Jane Abbott
Jane graduated from The 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.
Mark Asquino
Mark L. Asquino recently retired from the U.S. Foreign Service after a three decades plus career that included postings in Latin America, Europe, Central Asia and Africa. During 2012-2015, he was U.S. Ambassador to the Republic of Equatorial Guinea, the third largest oil and gas producer in Sub-Saharan Africa. He previously served as Deputy Chief of Mission in Sudan, another major oil producing nation. In Washington, he was Chief of Staff in the Office of the Under Secretary for Civilian Security, Democracy, and Human Rights at the U.S. Department of State. From 2010 to 2011, he had an academic year detail from State as Senior Public Diplomacy Fellow at George Washington University.
Ambassador Asquino earned a Ph.D. in American Civilization from Brown University, where he also did his undergraduate studies. He is married to Jane S. Asquino.
Mikhail Alexseev
Mikhail Alexseev, Professor of Political Science, San Diego State University, is a specialist on migration, ethnopolitical conflict and post-Soviet Russia. He is the author of “Immigration Phobia and the Security Dilemma: Russia, Europe and the United States” (Cambridge University Press, 2006) and the principal investigator of a multi-year international research project on migration and ethno-religious violence in the Russian Federation. He has published articles in various academic journals and opinion pieces on Soviet and post-Soviet affairs in the New York Times, Newsweek, the Toronto Globe and Mail, USA Today and the Seattle Times.
Daniel Baer
Dan Baer is a Diplomat in Residence at the University of Denver’s Josef Korbel School of International Affairs. He was U.S. ambassador to the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe from 2013 to 2017. He previously served as a Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for Democracy, Human Rights, and Labor from 2009-2013. Baer was an assistant professor at Georgetown’s McDonough School of Business, a Faculty Fellow at Harvard’s Safra Center for Ethics, and a project leader at The Boston Consulting Group. He has appeared on CNN, Fox, BBC, PBS Frontline, Al Jazeera, Sky, and The Colbert Report and his writing has appeared in The Wall Street Journal, USA Today, Politico, The Christian Science Monitor, Foreign Policy, The Chronicle of Higher Education, Westword, The Denver Post, and several other publications. He holds a doctorate in International Relations from Oxford, where he was a Marshall Scholar, and a degree in Social Studies and African American Studies from Harvard. He lives in his native Colorado with his husband, Brian.
Michael Battle
A retired US Army Reserve Chaplain, diplomat, academic, prolific writer, university and seminary administrator and President of the Interdenominational Theological Center, Atlanta, Georgia, Michael A. Battle served as US Ambassador to the African Union (2009-13) as well as US Permanent Representative to the United Nations Economic Commission for Africa (2010-13) both headquartered in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia.
From January 2015-2017, he served as Executive Vice President/Provost at the National Underground Railroad Freedom Center in Cincinnati, Ohio. The Center provides academic and experiential engagements on the broad issues of international freedom and combatting slavery.
In 2014 Ambassador Battle served as Senior Advisor to the African Bureau of the US State Department for the first Summit of African Heads of State and Government hosted in the US by an American president and managed the diplomatic side of the Summit.
He received his BA from Trinity College, Hartford, Connecticut, Master of Divinity from Duke University, Durham, North Carolina and his Doctor of Ministry with Emphasis in Ethics from Howard University, Washington, DC. He also completed the Institute for Educational Management (IEM) at Harvard University Graduate School of Education and the Millennial Leadership Institute, sponsored by the American Association of State Colleges and Universities. He is a graduate of the US Army Reserve Command and General Staff College.
Ambassador Battle is married to the former Linda Ann McClure. They have three adult children, and five grandchildren.
