Advisory Council
The Honorable Lloyd Axworthy, P.C., O.C., O.M.
President & Vice-Chancellor, University of Winnipeg
Dr. Axworthy’s political career spanned 27 years, during six of which he served in the Manitoba Legislative Assembly and twenty-one in the Federal Parliament. He held several Cabinet positions, notably Minister of Foreign Affairs from 1996-2000. Upon leaving public office, Dr. Axworthy served as Director and CEO of the Liu Institute for Global Issues at the University of British Colombia prior to his appointment at the University of Winnipeg. In the Foreign Affairs portfolio, Dr. Axworthy became internationally known for his advancement of the human security concept, in particular, the Ottawa Treaty - a landmark global treaty banning anti-personnel landmines. For his leadership on landmines, he was nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize. For his efforts in establishing the International Criminal Court and the Protocol on child soldiers, he received the North-South Prize of the Council of Europe. In 2004, UN Secretary General Kofi Annan appointed Lloyd Axworthy as his special envoy for Ethiopia-Eritrea. Dr. Axworthy currently serves as a commissioner on the Aspen Institute’s Dialogue and Commission on Arctic Climate Change. He is a Board member of the MacArthur Foundation, Human Rights Watch, the Educational Policy Institute, and the University of the Arctic, among others.
Amr Badr
Managing Director, Egypt and Middle East, Abercrombie and Kent - Cairo, Egypt
Managing Director for the Middle East and Egypt with Abercrombie and Kent, Amr Badr developed his career over the past 15 years in travel and hospitality industry as well as in international relations by serving in the Middle East, India, Europe, Canada, and the USA. He has been appointed to numerous committees and boards including the Suzanne Mubarak Women’s International Peace Movement, and the High Committee for Tourism Promotion and Media and Communications Committees of the Egyptian Tourism Federation. In 2003, he was unanimously elected to serve as Vice Chairman for Middle East and Africa People to People organization. He has received recognition for outstanding achievement and excellence from Queen Rania of Jordan, King Mohamed of Morocco, the Carter Center, People to People International, and MSC, among others.
The Honorable T.M. Franklin Cownie
Mayor, The City of Des Moines
Frank Cownie has served as mayor of the City of Des Moines since 2004. Prior to 2004, he served as an at-large council member, helped create the 2020 Character Plan, chaired the Des Moines Planning and Zoning Commission, and served as president of Downtown Des Moines, Inc. Mayor Cownie is a current member of the U.S. Conference of Mayors. He is co-chair of the Capital Cities Task Force and co-chair of the Homelessness Awareness Task Force.
Mary Murray Bosrock
President & CEO, International Education Systems
Mary Bosrock is the founder and CEO of International Education Systems. She is also the author and publisher of Put Your Best Foot Forward books, an award-winning series on cross-cultural communication and behavior. Bosrock is a featured speaker and consultant to multinational corporations, and a presenter of a training program on globalization. Her audiences have included such prominent organizations as Parke-Davis Pharmaceutical Research, Northwest Airlines, & American Express. A popular radio and television guest, she has appeared on CNN, CNBC, Fox News and A&E Network, among many others. Bosrock is a former editor of Foreign Trade magazine. She is currently a Senior Associate at The Protocol School of Washington, and serves on the board of Africa Calls Today, the American subsidiary of the Damietta Peace Initiative.
President Anicet George Dologuele
President, Central African States Development Bank - Republic of Congo
A former Finance Minister and Prime Minister of the Central African Republic, President Dologuele has been presiding over the Central African States Development Bank (BDEAC) since September 2001. Prior to that assignment, he was National Director at the Central African Reserve Bank (BEAC) for his country. He spent 19 years with BEAC where he assumed extensive managerial and operational roles ranging from the Governor’s Representative in France and Western Europe, Central Director for External Financial Relations to Central Director for Organization and Information Systems. He holds numerous honors and distinctions both nationally and internationally.
