mr. Kirk organized and led the successful efforts of a group of business and civic leaders to keep the New England Patriots from moving from Foxboro, MA to Hartford, CT.
A graduate of Harvard College and Harvard Law School, Mr. Kirk resides in Marstons Mills, Massachusetts with his wife Gail.
Andrew Kohut is the President of the Pew Research Center, in Washington, DC. He also acts as Director of the Pew Research Center for The People & The Press (formerly the Times Mirror Center for the People & the Press) and the Pew Global Attitudes Project.
Kohut was President of The Gallup Organization from 1979 to 1989. In 1989, he founded Princeton Survey Research Associates, an attitude and opinion research firm specializing in media, politics, and public policy studies. He served as founding director of surveys for the Times Mirror Center 1990-1992, and was named its Director in 1993.
Kohut was president of American Association of Public Opinion Research 1994-1995. He was president of the National Council on Public Polls 2000-2001, a member of the Market Research Council, and a member of the Council on Foreign Relations.
Kohut is a press commentator on the meaning and interpretation of opinion poll results. In recent national elections, he has served as a public opinion consultant and analyst for National Public Radio. Kohut often comments on public opinion for television news programs including the NewsHour with Jim Lehrer. He has written widely about public opinion for leading newspapers and magazines, as well as for scholarly journals. He is a frequent op-ed essayist for The New York Times and in the past has been a regular columnist for the Columbia Journalism Review and AOL News. Kohut has co-authored four books, including, mostly recently, “America Against the World” (Times Books) and The Diminishing Divide: Religion's Changing Role in American Politics, (Brookings Institution Press).
Kohut received the first Innovators Award from American Association of Public Opinion Research for founding the Pew Research Center. He also was given the New York AAPOR Chapter award for Outstanding Contribution to Opinion Research. Most recently he was awarded the 2005 American Association of Public Opinion Research’s highest honor, the Award for Exceptionally Distinguished Achievement. Kohut received an A.B. degree from Seton Hall University in 1964 and studied graduate sociology at Rutgers, the State University, from 1964 to 1966.
Ricardo Lagos worked as a Professor of Economy in the School of Law at the University of Chile until 1972. Between 1971 and 1972, he occupied the position of Director at the University’s Institute of Law. During this decade he also served as Director of the Latin American Council of Social Sciences and as a visiting professor to the head of the department, William R. Kenan, of Latin American Studies at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill in the United States.
First associated with the Partido Radical (PR), Lagos later became a member of Salvador Allende’s Partido Socialista de Chile (PSCh), where, as a delegate with the rank of ambassador, he provided diplomatic services during the XXVI General Assembly of the United Nations in 1971. He also served as a delegate in the United Nations’ III Conference on Commerce and Development (UNCTAD) in 1972.
Following General Augusto Pinochet Ugarte’s coup d’état in September of 1973, Lagos was forced to move to Argentina and later to the United States, where he resumed his academic activity. In 1975 he worked as a consultant for the Development Program of the United Nations (PNUD) and from 1978, the year of his return to Chile, until 1984 he became an economist for the United Nations’ Regional Employment Program for Latin America and the Caribbean.
In 1982 Lagos became a member of the Executive Committee of the PSCh, and from 1983 to 1984 he was President of the Alianza Demócrata (AD), a political force comprised of the majority of democratic parties opposed to General Augusto Pinochet’s regime. In 1984 he headed the Comité de Izquierda pro Elecciones Libres (CIEL) and on December 15th of the same year became one of the founders of the Partido por la Democracia (PPD).
The campaign of “no” to the restructuring of Pinochet’s presidency in the plebiscite of October 5th 1988 provided the push that the PPD and Ricardo Lagos needed to become prominent political figures. With Patricio Aylwin as the new President of Chile, Ricardo Lagos became Minister of Education (1992-1993), initiating an educational reform intended to decentralize Chile’s educational system. He was appointed Minister of Public Works (1994-1998) by President Eduardo Frei, and in this position Lagos created an innovative system of road projects involving the participation of the private sector, which invested nearly two thousand million dollars in different projects. In March of 2000, Ricardo Lagos was elected the new President of Chile.
In 2007 he was appointed Special Envoy for Climate Change by UN Secretary-General.
Zlatko Lagumdzija is the former Prime Minister of Bosnia-Herzegovina (2001-2002) and current member of the Club de Madrid. Currently President of the Social Democratic Party (SDP) and Member of the House of Representatives since 1996. Member of several international missions and commissions, including the International Electoral Observer Mission to the Pakistani elections (1998) and the International Commission on the Balkans (2004). Minister for Foreign Affairs (2001-2003) and Chairman of the Council of Ministers (2001-2002). Acting Prime Minister during 1993, and Deputy Prime Minister from 1992-1993. Lagumdzija is active in Club of Madrid’s Shared Societies Project, Freedom of Association in the Middle East and Interreligious Dialogue.
Anthony Lake is Distinguished Professor in the Practice of Diplomacy in the Edmund A. Walsh School of Foreign Service, Georgetown University and Foreign Policy Advisor for Senator Barack Obama. Dr. Lake most recently served as Assistant to the President for National Security Affairs from 1993-1997.
From 1981-1992, Dr. Lake was Five College Professor of International Relations at Amherst, Mount Holyoke, Smith, Hampshire colleges and University of Massachusetts. He also served as a Senior Foreign Policy Advisor to the Clinton/Gore campaign in 1991-1992. In 1961, Dr. Lake received an A.B. degree from Harvard College. He read international economics at Trinity College, Cambridge and went on to receive his Ph.D. from the Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs at Princeton University in 1974.