Ralph Begleiter
During two decades as CNN’s “world affairs correspondent,” Ralph Begleiter was the network’s most widely-traveled reporter, covering five U.S. Secretaries of State and three Presidents. During the 1980s and 1990s, he covered U.S. diplomacy, interviewed countless world leaders, hosted the public affairs program “Global View,” and co-anchored CNN’s “International Hour.” Later, he hosted the nationally broadcast PBS program “Great Decisions.” He has worked in 100 countries on all 7 continents, including taking university students to Cuba, South America, Turkey, the United Arab Emirates and Antarctica. At the invitation of the U.S. government, Begleiter has taught journalists in Cambodia, Thailand, Jordan, Syria and Taiwan, and media-related classes for U.S. National Security Agency employees as well as lectured for a wide array of organizations in the US, the UK and abroad.
During nearly two decades at the University of Delaware, he was founding Director of the Center for Political Communication, and brought more than 30 years of broadcast journalism experience to his award-winning instruction in communication, journalism, and political science. In 2004-5, Begleiter successfully used the Freedom of Information Act in the United States to prompt public release of hundreds of photos taken by the U.S. government of fallen American soldiers returning home from Afghanistan and Iraq in flag-draped caskets. The ban on visibility of returning casualties was lifted by the Pentagon in 2009. For this effort, in 2012 Common Cause of Delaware honored Begleiter with its John Gardner Lifetime Achievement Award.
He earned his Honors B.A. in political science at Brown University and his M.S. in journalism at Columbia.
Jeff Bingaman, Jr.
A native of Silver City, NM and former private practice attorney along with his wife Anne Kovacovich, Bingaman was Attorney General of New Mexico from 1979 to 1983 focusing on environmental and antitrust issues. He has worked consistently to protect wildlife and public lands. He championed the Clean Energy Act of 2007 and its importance in developing clean technology and green jobs and supported the bill’s principle of eliminating tax breaks on gas and oil companies. He continues to support a bill to reduce greenhouse gas emissions via “cap and trade” and also to increase federal funds for R&D in green technologies. He is a graduate of Harvard University and Stanford University Law School. The Bingamans have one son.
Donald M Bishop
Melissa Bokovoy
Chair and Professor of History
Regents Lecturer, The University of New Mexico
Melissa Bokovoy is professor and chair of the history department at the University of New Mexico, Albuquerque. Bokovoy obtained her PhD from Indiana University, Bloomington in the field of Eastern Europe since 1453. She has been at the University of New Mexico since 1991. She is the author of Peasants and Communists: Politics and Ideology in the Yugoslav Countryside, 1941–1953 (Pittsburgh, 1998), which won the Barbara Jelavich Prize of the Association for Slavic, East European, and Eurasian Studies. She is co-editor of State-Society Relations in Yugoslavia, 1945–1992 (Palgrave Macmillan, 1997) and co-author of Sharing the Stage: Biography and Gender in Western Civilization, 2 vols. (Houghton-Mifflin, 2003) and Sharing the World Stage: Biography and Gender in World History, 2 vols. (Cengage, 2009). She has published numerous articles and book chapters on 20th-century Yugoslavia. UNM has recognized her for both her scholarship and teaching. In 2001, she was appointed University of New Mexico Regents’ Lecturer. In 2011, she was named UNM Outstanding Teacher of the Year. In 2013, she became co-principal investigator of UNM’s AHA Career Diversity Pilot Program funded by the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation. She is now completing a manuscript on the politics of commemoration in interwar Yugoslavia.
Karl-Braithwaite
Karl Braithwaite, SFWAF Member
Karl Braithwaite is a specialist in the relationship between science and government; a former Director of Government Relations for Sandia and Senior Manager for Los Alamos National Laboratories having dealt with national security issues, environment and energy topics, and science and technology policy issues over the years retiring from public service after 49 years; and Dean of the Muskie School of Public Service at the University of Southern Maine. Currently a leader in the Rio Grande Chapter of the Sierra Club, his PhD in political science is from the University of Wisconsin.
