SFWAF Mission

The Santa Fe World Affairs Forum aims to broaden and deepen understanding of world affairs through small, interactive, professionally led sessions on international issues for a membership of informed individuals.

Forum Membership

SFWAF members are foreign affairs specialists, scientists, artists, business people, journalists, educators, photographers, seasoned travelers and others with a zest for sharing what they know and a passion for learning more.

Current annual dues are $50 a member.  Modest fees apply for luncheon sessions.  Fees for symposia and other special events vary. Members play an active role in suggesting programs and by helping to recruit and escort speakers. Some members also serve as presenters, sharing new developments in their own spheres of expertise.  Finally, members also play an active organizational role by serving on the Board of Directors and on vital committees.

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If you are interested in joining SFWAF, contact us

Tell us who you are, why you would like to join us and what you think you might be able to contribute.
The membership dues are payable via the Payment Page.
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Board Members

Patricia Kushlis
Patricia KushlisPresident
Pat is a retired US Foreign Service Officer specializing in public diplomacy. Pat has served extensively within Europe, Asia, and at the US Information Agency Headquarters. Pat holds a Ph.D in Political Science from the Maxwell School, Syracuse University. She is co-writer of the foreign affairs blog WhirledView. Pat is a cofounder of SFWAF.
Arvid Lundy
Arvid LundyVice President
Arvid has extensive experience in nuclear export controls, nuclear proliferation intelligence, electronic instrumentation design, and clinical medical physics. Arvid spent thirty one years at Los Alamos National Laboratory as project engineer, group leader, and program manager. His career included over 100 foreign trips for the US government on nuclear issues, especially international nuclear export control.
Felicia Naranjo Martinez
Felicia Naranjo MartinezTreasurer
Felicia Naranjo Martinez Felicia served as Executive Director of the Colorado European Union Center of Excellence at the University of Colorado Boulder for over a decade. During her tenure she secured funding for numerous multiyear grant awards that allowed for support, co-sponsorship and partnership on events and activities with SFWAF. In collaboration with partner organizations like SFWAF, she successfully orchestrated innumerable platforms for knowledge and understanding of the European Union to communities across a wide radius of the Mountain West Region of the United States.
Sue Benedict
Sue BenedictSecretary
Sue’s international experience began as an American Field Service Student to France in 1960. In 1963 she became secretary to the Administrator of Tenefly, New Jersey and the Tenefly Planning Board and later secretary to a Vice President at Thomas J Lipton. She then became involved with the Waldorf Schools, where she began teaching while her children attended nursery school through 12th grade making many international connections through this global movement. She regularly hosted international exchange students (her own children were exchange students in Germany which led to family travels throughout Europe.) She then studied Biographical Counseling in England and worked in a British clinic while doing a counseling practicum in England. Summer 2000, she participated in “Hands in Peace,” a second track citizen based peace initiative in Greece for children from countries experiencing major social conflict, including Israelis and Palestinians. The initiative brought these children together in Olympia, mixing them with children from other countries, teaching them the original Olympic sports as well as providing activities in art, dance, music, crafts and culminating in Delphi in Olympics based athletic competitions. Through her Waldorf experience, Sue had the opportunity to travel and visit families in other countries which broadened her understanding of today’s world. In 1991 she graduated from nursing school and pursued a career in nursing until moving to Santa Fe 4 years ago.
Rossana Jordan
Rossana JordanMembership Chair
A humanitarian practitioner with over 30 years of experience out of which 25 years were spent working for one of the United Nation’s organizations, UNOPS (United Nations Office for Project Services). UNOPS is the operational branch of the United Nations with expertise in international procurement, project management and infrastructure worldwide, particularly in conflict areas where I worked as UNOPS Head of Support Services focused on managing an operations team in Human Resources, International Procurement, Finance and IT services to multiple projects in Sri Lanka during the post-Tsunami period to help reconstruct Sri Lanka, subsequently Myanmar, then Haiti, disaster relief operations after the earthquake that took place in January 2010, and finally the Democratic Republic of Congo. I provided support in my capacity as Head of Support Services in multiple UNOPS infrastructure projects with great focus on project management for the construction of roads, bridges, hospitals, schools, maternity wards, health centers, water and sanitation projects, community centers, semi-permanent homes, and more, funded by multiple donors: World Bank, Asian Development Bank, Inter-American Development Bank, USAID, European Union, and beneficiary governments, among others. In essence, I’m an internationalist and a humanitarian practitioner at heart.
Jane Abbott
Jane AbbottMember
Jane graduated fromThe American College of Greece in Athens, Greece. She was a Peace Corps Volunteer and Peace Corps staff in Nepal, the Solomon Islands, and Kiribati. She earned a Ph.D. from Colorado State University in community college leadership. She taught mostly integrated humanities in community colleges in Colorado and served as a dean for 12 years. She has also participated in three short-term Fulbrights in Paraguay, Germany, and Thailand. Most recently, Jane directed a program for first generation, low income students at Santa Fe Community College.
William Finnoff
William FinnoffMember
William was born and spent his early years in Denver, then later attended high school in Steamboat Springs Colorado. After graduating from high school, he spent a number of years working on oil drilling rigs and mines in Colorado, Wyoming and Alaska. He resumed his education after this period, first learning German, then studying at the Ludwig Maximillians Universitaet in Munich, where he received both undergraduate and PhD degrees in mathematics. After university, he worked for a number of years in Germany, first at the Ifo Institute for Economic Research then in the Central Research Department of Siemens A.G., doing research on various problems in finance, economics, plant control and medical imaging. He then returned to the United States and spent the next twenty years doing financial and economic research at a number of different financial institutions. In 2008 he left the financial world to found, together with one of his brothers, Finnoff Aviation Products, a company that develops, certifies and sells aftermarket components for civil aviation aircraft. William is still an active researcher and has numerous publications in the areas of mathematics, economics, machine learning and statistical methodology.
C. E. (Ed) Hildebrand
C. E. (Ed) HildebrandMember
Ed received undergraduate education in physics at Gettysburg College, and earned M.S. and Ph.D. degrees in biophysics from the Pennsylvania State University. His multidisciplinary scientific interests led to involvement in bioscience research, leadership and management roles at Los Alamos National Laboratory with interim postings with the Foreign Service as Science Attaché at the U.S Embassy, London, at the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy, and at the NIH. His research at LANL focused on the international human genome project. Prior to retirement from LANL, he engaged in building collaborative programs with regional universities. More recently, Ed was a principal science and engineering analyst with a not for profit national and homeland security contractor serving multiple federal agencies and state entities.
Wayne Hardie
Wayne Hardie Member
Wayne was raised on a farm in eastern South Dakota. He went to a one-room schoolhouse (some years there were only four kids in the whole Grades 1-8 school) then to high school in Redfield, SD (population 2214), college at South Dakota State University (physics) and graduate school at Oregon State University (nuclear engineering).