Dr. Lake joined the State Department in 1962, where he served until 1970 as a Foreign Service Officer. His State Department career included assignments as U.S. Vice Consul in Saigon (1963), U.S. Vice Consul in Hue (1964-65) and Special Assistant to the Assistant to the President for National Security Affairs (1969-1970).
After work with the Muskie Campaign, the Carnegie Endowment and International Voluntary Services, Dr. Lake returned to the State Department in 1977 to serve as Director of Policy Planning for President Carter, a position he held until 1981.
Dr. Lake’s board and advisory memberships include the U.S. Fund for UNICEF, the Marshall Legacy Institute, the Carnegie Council on Ethics and International Affairs, Center for the Study of Democracy at St. Mary’s College of Maryland, Center for International Studies at the Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs at Princeton University, Center for International Relations at University of California/Los Angeles, and the America Abroad Media. He also serves on the Board Of Trustees at St. Mary’s College of Maryland.
Dr. Lake is the author of a number of books, including More Than Humanitarianism: A Strategic U.S. Approach Toward Africa (2006), 6 Nightmares (2000), Somoza Falling (1989), Our Own Worst Enemy: The Unmaking of American Foreign Policy (co-authored) (1984) and The “Tar Baby” Option: American Policy Toward Southern Rhodesia (1976). In addition, he edited After the Wars (1990) and was the contributing editor of Legacy of Vietnam: The War, American Society, and the Future of U.S. Foreign Policy (1976).
Thomas E. Mann is the W. Averell Harriman Chair and Senior Fellow in Governance Studies at The Brookings Institution. Between 1987 and 1999, he was Director of Governmental Studies at Brookings. Before that, Mann was executive director of the American Political Science Association.
Born on September 10, 1944, in Milwaukee, he earned his B.A. in political science at the University of Florida and his M.A. and Ph.D. athe University of Michigan. He first came to Washington in 1969 as Congressional Fellow in the offices of Senator Philip A. Hart and Representative James G. O'Hara. Mann has taught at Princeton University, Johns Hopkins University, Georgetown University, the University of Virginia and American University; conducted polls for congressional candidates; worked as a consultant to IBM and the Public Broadcasting Service; chaired the Board of Overseers of the National Election Studies; and served as an expert witness in the constitutional defense of the McCain-Feingold campaign finance law. He lectures frequently in the United States and abroad on American politics and public policy and is also a regular contributor to newspaper stories and television and radio programs on politics and governance.
Mann is a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and a member of the Council on Foreign Relations. He is a recipient of the American Political Science Association’s Frank J. Goodnow and Charles E. Merriam Awards.
Mann's published works include Unsafe at Any Margin: Interpreting Congressional Elections; Vital Statistics on Congress; The New Congress; A Question of Balance: The President, the Congress and Foreign Policy; Media Polls in American Politics; Renewing Congress; Congress, the Press, and the Public; Intensive Care: How Congress Shapes Health Policy; Campaign Finance Reform: A Sourcebook; The Permanent Campaign and Its Future; Inside the Campaign Finance Battle: Court Testimony on the New Reforms; The New Campaign Finance Sourcebook; and Party Lines: Competition, Partisanship and Congressional Redistricting. He has also written numerous scholarly articles and opinion pieces on various aspects of American politics, including elections, political parties, Congress, the presidency and public policymaking. He is currently working on projects dealing with redistricting, election reform, and party polarization. He and Norman Ornstein published The Broken Branch: How Congress is Failing America and How to Get It Back on Track (Oxford University Press, 2006).
Mann resides in Bethesda, Maryland with his wife Sheilah, who is also a political scientist. They have two children, Ted, an assistant curator at the Guggenheim Museum in New York, and Stephanie, an MBA student in the Kellogg School at Northwestern University.
Jessica Tuchman Mathews is President of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, an international research organization with offices in Washington, D.C., Moscow, Beijing, Beirut and Brussels. Her career includes posts in the executive and legislative branches of government, in management and research in the nonprofit arena and in journalism; including Director of the Office of Global Issues on the staff of the National Security Council in the White House; Deputy to the Undersecretary of State for Global Affairs; founding Vice President and Director of Research ('82-'93) of the World Resources Institute; professional staff member – House Interior Committee; Subcommittee on Energy and Environment; and, member of the Editorial Board of The Washington Post; and Washington Post columnist (’91-’95).
Abner Mikva holds the distinction of having served at a high level in all three branches of the federal government and in state government as well. He was elected in 1956 to the first of five consecutive terms in the Illinois General Assembly where he sponsored fair Employment Practices Legislation, Open Housing legislation, and labored to overhaul the Criminal Code. He was elected to the U.S. Congress in 1968 and served for five terms as a member of the Judiciary Committee and then the Ways and Means Committee. Appointed by President Carter to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia, Abner served for fifteen years, the last four as Chief Judge. In 1994 Judge Mikva resigned from the bench to become White House Counsel to President William H. Clinton.
After service as a Navigator in the Army Air Corps in World War II, Judge Mikva received his law degree from the University of Chicago, graduating cum laude. He was editor-in-chief of the Law Review. Following graduation he served as a law clerk to Associate Justice Sherman Minton on the Supreme Court. During his time in private practice he represented the West Side Organization, an early community-civil rights organization which tried to break down prejudice in employment, housing, and schools. He argued many cases before the Supreme Court. The Judge has received many awards including the Paul H. Douglas Ethics in Government Award through the University of Illinois and the Thurgood Marshall Award from the American Bar Association. He currently serves as Senior Director of the Mandel Legal Aid Clinic at the University of Chicago Law School.