Beatrice Camp
Ms. Camp’s 32-year career as a foreign service officer was evenly split between the U.S. Information Agency and the U.S. Department of State, with assignments in Beijing, Bangkok, Stockholm, Budapest, Chiang Mai, Shanghai, and Washington, DC. With her appointment in Shanghai, Ms. Camp became the first woman, and the first public diplomacy officer, to lead a U.S. Consulate in China. In addition, she twice managed U.S. participation in major world’s fairs – Shanghai Expo 2010 and Milan Expo 2015 — and served as Senior Advisor at the Smithsonian.
Before joining the foreign service, Ms. Camp taught English at Chiang Mai University in northern Thailand, worked as a journalist in Washington, DC, and helped pioneer the first electronic news service at Dow Jones in New York. She is married to retired FSO David Summers.
Deborah Cornelius
Stephen Creskoff
David Douglas
Douglas practiced environmental law and wrote extensively in the 1980’s and 1990’s on global drinking water issues. He is the author of “Wilderness Sojourn: Notes in the Desert Silence,” “Letters of Faith: Memoirs of an Appalachian Conversion,” and co-author with his wife, Deborah, of “Pilgrims in the Kingdom: Travels in Christian Britain.” He and Deborah live in Santa Fe and have two grown daughters and five grandchildren.
James Doyle
Evelyn A. Early
Her publications include: Baladi Women of Cairo: Playing with an Egg and a Stone, the co-edited Everyday Life in the Muslim Middle East, so popular in university courses it is in the third edition, “Telepreachers and Talk Shows: The Fight over Egyptian Airwaves,” “Syrian Television Drama: Permitted Political Discourse,” “Fertility and Fate,” “Poetry and Pageants: Growing up in the Syrian Vanguard.” She lives in Albuquerque, New Mexico.
2. “Climate change and mass media: The disconnect between science and public perception”
Douglas Fox
A guest lecturer for science writing and environmental programs at the University of California, Stanford University, and Iowa State University, he was a co-author for The Science Writers’ Handbook (Da Capo Press, 2013). Doug’s stories have garnered national awards from the American Association for the Advancement of Science (2009), the American Society of Journalists and Authors (2011), and the National Association of Science Writers (2013); his stories have been anthologized in The Best American Science Writing (2012), The Best Technology Writing (2010), and The Best American Science & Nature Writing (2009).
Linda Pappas Funsch
She has taught at several colleges in New York and Maryland, including Iona College, Mount Saint Mary’s University, Hood College and — for 15 years and currently — at Frederick (MD) Community College’s Institute for Learning in Retirement. She has guest lectured at Georgetown University, the World Affairs Council, the World Bank, the National Defense University, Mary Washington University, and Baylor University, among others. She has also been interviewed on the Voice of America. In addition, she is engaged in a number of ecumenical outreach activities, aimed at fostering an understanding and appreciation of the shared values among the Abrahamic faith traditions.
Judy Garber
Action Task Force”
Javier Gonzales
community taught him respect and diversity. As Mayor, Javier is actively engaged in making Santa Fe the leader in the green economy.
Javier currently also serves as the Vice President of Corporate Responsibility and Sustainability for Rosemont Realty, where he oversees the greening of office buildings to increase their energy efficiency. He has served on the Santa Fe County Commission and in 2001 was elected as the first Hispanic president of the National Association of Counties which represents more than 3,000 counties nationwide. He served two terms as chair of the Democratic Party of New Mexico and remains active in promoting better education for youth as he did through service on the Board of Regents for New Mexico State University and New Mexico Highlands University.
Todd Greentree
Dr. Raul Gouvea
His full vitae is available at http://www.mgt.unm.edu
Jesse Guillen
Renate Hahlen
Dr Hahlen previously worked on EU cooperation with Algeria, Jordan, Vietnam and Laos and held posts in the German federal administration related to international and bilateral debt initiatives for developing countries and on EU related issues. She studied in Germany, Switzerland and Turkey, graduated in law and holds a PhD in international private and comparative law from Germany’s Freiburg University.