He worked at Richland Washington for 15 years—the first 10 years designing nuclear reactors. He came to Los Alamos Scientific Laboratory/Los Alamos National Laboratory in 1979 and retired in 2010. There he managed a group of multidisciplinary scientists and economists doing computer modeling, simulations, and analyses for the Department of Energy, Department of Defense, Department of State, Treasury Department, and the Department of Homeland Security. His group had a major energy program in Central America in the 80’s and another in air quality in Mexico in the 90’s.

Wayne had a a two-month assignment as a guest scientist at the Swiss Federal Institute for Reactor Research but otherwise has lived in the US including Los Alamos for 42 years. He has made several business trips to Mexico, Central America, and some to South America. Since retiring, he and his wife, Linda, usually take three international trips/year.

Krista Peterson
Krista PetersonMember
Krista Peterson received a degree in radio/television/film from Northwestern University in 1993 but it was a presentation by the US Department of State during her college years that led her to join the Foreign Service. She arrived in Tegucigalpa, Honduras—her first foreign country other than Canada and Mexico—in September 1998 to live and work. Hurricane Mitch devasted Honduras two weeks later, which made for a very interesting two years in the consular section.

After Russian language training she arrived in Ukraine about one month before the terrorist attack in the US on September 11, 2001. Not long after that she consolidated many US agencies spread out across Kyiv and administrative functions housed in shipping containers on the Embassy grounds into two floors of a leased building. She has been an administrative specialist ever since and has worked for several different for profit businesses and nonprofit and educational organizations in Española and Santa Fe.

Craig Roepke
Craig Roepke Member
Craig Roepke was born in Florida but grew up on his family’s farm on Michigan’s Upper Peninsula. After his father’s return from WWII, the family traveled throughout the United States and Europe. After graduating from the University of New Mexico and a stint in the Marines, he became a carpenter, contractor, and surfer in San Diego. In a bit of serendipity, he signed on for a short trip on a tuna boat. After 13 years, he realized it was time to take early retirement – that is, except for trips to Italy for business and pleasure. He then returned to school to study geology at the New Mexico Institute of Technology specializing in hydrology. Graduation led to work at Sandia National Laboratories (SNL), consulting, and building a water program for the Cheyenne River Sioux Tribe in South Dakota, then back to New Mexico with the New Mexico Interstate Stream Commission. He retired again a few years ago and has taken up catch and release fly fishing with his incredible and beautiful wife Suzanne.