Walter Mondale has been a two-term U.S. Senator, the forty-second vice president of the United States (1977-1981), and the Democratic Party nominee for president in 1984 against the incumbent, Republican Ronald W. Reagan. Mondale, of Norwegian descent, was born in Ceylon, Minnesota., the son of a Methodist minister. He was educated at Macalester College in St. Paul and the University of Minnesota, graduating in 1951. He then served two years at Fort Knox, in the U.S. Army during the Korean War. He gained a law degree in 1956 and began to practice law in Minneapolis.
Mondale served two terms as attorney general. When Hubert H. Humphrey II was elected vice president in 1964, Mondale was appointed to Humphrey's seat in the Senate. Mondale was elected to the seat in 1966 and re-elected in 1972.
When Jimmy Carter won the Democratic nomination for president in 1976, he chose Mondale as his running mate. Mondale was inaugurated as vice president on Jan. 20, 1977. He was the first VP to reside at the official vice presidential residence, Number One Observatory Circle. Carter and Mondale were renominated at the 1980 Democratic National Convention, but lost to Ronald W. Reagan and George H. W. Bush. After a brief return to the practice of law, Mondale won the Democratic presidential nomination in the 1984 election. He chose U.S. Rep. Geraldine A. Ferraro of New York as his running mate, making her the first woman nominated for that position by a major party. Mondale ran a progressive campaign, supporting a nuclear freeze and the Equal Rights Amendment (ERA). He spoke against what he considered to be unfairness in Reagan's economic policies and the need to reduce federal budget deficits.
In the 1984 election, Mondale was defeated. Following the election, Mondale returned again to private law practice, with Dorsey & Whitney in Minnesota in 1987. From 1986 to 1993, Mondale was chairman of the National Democratic Institute for International Affairs. Under the presidency of William J. Clinton, he was ambassador to Japan from 1993 to 1996, chaired a bipartisan group to study campaign finance reform, and traveled to Indonesia at Clinton's request in 1998.
In 2002, U.S. Sen. Paul D. Wellstone (D-Minn.), who was running for re-election, died just 11 days before the Nov. 5 election. Mondale, at age 74, replaced Wellstone on the ballot, but narrowly lost the election to Republican opponent Norm Coleman. Upon conceding the election, Mondale said, "At the end of what will surely be my last campaign, I want to say to Minnesota, you always treated me well, you always listened to me." Mondale finished with 1,067,246 votes (47.34%) to Coleman's 1,116,697 (49.53%) out of 2,254,639 votes cast.
Mike Murphy is a founding principal and member of the Executive Committee of Navigators and is based out of Navigators’ Los Angeles, California, office.
Mr. Murphy is one of the Republican Party’s most successful political media consultants. He has been called a “media master” by Fortune Magazine, the GOP’s “hottest media consultant” by Newsweek, and the leader of a “new breed” of campaign consultants by Congressional Quarterly Inc.
Mr. Murphy has handled strategy and advertising for more than 26 successful senatorial and gubernatorial campaigns, including the successful gubernatorial races of Jeb Bush, Mitt Romney, John Engler, Tommy Thompson, Christie Whitman, Dirk Kempthorne and Terry Branstad, as well as the successful senatorial races of Lamar Alexander, Slade Gorton, Spence Abraham, Jeff Sessions, Dirk Kempthorne, Steve Symms, Paul Coverdell and Larry Pressler. In 2000, he served as senior strategist for U.S. Senator John McCain’s presidential campaign. In 2003, he was senior strategist for Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger’s historic recall election in California. In addition to his campaign work, he advises several Fortune 500 corporations and leading interest groups. He has advised leaders in more than five foreign countries.
Mr. Murphy is a frequent writer for The Weekly Standard, as well as writes and performs radio commentary for National Public Radio’s All Things Considered. Additionally, he is a regular election analyst on NBC’s Meet the Press with Tim Russert. Mr. Murphy has appeared on CNN’s The Capital Gang, Crossfire, Hardball, Face the Nation and The NewsHour with Jim Lehrer. In Los Angeles, Mr. Murphy also works as a writer and producer in the entertainment industry.
Mr. Murphy was born in Detroit, Michigan, and attended the Edmund A. Walsh School of Foreign Service at Georgetown University. In 2001, he was an Institute of Politics Fellow at Harvard's JFK School of Government.
Dan Nowicki is The Arizona Republic's national political reporter. The 2008 presidential race is his beat, with an emphasis on the campaign of Arizona's John McCain. He is a former Washington, D.C., reporter and wrote The Republic's Plugged In political blog during 2006. He has been interviewed about McCain by CNN, MSNBC, Fox News Channel, C-SPAN, BBC World Service, Danish television and has appeared on assorted national, satellite and local radio programs. His awards include first place Best of the West and Arizona Press Club honors in editorial writing and deadline news reporting and he was the lead writer on a series about Arizona transportation politics that won a prestigious National Headliner Award.
Norman J. Ornstein is a resident scholar at the American Enterprise Institute for Public Policy Research. He also serves as an election analyst for CBS News and writes a weekly column called "Congress Inside Out" for Roll Call newspaper. He has written for the New York Times, Washington Post, Wall Street Journal, Foreign Affairs, and other major publications, and regularly appears on television programs like The NewsHour with Jim Lehrer, Nightline, and Charlie Rose. At the 30th Anniversary party for The NewsHour, he was recognized as the most frequent guest over the thirty years.
Ornstein serves as senior counselor to the Continuity of Government Commission, working to ensure that our institutions of government can be maintained in the event of a terrorist attack on Washington; his efforts in this area are recounted in a profile of him in the June 2003 Atlantic Monthly. His campaign finance working group of scholars and practitioners helped shape the major law, known as McCain/Feingold, that reformed the campaign financing system. Legal Times referred to him as "a principal drafter of the law" and his role in its design and enactment was profiled in the February 2004 issue of Washington Lawyer.