Suzanne Hayden
Suzanne Hayden spent over 30 years as a US and International prosecutor. She was a senior prosecutor for the Department of Justice and a trial attorney at the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia where she started the first UN financial intelligence unit to follow the money of Slobodan Milosevic and supervised one of the earliest global stolen assets investigations against a sitting State’s leader. She was the DOJ legal advisor in Russia and Turkey and drafted anti-money laundering, terrorist finance and asset forfeiture legislation at the request of over 25 countries. Ms. Hayden served as the US Department of Justice’s (DOJ) first national security coordinator and represented the DOJ in the Financial Action Task Force (FATF), the global standard setter for antimony laundering and terrorist financing.
During her career, Ms. Hayden served as a senior advisor for the US Intelligence Community, the US Department of Justice, the US Department of the Treasury Office of Technical Assistance, the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime and the International Anti-Corruption Academy in Austria. She is on the Board of Trustees of the UN Interregional Crime and Justice Research Institute and sits on two advisory boards for illicit trade and anti-corruption. Ms. Hayden is currently the legal strategist for International Wildlife Trust, an NGO formed to build prosecutable cases against organized crime groups whose wild life criminal activities have thus far remained insulated and untouchable. Ms. Hayden continues to follow her passion for Native American issues and is working on a strategy to address the US tragedy of murdered and missing Native American women and girls through investigation, advocacy and legislation.
Siegfried S. Hecker
He served as the fifth director of the Los Alamos National Laboratory from 1986-1997. Hecker received his B.S., M.S., and Ph.D. degrees in metallurgy from Case Western Reserve University. His professional interests include nuclear weapons policy, plutonium research, global nuclear risk reduction with Russia, China, Pakistan, India, North Korea and Iran, and threats of nuclear terrorism.
John Herbst
Ed Hildebrand
Ed Hildebrand, SFWAF Member
Ed Hildebrand has multidisciplinary experience in the biosciences and in national and international science and technology policy analysis. After earning a Ph.D. in biophysics from the Pennsylvania State University, he joined the Los Alamos National Laboratory where his research focused on the international human genome project. While at LANL he also served in postings to the Foreign Service as Science Attaché at the U.S. Embassy in London and to the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy. More recently, Ed was a science and engineering analyst with a not for profit national and homeland security contractor. He is currently a member of the Santa Fe World Affairs Forum Board.
Laura S. H. Holgate
Senior Nonresident Fellow, Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs, Kennedy School of Government, Harvard University
Ambassador Laura S. H. Holgate is currently a consultant to the Third Way’s project on advanced nuclear reactors and national security, and to the Pacific Northwest National Laboratory. Ambassador Holgate represented the United States at the International Atomic Energy Agency and UN offices in Vienna. In this role, she advanced U.S. priorities in nonproliferation, nuclear security, and verification of the Iran nuclear deal. Amb. Holgate was previously the Special Assistant to the President and Senior Director on the National Security Council, where she coordinated the development of national policies and programs to thwart terrorist access to and use of nuclear, biological and chemical weapons. She was the U.S. Sherpa to the Nuclear Security Summits and co-led the Global Health Security Agenda. Amb. Holgate held senior positions at the non-profit Nuclear Threat Initiative as well as the Departments of Energy and Defense, in which she designed and implemented innovative approaches to reducing the weapons of mass destruction threats posed by the collapse of the Soviet Union. Amb. Holgate holds degrees from Princeton University and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
Vicki Huddleston
Ambassador Vicki Huddleston, is an American diplomat with lengthy expertise in foreign, defense, and development policy. She was a senior advisor to the Secretary of Defense and led American diplomatic missions in Mali, Madagascar, Cuba and Ethiopia. In Haiti she was Chief of Party for a USAID Value Chain project. She was a Visiting Fellow at the Brookings Institution, a Fellow at the Institute of Politics at Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government, and as a Congressional Fellow worked on the staff of former Senator Jeff Bingaman (D-NM).
Vicki’s opinion pieces on Cuba, Mali, and Ethiopia have appeared in The New York Times, The LA Times, The Miami Herald, and The Washington Post. She is the author of Our Woman in Havana and co-author of Learning to Salsa – New Steps in Cuban Relations.