Mary Jean Eisenhower
President and CEO, People to People International
Mary Jean Eisenhower was born in Washington, D.C. during her grandfather Dwight D. Eisenhower’s first term in office as President of the United States. After several years of volunteer work with People to People International (PTPI), Mary currently serves as President and CEO. In 1999, Mary started the People to People International Friendship Fund (IFF) as a way for people to help the friends and facilities they visit throughout the world and to help the PTPI Chapter network assist each other. One hundred percent (100%) of all funds received through the IFF go to the efforts and projects as specified by the donors. Following September 11, 2001, Mary founded Peace Camp 2003: An Evolution of Thought and Action and The Global Peace Initiative, a special event co-hosted by H. E. Suzanne Mubarak, First Lady of the Arab Republic of Egypt. Both programs continue today, bringing people from diverse areas of the world together to discuss issues and reach a better understanding of their unique and individual cultures. President Eisenhower founded People to People International on September 11, 1956. Mary joined PTPI hoping to carry on her grandfather’s dream, and it has become her life’s work. Mary’s speaker honorariums are donated directly to the IFF.
Edie Fraser
Chair of Diversity Practice & Managing Director, Diversified Search Odgers & Berndtson
Edie Fraser serves Diversified Search Ray & Berndtson, the largest woman-owned executive search firm in America with offices in more than 34 countries and in more than 60 locations. She has been honored with a myriad of awards for her support of global diversity and women. In the field of communication, she received the esteemed Silver Anvil for a specialized international campaign on US and Japan communications and trade promotion. Fraser was former Director of Health Communications Planning for the Federal Government (then HEW), and Consumer Director for a global public relations firm. She served as an African Desk Officer at the Peace Corps and worked for the poverty program of the USA. Fraser is a board member of the Committee of 200, Count-Me-In and Make Mine a $Million, Women’s Center in Nigeria, Harvard University Kennedy School of Government, to name a few. She is a member of the United Nations Association.
Thomas Fox
Consultant
Since early 2001, Thomas Fox has been an independent consultant with several international consulting firms, non-governmental organizations (NGOs), and private foundations. He is chairman of the board of a new and potentially substantial foundation addressing issues that affect poor children and youth in Africa. He has also been an occasional lecturer and teacher at both Johns Hopkins University’s SAIS and George Washington University —a course on NGOs. From 1997–2001, Fox was Assistant Administrator for Policy and Program Coordination for the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID). With a career spanning almost forty years in international development, he has held senior management and leadership positions with the US Peace Corps, Volunteers in Technical Assistance (VITA), USAID, the Council on Foundations, and the World Resources Institute.
John Hishmeh
Executive Director, Council on Standards for International Educational Travel (CSIET)
Based in Alexandria, Virginia, the CSIET is a national not-for-profit foundation whose mission is to identify reputable international youth exchange programs in order to provide meaningful and safe international exchange experiences. Hishmeh is responsible for the overall management of foundation activities and staff. Previously, he served as a Special Projects Officer working for the Deputy Assistant Secretary for Academic Programs at the U.S. Department of State. Responsibilities included special promotional events and visibility and public affairs efforts for the Fulbright program. Hishmeh has held positions at the U.S. Information Agency including: Educational and Cultural Affairs Specialist for the Exchange Visitor Program under the General Counsel, and positions in the Fulbright Teacher Exchange Program and the Office of Congressional Liaison and Intergovernmental Affairs.
Harriet Mayor Fulbright
President, J. William & Harriet Fulbright Center
Harriet Mayor Fulbright leads the Fulbright Center, a non-profit organization in Arlington, Virginia, dedicated to promoting world peace and nonviolent means of resolving conflicts through international collaborations and education programs. Fulbright has extensive experience in the fields of education and the arts, serving from 1997 to 2000 as executive director of the President’s Committee on the Arts and the Humanities and earlier as president of the Center for Arts in the Basic Curriculum.
Dr. Michael Hopkins, Ph.D.