He has also co-directing a multi-year effort, called the Transition to Governing Project, to create a better climate for governing in the era of the permanent campaign, and is co-director of the AEI/Brookings Election Reform Project. He spent six years as a member of the Board of Directors of the Public Broadcasting Service (PBS) and is currently on the boards of the Campaign Legal Center, the Washington Tennis and Education Foundation, the Center for U.S. Global Engagement and the U.S. Capitol Historical Society, and of UCB, a biopharmaceutical company based in Belgium.
He was elected as a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 2004. He was the recipient in 2006 of the American Political Science Association’s Goodnow Award for distinguished service to the profession. Ornstein has a B.A. (Magna cum Laude) from the University of Minnesota and M.A. and Ph.D. from the University of Michigan. His alma mater, the University of Minnesota, gave him an honorary Doctor of Laws degree in 2007.
His many books include The Permanent Campaign and Its Future; Intensive Care: How Congress Shapes Health Policy, both with Thomas E. Mann; and Debt and Taxes: How America Got Into Its Budget Mess and What to Do About It, with John H. Makin. The Broken Branch: How Congress Is Failing America and How to Get It Back on Track, co-authored by Thomas E. Mann, was published in August 2006 by Oxford University Press, with an updated edition in August 2008. It was picked both by The Washington Post and the St. Louis Post-Dispatch as one of the best books of 2006.
Donald M. Payne, a native of Newark, New Jersey, was elected to represent the 10th Congressional District of New Jersey in 1988 as New Jersey’s first African American Congressman by an overwhelming majority and has been returned by a wide margin of the vote in each subsequent election. In 2004, he won election to his ninth term to represent the 10th District in the 109th Congress. Congressman Payne was chosen by House Democratic Leader Nancy Pelosi to serve on the powerful Democratic Steering Committee, whose membership determines each individual committee assignment for Democratic members and plays an active role in shaping the legislative agenda. In 2003, President Bush appointed Payne as one of two members of Congress to serve as a Congressional delegate to the United Nations. In this role, he met with the U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations and regularly attended sessions of the U.N. General Assembly and other high level meetings.
Congressman Payne is a member of the House Committee on Education and the Workforce, where he serves on the Subcommittee on Employer-Employee Relations and the Subcommittee on 21st Century Competitiveness. He also serves on the International Relations Committee and its Subcommittee on the Western Hemisphere and Subcommittee on Africa, Global Human Rights and International Relations, where he holds the position of Ranking Member. A past Chairman of the Congressional Black Caucus, he is a member of the Democratic Whip Organization and has served as a member of the House Democratic Leadership Advisory Group. As a leading advocate of education, he has been instrumental in the passage of key legislation, including the Goals 2000 initiative to improve elementary and secondary schools; the School-to-Work Opportunities Act; the National Service Act, establishment of the National Literacy Institute, and funding for Head Start, Pell Grants and student loans.
On the international front, Congressman Payne has been at the forefront of efforts to restore democracy and human rights in nations throughout the globe, including South Africa, Namibia, Haiti, Zaire, Nigeria, China, Eastern Europe and Northern Ireland. He was one of five members of Congress chosen to accompany President Clinton and Hillary Rodham Clinton on their historic six-nation tour of Africa. Congressman Payne gained national recognition when he was selected to manage the debate on the floor of the House of Representatives in opposition to the use of force in Iraq before fully exploring a diplomatic solution. In the 108th Congress, he was successful in wining passage of a resolution declaring genocide in Darfur, Sudan. He is leading the national Divest Sudan Campaign to divest state-administered pension funds of companies doing business with Sudan.
Before being elected to serve as New Jersey's first African American Congressman, his career included service on the Newark Municipal Council; the Essex County Board of Chosen Freeholders; an executive of the Prudential Insurance Company; Vice President of Urban Data Systems, Inc. and an educator in the Newark public school system. A former national President of the YMCA, he served as Chairman of the World Refugee and Rehabilitation Committee. He has served on the board of directors of the National Endowment for Democracy, TransAfrica, Discovery Channel Global Education Fund, the Congressional Award Foundation, the Boys and Girls Clubs of Newark, the Newark Day Center, the Fighting Back Initiative and the Newark YMCA. He has received numerous awards and honors from national, international and community-based organizations. A graduate of Seton Hall University, he pursued graduate studies at Springfield College in Massachusetts. He holds honorary doctorates from Chicago State University, Drew University, Essex County College and William Paterson University. Congressman Payne, a widower, is the father of 3 and grandfather of 4.
Susan E. Rice is Senior Fellow in the Foreign Policy and Global Economy and Development Programs at the Brookings Institution in Washington, D.C., where her work encompasses a wide range of issues related to U.S. foreign and national security policy. Her long-term research focuses on the national security implications of global poverty and inequality. Her other areas of expertise include transnational security threats, terrorism, weak and failed states, development issues, foreign assistance, post-conflict peace-building, the United Nations, U.N. international stability and peace operations, and African affairs.
Dr. Rice served as U.S. Assistant Secretary of State for African Affairs from 1997-2001. In this capacity, she formulated and implemented overall U.S. policy towards 48 countries of Sub-Saharan Africa, including political, economic, security and humanitarian issues. She oversaw management of 43 U.S. Embassies, over 5000 U.S. and Foreign Service national employees, a Bureau operating budget of over $100 million and a program budget of approximately $160 million, annually. From 1995-1997, Dr. Rice was Special Assistant to the President and Senior Director for African Affairs at the National Security Council (NSC) and, from 1993-1995, was Director for International Organizations and Peacekeeping at the NSC. Prior to her White House tenure, Rice was a management consultant at McKinsey and Company, where she served clients in oil and gas, steel, transportation, retail, public/non-governmental and pulp/paper sectors. She was the co-recipient of the White House’s 2000 Samuel Nelson Drew Memorial Award for distinguished contributions to the formation of peaceful, cooperative relationships between states.