Brian Hurd
He has lectured and provided expert assistance in various countries including Thailand, Cambodia, Tunisia, Spain, Senegal, Saudi Arabia, Philippines, Australia, and Italy. He has served as Associate Editor for the Journal of Natural Resources Policy Research and as President of the Universities Council on Water Resources (UCOWR) Board of Directors.
Dr. Joe Jupille
Charles “Chick” Keller
His earliest work at LANL involved photographing total solar eclipses from high altitude aircraft. Later, he helped to pioneer the Lab’s computer modeling of the Earth’s atmosphere and oceans. He devoted twenty years to the study of climate change—in particular human induced global warming including a sabbatical at Scripps Institution of Oceanography. In addition Keller was a co-founder of the Pajarito Environmental Education Center where he has established a modest herbarium of some 3,000 archived plants from the Jemez Mountains. He has had a life-long passion for science and nature and enjoys communicating this to others.
Kristie Kenney
Ambassador Kenney served as the 32nd Counselor of the State Department, the Departments fifth ranking official position and on behalf of Secretary Kerry, led delegations to Latin America and Asia.
As Ambassador to Thailand from 2011-2014, Ambassador Kenney was the first female to head U.S. Embassy Bangkok, one of the United States largest diplomatic missions with over 3,000 staff.
She was the Ambassador to the Philippines from 2006-2010, the first woman to hold that post. She coordinated U.S. military and development assistance over multiple natural disasters. During this and subsequent assignments, she pioneered use of social media by U.S. Ambassadors to connect with diverse and dynamic foreign audiences. Earlier, she served as Ambassador to Ecuador where she advanced U.S. business and security interests in Latin America.
Ambassador Kenney holds a Bachelor’s degree from Clemson University and a Master’s degree from Tulane University. She also attended the National War College in Washington, D.C. She speaks Spanish and French, as well as some Thai and Tagalog. She is married to Ambassador William Brownfield. When not rooting for Washington area sports teams, Ambassador Kenney enjoys travel, skiing, and connecting with social media friends around the world.
Daniel Kochis
His writings have been featured in Forbes, Foxnews, RealClearWorld, the National Interest, and the Washington Times. A frequent media contributor, Daniel has provided expert analysis in hundreds of interviews for foreign and domestic outlets including Al-Jezeera English, FoxNews, National Public Radio, Wall Street Journal, and Voice of America. Daniel has presented at the Transatlantic Think Tank Conference in Brussels, Belgium as well as the US Southern Command, and has provided parliamentary evidence to the UK House of Lords Select Committee on the Arctic.
Kendra Koivu
Ellen Laipson
Henry (Hank) A. Levine
Before entering the private sector Mr. Levine spent 25 years as a Foreign Service Officer with the US Department of State. In this capacity he served twice in the State Department’s Office of China Affairs, twice at the US Embassy in Beijing, and as US Consul General in Shanghai. Following his tour in Shanghai he served for three years as the Deputy Assistant Secretary for Asia at the US Department of Commerce. In that capacity he was the senior China advisor to two secretaries of Commerce and lead negotiator for the annual US-China Joint Commission on Commerce and Trade.
Mr. Levine is a member of the National Committee on US China Relations and a member of the Advisory Council of the US-China Education Trust, where he previously served as Executive Director. Mr. Levine has a B.A. in Political Science from Bucknell University. He did graduate work in international affairs at the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy at Tufts University. He is a graduate, with distinction, from the US National War College. He is fluent in Chinese (Mandarin).
Fernando Lopez-Alves
Arvid Lundy
Elizabeth Manak
Dr. Elizabeth Manak is a South Asia and nonproliferation specialist. In her thirty plus years with the Central Intelligence Agency, Elizabeth worked in a variety of positions both in the US and abroad. Most recently, she was an adviser to a US Embassy working on topics of interest in South Asia. For two years prior to that, Elizabeth was the Deputy National Intelligence Officer for the Near East and South Asia in the National Intelligence Council.