CEO & Chairman, MHC International Ltd. – London, Washington DC & Geneva
Michael Hopkins is CEO and Chairman of MHCi, a research and service company that focuses on Strategic CSR and employment promotion in emerging markets. He holds a doctorate in labor economics from the University of Geneva, and is Professor of Corporate and Social Research at the University of Middlesex in London, UK. He is currently Founder and Director of Executive Programs on CSR at the University of Geneva in Switzerland and holds a similar position at George Mason University in Virginia, US. In addition, Hopkins leads the Jewelry Ethical Trading System (JETS); initiated the Qatar Youth Employment Project; is Sr. Adviser to the US Chamber of Commerce’s citizenship program; is revising the World Bank’s online CSR and has joint ventures to develop CSR activities in West Africa, Pakistan and East Africa. Previously, Hopkins was a Senior Economist at the International Labor Organization in Geneva, and was Chief Economist of the Netherlands Antilles where he directed its socio-economic plan that initiated today’s vibrant market in Curacao. He has worked on developing and evaluating human resources and labor market issues in over 120 countries around the world. A widely published author, his most recent of 13 books is “CSR & International Development” (Earthscan 2007).
David Maxwell, Ph.D.
President, Drake University, Des Moines, Iowa
Dr. Maxwell has been the president of Drake University since May 1999. Previously, he was director of the National Foreign Language Center, president of Whitman College, and a full-time faculty member and later dean of Undergraduate Studies at Tufts University. At Tufts, he taught Russian language and literature and chaired the Soviet and East European Area Program. Dr. Maxwell has served on the executive and strategic planning committees of the board of the Council on International Educational Exchange. He also chaired the Commission on International Education of the American Council on Education.
Hayumi Higuchi, Ph.D.
Professor, Senshu University, Kanagawa, Japan
Hayumi Higuchi completed a part of her graduate work in history at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, and is currently a professor at Senshu University in Japan. She is the author of American Black Leaders and White Management in Northern Industrial Cities: The Formation of a Positive Black Identity during the Interwar Period (1997, in Japanese), which won the Shimizu Hiroshi Award in 1998. She is also co-editor of American Histories: Narrating the Routes to Nationhood (2006, in Japanese), and the translator (in Japanese) of Having Our Say (2000), Somerset Homecoming (2002), and Coming of Age in Mississippi (2008). Her current research interest revolves around the making of memory in race relations in twentieth-century U.S., as well as civil rights movements in the U.S. She has also been engaged in many administrative works for academic organizations in Japan.
The Honorable Norman Y. Mineta
Vice Chairman, Hill & Knowlton, Inc. | Former Secretary, U.S. Department of Transportation
Norman Mineta is Vice Chairman of Hill & Knowlton based in its Washington, DC office. He is recognized for his expertise in transportation and national security, as well as accomplishments in economic development, science and technology policy, foreign and domestic trade, the environment, budgetary issues and civil rights. Secretary Mineta served in Congress for over twenty years and in the Cabinets of both Republican and Democratic presidents. For almost 30 years, Mineta represented San Jose, California, first on the City Council, then as Mayor and from 1975-1995 as a Member of Congress. Secretary Mineta received the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the highest civilian honor in the U.S., and the Wright Brothers Memorial Trophy, awarded for significant public service of enduring value to aviation in the United States.
The Honorable Harold H. Saunders, Ph. D.
Chairman and President International Institute for Sustained Dialogue Assistant Secretary of State (1978-81)
Since leaving the government in 1981 after a 25-year career, Harold H. Saunders has conducted sustained non-official dialogues to transform relationships among conflicting parties in the Cold War, in former Soviet Republics, and in the Middle East. From that experience he has conceptualized the process called Sustained Dialogue. In government on the National Security Council Staff and in the State Department, he was intensively involved in the Arab-Israeli peace process from 1974-1981, flying on the Kissinger shuttles and, as Assistant Secretary of State, a principal drafter of the Camp David accords in 1978 and mediator of the Egyptian-Israeli peace treaty. He serves concurrently as Director of International Affairs at the Kettering Foundation.