She was awarded the Chatham House-British International Studies Association Prize for the most distinguished doctoral dissertation in the United Kingdom in the field of International Relations. Dr. Rice is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations and the Aspen Strategy Group. She also serves on several boards, including the National Democratic Institute, the U.S. Fund for UNICEF, the Atlantic Council, Stanford University’s Institute for International Studies, the Bureau of National Affairs, Inc., the Partnership for Public Service, the Beauvoir School, and the Internews Network.
Rice received her B.A. in History with Honors from Stanford University and her M.Phil. and D.Phil. (Ph.D.) degrees in International Relations from Oxford University, where she was a Rhodes Scholar. Rice is currently on leave from Brookings, serving as foreign policy advisor to Senator Barack Obama.
Eugene Robinson is a columnist and associate editor of The Washington Post and a commentator for MSNBC. His twice-weekly column on The Post’s Op-Ed page was launched in February 2005, and within a year it was being syndicated to more than 130 newspapers – making it, by far, the fastest-growing column in the history of the Washington Post Writers Group. Robinson’s essays on politics, culture and events have helped shape the debate on issues such as the war in Iraq, the limits of presidential power and the rebuilding of the hurricane-ravaged Gulf Coast. He is a regular commentator on NBC’s award-winning “Meet the Press” (right) and also appears frequently on MSNBC, CNN and other media outlets. In January 2006, barely twelve months after the column’s debut, The Post’s editors honored Robinson’s work by nominating his columns for the Pulitzer Prize.
A 26-year veteran of The Post, Robinson was born and raised in Orangeburg, S.C. He was educated at Orangeburg High School, where he was one of a handful of black students on the previously all-white campus; and the University of Michigan, where during his senior year he was the first black student to be named co-editor-in-chief of the award-winning student newspaper, The Michigan Daily.
Robinson began his journalism career at the San Francisco Chronicle, covering such stories as the circus-like trial of kidnapped newspaper heiress Patricia Hearst. He joined The Washington Post in 1980 as city hall reporter, covering the first term of Washington’s larger-than-life mayor, Marion Barry. He Robinson became an assistant city editor in 1981, and in 1984 was promoted to city editor, in charge of the paper’s coverage of the District of Columbia. During the 1987-88 academic year, on leave from The Post, Robinson was a Neiman Fellow in Journalism at Harvard University, where he studied Latin American history and politics and the Spanish language. On his return to the paper he was named The Post’s South America correspondent, based in Buenos Aires, Argentina, a post he held from 1988 to 1992. Subsequently he was London bureau chief 1992 to 1994, before returning to Washington to become The Post’s foreign editor. That same year he was elected to the Council on Foreign Relations.
In January 1999, Robinson became an assistant managing editor of The Post, in charge of the groundbreaking Style section, which during his tenure won two Pulitzer Prizes and two Missouri Lifestyle Awards as the best newspaper feature section in the nation. His appointment as associate editor and columnist became effective January 1, 2005.
In January 2008, Robinson became a political analyst and commentator for MSNBC. He appears several times a week on MSNBC shows including “Hardball,” “Countdown with Keith Olbermann” and “The Race for the White House,” and has been a regular contributor to the network’s coverage of the presidential campaign.
Robinson is a member of the National Association of Black Journalists and has received numerous journalism awards. He is the author of two books: Coal to Cream: A Black Man’s Journey Beyond Color to an Affirmation of Race (Free Press, 1999); and Last Dance in Havana (Free Press, 2004). Robinson is married, has two sons, and lives in Arlington, Virginia.
Mary Robinson is former President of Ireland (1990-1997) and current Vice-president of the Club de Madrid. On 3 December, 1990, Robinson was inaugurated as the seventh President of Ireland, and the first female President. She resigned in 1997 to take up an appointment as United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights until 2002. Robinson has been Honorary President of Oxfam International since 2002, and she is also a founding member and Chair of the Council of Women World Leaders. She serves on many boards including the Vaccine Fund. Her newest project is the Ethical Globalization Initiative (EGI), which seeks to incorporate human rights into the globalization process and support capacity building and good governance in developing countries. President Robinson is a Member of the Club of Madrid-UNF ‘Global Leadership for Climate Action’ (GLCA) Initiative.
David Rogers broke into newspapers in New Jersey in the late 60’s with the Perth Amboy Evening News and picked up there again after being drafted and sent to Vietnam, where he served as a combat infantry medic with the First Division. He went back to school in 1971-73 after which he was signed by the Boston Globe where he covered Boston’s neighborhoods, school desegregation, and ultimately City Hall. The Globe sent him to Washington in late 1979, and Congress has been his chief focus since. The Wall Street Journal picked him up four years later in 1983 and he remained for 24 years before being bought out in December with the Murdoch takeover. He joined Politico in January.
Much of Rogers’ early education in Congress came from the Massachusetts delegation which then included Speaker Thomas “Tip” O’Neill as well as senior members of the House Appropriations Committee, who encouraged him to cover that panel when few other reporters did on a regular basis. His Vietnam experience fed an interest as well in the covert wars of the 1980’s, and his reporting disclosed the US mining of the Nicaraguan harbors as well as earned him a footnote –though not a movie part—in Charlie Wilson’s War.