Elizabeth also was Chief for Community Collection Strategies in the Office of Weapons Intelligence and Nonproliferation and Executive Officer for the Nonproliferation Center. From 1996 to 1998 she was Deputy Director in the Department of Energy’s Office of Intelligence where she managed a unit of intelligence analysts and provided direction and oversight to the analytic processes and products of the intelligence components at the National Laboratories. At DOE, she also served as Division Chief for Nuclear Weapons Analysis, overseeing programs of analysis at the National Laboratories.
Prior to working at DOE, she was Deputy Chief of Analysis and DI Proliferation Coordinator in the DCI’s Nonproliferation Center and served as a Branch Chief in the Office of Near East and South Asian Analysis. Elizabeth was awarded the National Intelligence Medal of Achievement, the Career Intelligence Medal and a number of other meritorious awards.
Before joining the federal government, Elizabeth was program manager for the Southeast Asia Studies Program at the University of Wisconsin, Madison where she directed a Speakers program and publishing house. A California native who grew up on Guam, Elizabeth received her B.A. and M.A. in History from California State University and her Ph.D. in South Asian History and Agricultural Economics on an East West Center Grant at the University of Hawaii.
Shana McDermott
climate change which require a detailed understanding of both biological and economic processes. Collaborating with natural scientists and policy-makers has added a practical
dimension to her modeling approaches and potential policy implications. She has published in top field journals, including Ecological Economics, Land Economics, and Ecological
Applications, and contributed to several chapters in environmental economics books. Prior to coming to UNM, Shana was a postdoctoral research associate at Dartmouth College in the departments of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology and Environmental Studies.
Ted McNamara
He retired in 1997 as Assistant Secretary of State for Politico-Military Affairs, but returned in 2001 to be Senior Advisor to the Secretary on terrorism and homeland security. He previously served as Ambassador to Colombia, Special Assistant to the President, Ambassador at Large for Counter Terrorism, Special Negotiator for Panama, and other senior positions. From 1998 to 2001 he was President and CEO of the Americas Society and Council of the Americas in New York.
He was Program Manager for the Information Sharing Environment, reporting to the President, Congress, and Director of National Intelligence (2006-09). He is also Adjunct Professor in the Elliot School of International Affairs at the George Washington University.
A career diplomat with postings in Colombia, Russia, Congo, and France, he has written extensively on Latin America, terrorism, arms control, non-proliferation and regional security. He is the recipient of numerous distinguished service awards and has appeared on the PBS Newshour, CNN, NPR, BBC, VOA and other national and international news media.
Mary Minow
Shelly Mueller
Ms. Mueller has served as a speaker for the U.S. Department of State in Saudi Arabia, Japan, and Washington, D.C., giving lectures and conducting workshops on leadership development for nonprofit organizations. In 2014, Georgetown University Press published the second edition of her book Working World: Careers in International Education, Exchange, and Development. Ms. Mueller earned her M.A.L.D. and Ph.D. from the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy.
Dr. Emile Nakhleh
Jerry Pacheco
Experience:
President of Global Perspectives Integrated, a New Mexico-based international trade and project management firm (1996 to the present). A selection of Global Perspectives’ clients includes Cementos de Chihuahua, the Public Service Company of New Mexico, SABRAE (the Brazilian Furniture Association), the U.S. Department of Commerce, World Photo Press, along with a host of smaller companies.
Director of Marketing, Santa Teresa Real Estate Development Corporation (1999 to 2004)
VP of Business Banking (commercial and international banking) of Norwest Bank (1994 to 1996)
Director of the State of New Mexico’s Trade and Tourism Office in Mexico City (1991 to 1994)
North American Trade Specialist, State of New Mexico (1990 to 1991)
Syndicated Columnist: For the past 23 years, Mr. Pacheco has published his “Business Across Borders” column, which appears in the Albuquerque Journal, El Paso Inc. and Ser Empresario Magazine. The column focuses on international trade, economics and cultural issues.
Has testified as an expert witness on the North American Free Trade Agreement and U.S.-Mexico trade before the U.S. Senate Finance Committee in Washington, D.C.
Has taught international management, economics, marketing and public relations classes at the University of New Mexico, the College of Santa Fe and Highlands University.
Past board member and Treasurer of the U.S.-Mexico Border District Export Council. Pacheco is currently the Treasurer for this group, which is appointed by the Secretary of the U.S. Department of Commerce.
Past member of the Advisory Board of the Inter-American Foundation
Past board member of the El Paso Foreign Trade Association, the North American Institute and Loretto Academy
Bachelor’s of Business Administration in Marketing, an M.B.A. in International Management and a Masters in Latin American studies – all from the University of New Mexico.
Mr. Pacheco is married to Loretta Pacheco and they have a 20-year old son.
Ankit Panda
Ankit Panda is an award-winning American writer, analyst, and researcher specializing in international security, defense, geopolitics, and economics. His work has appeared in a range of publications, including the New York Times, Foreign Affairs, the Diplomat, the Atlantic, the Daily Beast, Politico Magazine, and War on the Rocks. He is currently a senior editor at the Diplomat, where he writes daily on security, geopolitics, and economics in the Asia-Pacific region and hosts a popular podcast. He is also an adjunct senior fellow at the Federation of American Scientists, where his work focuses on nuclear and conventional force developments in Asia, deterrence, and nuclear strategy.
Panda has additionally published scholarly research in journals including the Washington Quarterly, the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, and India Review. He is additionally a contributor to the International Institute on Strategic Studies’ Asia-Pacific Regional Security Assessment and Strategic Survey. Panda is also a consultant for a number of governments, international institutions, and corporations. He is a frequent participant in Track-2 and Track-1.5 dialogues in Asia, Europe, and North America. Panda is a graduate of the Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs at Princeton University. He lives in New York City and tweets at @nktpnd. His forthcoming book, Kim Jong Un and the Bomb: Survival and Deterrence in North Korea, published by Hurst Publisher will be available in 2020.
Krista Peterson
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.
Robin Raphel
Cheryl Rofer
Ray Rivera
Christine Sauer
Charles Shapiro
Jim Stent
Jane Thery
Ms. Thery began her international affairs career as a program officer with the Ford Foundation in Lima, Peru. She has held senior positions with the Peterson Institute for International Economics, the University of Maryland, and the U.S. House of Representatives. In 1995, she joined the OAS team supporting the negotiations for the Free Trade Area of the Americas and had since managed key portfolios in the Summits of the Americas Secretariat and the Secretariat for External Relations. She holds a BA in international relations from Duke University, a MA in international relations/economics from Yale University and is fluent in Spanish.
Panayotis J. Tsakonas
He has been Research Fellow at the Institute of International Relations (Athens, Greece), NATO Research Fellow, post-doctoral Fellow at the Weatherhead Center for International Affairs at Harvard University, Fulbright Visiting Scholar at the Macmillan Center for International and Area Studies at Yale University and Academic Visitor at St Antony’s College, Center for European Studies, University of Oxford.
He has worked as Chief International Affairs Analyst for the weekly New Europe (1994-96), as Advisor on defense and strategic issues at the Hellenic Ministry of National Defense (1996-1998) and as Special Advisor at the Hellenic Ministry of Foreign Affairs on security issues and on Greek-Turkish relations (1999-2003).
Prof. Tsakonas has published books, monographs and articles on International Relations theory, regional security issues, foreign policy analysis (FPA), Greek foreign and security policy and Greek-Turkish relations. His articles, book reviews and contributions in edited volumes have been published in several European countries, Canada, the United States and New Zealand, and in professional journals, including: Etudes Helléniques, Turkish Studies, Journal of Modern Hellenism, Journal of Southeast Europe and Black Sea Studies, Millennium: Journal of International Studies, Welt Trends, Politics: The Journal of the British Political Studies Association, Security Dialogue, The Hague Journal of Diplomacy etc.