Mark Shields has been on the political playing field since Robert F. Kennedy ran for president in 1968. After years of managing campaigns from the courthouse to the White House, he is now one of the most widely recognized pundits and commentators in the United States.
Shields is best known for his work on CNN's "Capital Gang," where he debates policy issues with syndicated columnists Robert Novak, The Wall Street Journal's Al Hunt, and Time magazine's White House correspondent Margaret Carlson, and for his weekly appearances on the award-winning "NewsHour With Jim Lehrer," where, since 1987, he has teamed up with conservatives such as David Gergen, Paul Gigot and David Brooks to provide the program's principal political analysis.
Shields grew up in Weymouth, Mass., and graduated from the University of Notre Dame in 1959 with a major in philosophy and a minor in history. In 1964, after serving in the Marines in Florida, Shields moved to Washington, D.C., to indulge his love of American government.
His first political assignment was as a legislative assistant to former Sen. William Proxmire (D-Wis.). From there, he launched into a career on the campaign trail. Shields' first major campaign experience was during Robert F. Kennedy's bid for the presidency, for which Shields helped organize the California primary. He then went on to work for Sen. Edmund Muskie's presidential campaign in 1972, R. Sargent Shriver's bid for the vice presidency and Rep. Morris Udall's campaign for the Democratic nomination in 1976. In 1979, Shields joined the editorial staff of The Washington Post and a year later started writing his column, which is now syndicated weekly by Creators Syndicate. In addition to written commentary, Shields began regular appearances on television and radio in the early 1980s, including a nightly piece on ABC Radio's "Look at Today."
Shields' book, "On the Campaign Trail," about the 1984 presidential campaign, has been praised as "funny," "irreverent" and "insightful" and for bringing that race "to magnificent light." As one reviewer put it, Shields "is the wittiest political analyst around, and he is frequently the most trenchant, fair-minded and thoughtful."
Now enjoying life as a full-time political pundit, Shields appears regularly on CNN, on public television and on radio. He speaks to audiences often, sharing his firsthand accounts and impressions of the major political events of the past few decades. He has also taught courses on American politics and the press at Harvard University and the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania. Shields lives near Washington, D.C., with his wife, Anne, chief of staff at the Interior Department.
Adam Smith (US Congressman, D-Washington) was born on June 15, 1965 and has lived his entire life in the 9th District. He grew up in SeaTac and graduated from Tyee High School in 1983.
Adam worked his way through college loading trucks for United Parcel Service and graduated from Fordham University in 1987. He attended the University of Washington Law School and earned his law degree in 1990.
Wanting to give something back to the community and represent the people he grew up with, Adam ran for the State Senate in 1990. At only 25 years of age, he became the youngest state senator in the country when he took office in 1991.
Criminal justice issues captured much of Adam's time and attention. He served as Chair of the State Senate Law and Justice Committee and as a prosecutor for the city of Seattle, working on domestic violence and drunk driving cases when the Washington State Senate was not in session.
He developed a reputation as a centrist legislator focused on practical, problem-solving.
In 1996, he brought his thoughtful, commonsense leadership to Congress. Adam is a member of the House Armed Services Committee, where he chairs the Terrorism, Unconventional Threats and Capabilities Subcommittee. He also serves on the House Foreign Affairs Committee.
Adam married Spokane native Sara Smith in August of 1993. Sara is a graduate of Seattle University Law School. The Smiths are both involved in community affairs and organizations throughout the region. They have two children: Kendall Charlotte, born in July of 2000; and Jack Evers, born in June of 2003. They live in Northeast Tacoma.
Gayle Smith is a Senior Fellow at the Center for American Progress and Co-Chair of the ENOUGH Project. She is also Director of the International Rights and Responsibilities Program. Previously, Smith served as Special Assistant to the President and Senior Director for African Affairs at the National Security Council from 1998-2001, and as Senior Advisor to the Administrator and Chief of Staff of the U.S. Agency for International Development from 1994-1998.
Smith was based in Africa for over 20 years as a journalist covering military, economic, and political affairs for the BBC, Associated Press, Reuters, Boston Globe, Christian Science Monitor, Toronto Globe & Mail, London Observer, and Financial Times. Smith has also consulted for a wide range of NGOs, foundations, and governmental organizations including UNICEF, the World Bank, Dutch Interchurch Aid, Norwegian Church Relief, and the Canadian Council for International Cooperation. She won the World Journalism Award from the World Affairs Council and the World Hunger Year Award in 1991, and in 1999 won the National Security Council’s Samuel Nelson Drew Award for Distinguished Contribution in Pursuit of Global Peace.
Smith is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations and serves on the boards of Oxfam America, the Africa America Institute, USA for Africa, and the National Security Network. She also serves on the policy advisory boards of DATA, the Acumen Fund, and the Global Fairness Initiative, and was the Working Group Chair on Global Poverty for the Clinton Global Initiative from 2005 to 2007.
Hernando de Soto is President of the Institute for Liberty and Democracy, headquartered in Lima, Peru and considered by The Economist to be one of the two most important think tanks in the world. Time and Forbes have chosen him as one of the leading innovators in the world, and more than 20,000 readers of Prospect and Foreign Policy ranked him as one of the world’s top 13 “public intellectuals.”
He has served as President of the Executive Committee of the Copper Exporting Countries Organization, as CEO of Universal Engineering Corporation (one of Europe’s largest consulting engineering firms), as a principal of the Swiss Bank Corporation Consultant Group, and as a governor of Peru’s Central Reserve Bank. He is the author of several books and papers on economic policy, including the seminal work The Mystery of Capital.
Lynn Sweet is the Washington Bureau Chief for the Chicago Sun-Times. She writes a column and a blog for the paper. At present, Sweet is been focusing on the 2008 presidential campaign, with an emphasis on Sen. Barack Obama (D-Ill.). Sweet is a regular guest on MSNBC programs and other national political shows.
Sweet traveled with Obama to Jordan, Israel, Germany, France and England in July. In 2006, Sweet flew to Africa with Obama, on a trip that included a visit to his father’s native Kenya. As the violence between Israelis and Palestinians was deepening, in 2002 she was sent to the region to cover the conflict. In 1995, Sweet broke the story on the perks the Clinton White House offered major donors. In 1990, Sweet was one of the first journalists in the U.S. to analyze political ads for accuracy. Before moving to Washington in September 1993, Sweet was the political writer for the paper.
Sweet was a Spring 2004 fellow at Harvard University's Institute of Politics at the Kennedy School of Government. She is a former president of the Washington Press Club Foundation and is a member of the Gridiron Club.
She has a master's from Northwestern University's Medill School of Journalism and an undergraduate degree from the University of California at Berkeley. She also attended the University of Illinois at Champaign-Urbana. She is a native of Chicago.
Alejandro Toledo is the former President of Peru (2001-2006) and current member of the Club de Madrid. President Toledo appeared in the international political scene in 1996-2000 when he formed and led a wide democratic coalition in the streets of Peru to bring down the autocratic regime of Alberto Fujimori. Toledo won new elections in May of 2001 becoming the first Peruvian President from indigenous descent to be democratically elected in five hundred years. Doctor Toledo has worked as a consultant for various international organizations, including the United Nations, the World Bank, the Inter-American Development Bank, the International Labour Organization (ILO), and the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD). He has also been a visiting scholar and a research associate at Harvard University and at Waseda University in Tokyo. Currently he is very committed to the promotion of the Global Center for Development and Democracy, of which he is the founder and President.
Cynthia Tucker is the editorial page editor of The Atlanta Journal-Constitution and a Pulitzer Prize-winning columnist whose work appears in dozens of newspapers. She is also a popular television commentator.
Tucker’s wide-ranging interests are evident in her twice-weekly column, in which she has taken on topics as varied as voting rights, immigration reform, the importance of education and the misguided war on drugs. In her capacity as editorial page editor, she is responsible for guiding the development of the Journal-Constitution’s opinion policies on national and international affairs as well as state and local issues.
Tucker has won many awards and honors, including the American Society of Newspaper Editors Distinguished Writing Award, the University of Alabama’s Clarence Cason Writing Award and Colby College’s Elijah Lovejoy Award. She was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for commentary in 2007.
She graduated from Auburn University in 1976 and was a Nieman Fellow at Harvard University in the 1988-89 academic year. Tucker is a member of the American Society of Newspaper Editors, the National Association of Minority Media Executives, the National Association of Black Journalists, the Atlanta Press Club and the Council on Foreign Relations.
Vin Weber is Chairman of the National Endowment for Democracy, a private, nonprofit organization created in 1983 to strengthen democratic institutions abroad. He also serves on the newly formed National Commission on Public Service, charged with improving performance and management in government agencies.
Mr. Weber is also managing partner for the Washington, D.C., office of Clark and Weinstock, a consulting firm providing strategic advice to businesses interested in the policymaking process of the legislative and executive branches of government. Prior to joining that firm, Mr. Weber established the nonprofit organization Empower America with Jack Kemp, Jeanne Kirkpatrick, William Bennett, and others. The organization advocates policies that emphasize individual responsibility and accountability in approaching economic, social welfare, and education problems.
Mr. Weber served in the United States House of Representatives from 1981 to 1993, representing Minnesota's 2nd Congressional District. He was a member of the Appropriations Committee and an elected member of the House Republican Leadership. Prior to his Congressional service, he served as campaign manager and chief Minnesota aide to Sen. Rudy Boschwitz (1978-1980), and as the co-publisher of The Murray County Herald (1976-1978).
Mr. Weber is a senior fellow at the Humphrey Institute at the University of Minnesota, where he is co-director of the Policy Forum (formerly the Mondale Forum). He is also a board member of several private sector and non-profit organizations, including ITT Educational Services, Department 56, and the Aspen Institute. He also serves on the Board of the Council on Foreign Relations and co-chaired an independent task force on U.S. Policy toward Reform in the Arab World with former U.S. Secretary of State Madeleine Albright. In addition, Mr. Weber is a member of the U.S. Secretary of Energy's Advisory Board.
Mr. Weber has been featured in numerous national publications, including The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, The Washington Post, The Los Angeles Times, The Associated Press, National Journal, and The New Republic. Mr. Weber is a sought-after political and policy analyst, appearing frequently on major television outlets, including NBC's Nightly News, The News Hour with Jim Lehrer on PBS, ABC's This Week, the CBS Early Show, Fox News Channel, CNN, and MSNBC.
Timothy E. Wirth is the President of the United Nations Foundation and the Better World Fund. Both organizations were founded in 1998 through a major financial commitment from Ted Turner to support and strengthen the work of the United Nations. Senator Wirth began his political career as a White House Fellow under President Lyndon Johnson and was Deputy Assistant Secretary for Education in the Nixon Administration. He represented Colorado in the U.S. House of Representatives from 1974 until 1987, and in the U.S. Senate from 1986 until 1993.
After two decades of service in elected politics, Senator Wirth was national Co-Chair of the Clinton-Gore campaign, and served in the U.S. Department of State as the first Undersecretary for Global Affairs from 1993 to 1997. He helped organize U.S. foreign policy in the areas of refugees, population, environment, science, human rights and narcotics. He chaired the United States Delegation at the 1994 Cairo Conference on Population and Development, and was the lead U.S. negotiator for the Kyoto Climate Conference until he resigned from the Administration in late 1997 to accept Ted Turner’s invitation to be President of the newly created United Nations Foundation.