His books/monographs include: National Security Strategy. Building the Greek Model for the Twenty-First Century (Papazissis, Athens, 2005, with Th. Dokos -in Greek), Multilateralism and Security Institutions in an Era of Globalization (Routledge, London and New York, 2007, co-editor), European Security Institutions and Interstate Conflict in the Eastern Mediterranean. Parochial, Necessary or Insufficient? (Hellenic Center for European Studies, September 2007, Athens), and The Incomplete Breakthrough in Greek-Turkish Relations. Grasping Greece’s Socialization Strategy (Palgrave-Macmillan, Basingstoke and New York, 2010).
James L. West
Dr. James L. West, a specialist in pre-revolutionary Russian society, holds a PhD in history from Princeton University. He taught at the European University in St Petersburg, Russia from 2015-17, the sole remaining private university in the Russian Federation, closed last summer by the Russian government in its drive to eliminate western liberal thought in the country.
He was a professor of history and humanities at Middlebury College (1995-2011) and professor of history at Trinity College, Hartford, Connecticut (1971-1995). During his academic career, he was the recipient of several prestigious US government grants to conduct and publish research in and on the Soviet Union which resulted in: Between Tsar and People (1991) and, Merchant Moscow, (1998) Princeton University Press and republished in Russia in 2008 which he edited.
In addition to Russian history, West has taught courses on the interplay of culture, society, intellectual thought and politics in Russia and Central Europe. He spoke at SFWAF’s first symposium “A Window on Russia” in 2006 on “Old Merchants and New Modernism: Moscow, Modern and Post-Modern 1905-2005 and at our 2018 symposium “Values, Myths and Interests: American Foreign Policy in an Unstable World” on “Up Off Our Knees: The Search for a Usable Past for Russia’s Resurgence.”
Folkert Geert Wilman
Folkert Wilman, attorney, EU Commission member, EU Legal Service, Brussels and EU Fellowship Program participant. He is responsible for digital single market related matters including e-commerce, geo-blocking, and online platforms; intellectual property enforcement and trade secrets; civil aviation; and EU satellite navigation programs. He has dealt with external aspects of the EU’s common agricultural policy and public health issues. He has advised the European Commission Directorates General on EU law questions, revising and codrafting EU legislation, participating in intra- and inter-institutional decision-making processes. He has represented the European Commission before the European Union Courts in various cases including the collaborative economy (Uber), e-commerce, customs, substantive intellectual property law and social affairs. As a member of the EU Commission’s Legal Service Equal Opportunities Committee he has provided in-house training to new members. His PhD in EU Law is from Leiden University (Netherlands) and his BA and MAs in EU and International Law are from the University of Groningen (Netherlands) and the College of Europe (Bruges, Belgium.)
Ambassador Kenneth Yalowitz
Ambassador Kenneth Yalowitz is Director of the Conflict Resolution MA Program at Georgetown University and a Global Fellow at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars. He served as a U.S. Foreign Service Officer for 36 years and was US Ambassador to Belarus from 1994-1997 and Georgia from 1998-2001. He also served two tours in Moscow as well as tours in The Hague and at the US Mission to NATO in Brussels. He was chosen for the Ambassador Robert Frasure award for peacemaking and conflict prevention in 2000 for his work in preventing spillover of the Chechen war into Georgia.
James Zumwalt
Ambassador (rtd) James Zumwalt
Ambassador James Zumwalt became CEO of the Sasakawa Peace Foundation USA in February 2017. He served for 36 years in the State Department with assignments as United States Ambassador to the Republic of Senegal and the Republic of Guinea Bissau, Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for Japan and the Korean Peninsula, Deputy Chief of Mission in U.S. Embassy Tokyo, and Director of the State Department Office of Japanese Affairs.
Ambassador Zumwalt received a master’s degree in International Security Studies from the National War College in 1998 and a BA in American History and Japanese Language from UC Berkeley in 1979. He speaks Japanese and French. He is married to Ann Kambara.