Prior to entering politics, Senator Wirth was in private business in Colorado. He is a graduate of Harvard College and holds a Ph.D. from Stanford University. Senator Wirth is the recipient of numerous awards and honorary degrees, has served as a member of the Harvard Board of Overseers, and was recently honored as a Champion of the Earth by the United Nations Environment Programme.
James D. Wolfensohn is Chairman of Wolfensohn & Company, LLC, a private investment firm and an advisor to corporations and governments. Mr. Wolfensohn became Chairman of Citigroup International Advisory Board on April 18, 2006. He is also advisor to Citigroup’s senior management on global strategy and on international matters. Mr. Wolfensohn is also Chairman of the advisory group of the Wolfensohn Center, a new research initiative focused on global poverty, at the Brookings Institution. Mr. Wolfensohn was the ninth president of the World Bank Group (since 1995). On May 31, 2005, at the end of his second term, he left office and assumed the post of Special Envoy for Gaza Disengagement for the Quartet on the Middle East, a position he served until April 30, 2006. In this role, he helped coordinate Israel’s planned withdrawal from the Gaza Strip and spearheaded reconstruction efforts as Palestinians assumed sovereignty over the area. As President of the World Bank, he travelled to more than 120 countries in order to pursue the challenges facing the World Bank in regard to poverty and environmental issues. He successfully led initiatives on debt reduction, environmental sustainability, anti corruption programs, and AIDS prevention and treatment.
Prior to joining the Bank, Mr. Wolfensohn was an international investment banker. His last position was as President and Chief Executive Officer of James D. Wolfensohn, Inc., his own investment and corporate advisory firm set up in 1981 to work with major U.S. and international corporations. He relinquished his interests in the firm upon joining the World Bank.
Before setting up his own company, Mr. Wolfensohn held a series of senior positions in finance. He was Executive Partner of Salomon Brothers in New York and head of its investment banking department. He was Executive Deputy Chairman and Managing Director of Schroders Ltd. in London, President of J. Henry Schroders Banking Corporation in New York, and Managing Director of Darling & Co. of Australia.
Throughout his career Mr. Wolfensohn has also closely involved himself in a wide range of cultural and voluntary activities, especially in the performing arts. In 1970, Mr. Wolfensohn became involved in New York’s Carnegie Hall, first as a board member and later, from 1980 to 1991, as Chairman of the Board, during which time he led its successful effort to restore the landmark New York building. He is now Chairman Emeritus of Carnegie Hall. In 1990, Mr. Wolfensohn became Chairman of the Board of Trustees of the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts in Washington, D.C. On January 1, 1996, he was elected Chairman Emeritus. In May 1995 he was awarded an Honorary Knighthood by Queen Elizabeth II for his contribution to the arts. Mr. Wolfensohn has also been decorated by the Governments of Australia, Belgium, Brazil, France, Japan, Germany, Georgia, Mexico, Morocco, The Netherlands, Norway, Peru, Pakistan and Russia.
Mr. Wolfensohn has served as Chairman of the Board of the Institute for Advanced Study at Princeton University for the last 18 years. He has been President of the International Federation of Multiple Sclerosis Societies, Director of the Business Council for Sustainable Development, and served both as Chairman of the Finance Committee and as Director of the Rockefeller Foundation and of the Population Council, and as member of the Board of Rockefeller University. He is an Honorary Trustee of the Brookings Institution, a member of the Council on Foreign Relations and the Century Association in New York.
Born in Australia in December 1933, Mr. Wolfensohn is a naturalized U.S. citizen. He holds B.A. and LL.B. degrees from the University of Sydney and an M.B.A. from the Harvard Graduate School of Business. Before attending Harvard, he was a lawyer in the Australian law firm of Allen, Allen & Hemsley. Mr. Wolfensohn served as an Officer in the Royal Australian Air Force, and was a member of the 1956 Australian Olympic Fencing Team.
Kenneth Wollack is president of NDI. He has been actively involved in foreign affairs, journalism and politics since 1972.
Mr. Wollack joined NDI in 1986 as executive vice president. The Institute's board of directors, then chaired by former Vice President Walter Mondale, elected him president in March 1993.
Mr. Wollack has traveled extensively in Eastern and Central Europe, the former Soviet Union, Latin America, the Middle East, Asia and Africa on behalf of the Institute's political development programs.
Now chaired by former Secretary of State Madeleine Albright, the Institute maintains offices in more than 60 countries and works to support democratic elections, political parties, parliaments, civic engagement and women’s political empowerment.
Before joining NDI, Mr. Wollack co-edited the Middle East Policy Survey, a Washington-based newsletter. He also wrote regularly on foreign affairs for the Los Angeles Times. From 1973 to 1980, he served as legislative director of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC).
Mr. Wollack has been active in American politics, serving on the national staff of the McGovern presidential campaign in 1972. He graduated from Earlham College in Richmond, Indiana, and was a senior fellow at UCLA’s School for Public Affairs. He has testified in numerous occasions before congressional committees, appeared on national television and radio, and spoken before world affairs councils across the country. He has served on various task forces sponsored by the Brookings Institute, the U.S. Institute for Peace, the Council on Foreign Relations and the Center for Global Engagement.
Mr. Wollack currently is a member of the Advisory Committee on Voluntary Foreign Aid and is the chairman of the board of directors for the U.S. Committee for the United Nations Development Programme.
National Democratic Institute
2030 M Street, NW, Fifth Floor
Washington, DC 20036-3306
Tel: 202.728.5471
Fax: 202.728.5556
www.ndi.org