Ambassador Ronald E. Neumann
President, American Academy of Diplomacy
Formerly a Deputy Assistant Secretary, Ronald E. Neumann served three times as Ambassador; to Algeria, Bahrain and finally to the Islamic Republic of Afghanistan from July 2005 to April 2007. Before Afghanistan, Mr. Neumann, a career member of the Senior Foreign Service, served in Baghdad from February 2004 with the Coalition Provisional Authority and then as Embassy Baghdad’s principal interlocutor with the Multinational Command. Ambassador Neumann served as a Deputy Assistant Secretary in the Bureau of Near East Affairs, where he directed the organization of the first separately-funded NEA democracy programs and also was responsible for the bureau’s work in developing the North African Economic Initiative. Ambassador Neumann speaks some Arabic and Dari as well as French. He received State Department Senior Foreign Service pay awards in 2004, 2003, and 1999 as well as individual Superior Honor Awards in 1993 and 1990. He served as an Army infantry officer in Viet Nam and holds a Bronze Star, Army Commendation Medal and Combat Infantry Badge. In Baghdad, he was awarded the Army Outstanding Civilian Service Medal.
The Honorable Robert D. Ray
Governor of Iowa (1969–1982)
Robert Ray was governor of Iowa for five terms, serving from 1969 to 1983. He was a leader in the United States in the resettlement of refugees. He is credited with the founding of the Iowa Peace Institute, Sister States, and the Iowa Natural Heritage Foundation, among a number of other organizations. Following his terms as Governor, Ray became president and chief executive officer of Life Investors, Inc., now known as AEGON, Inc. He next joined Blue Cross and Blue Shield of Iowa as president and CEO. Ray was chairman of the Board of Trustees and then became president of Drake University. Previously, he filled an interim term as mayor of Des Moines. In addition, Ray has been a U.S. representative to the United Nations.
Ambassador Uri Savir
President, Peres Center for Peace
Ambassador Uri Savir has spent his professional life on the frontline of peace-making in Israel. As Director-General of the Foreign Ministry between 1993 and 1996, Savir served as Israel’s Chief Negotiator for the Oslo Accords, as a member of the Israeli Negotiations Delegation with Jordan, and as head of the Negotiation Delegation with Syria in 1995-1996. As a second generation diplomat, Savir was Shimon Peres’ right-hand man for many years, Director of the Israeli Consulate in New York, and later as Member of Israeli Parliament, he was head of the Sub-Committee for Foreign Affairs. In 1996, he established the Peres Center for Peace, which encourages regional peace-building initiatives. In 2001, Savir established a Rome-based international non-profit organization called Glocal Forum, which encourages intercity diplomacy around the world.
The Honorable Jill A. Schuker
Head, Washington Center/North America, Organization for Economic Cooperation & Development (OECD), Washington, DC
Jill A. Schuker heads the Washington Center for OECD and is the former president of JAS International. Ms. Schuker has held a number of senior positions in both public and private sectors, as well as leading positions on non-profit board. Her public experience includes serving in the Clinton Administration‘s National Security Council and Commerce Department and the Carter Administration’s U.S. Mission to the United Nations and State Department. Ms. Schuker, a member of the Council on Foreign Relations, has published numerous articles on public diplomacy, civil liberties and security issues. She has served as an Adjunct Associate Professor at the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy at Tufts University and currently is a Shapiro Fellow and Adjunct Professor at George Washington University.
Ambassador Cynthia P. Schneider, Ph.D
Distinguished Professor in the Practice of Diplomacy, Georgetown University
An expert on cultural diplomacy, Dr. Schneider teaches, publishes, and organizes initiatives in the field with a focus on relations with the Muslim world. She is Co-Director of Muslims on Screen and Television (MOST) and heads the Arts and Culture Dialogue Initiative within the Saban Center for Middle East Policy at the Brookings Institution. Dr. Schneider also teaches Diplomacy and Culture at Georgetown University. Schneider served as U.S. Ambassador to the Netherlands from 1998 -2001. From 1993-1998 she served as Vice Chair of the President’s Committee on Arts and Humanities. Previously, she held positions as an Associate Professor of Art History at Georgetown University and as Assistant Curator at the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston. Dr. Schneider serves on several boards, including the Institute of Cultural Diplomacy and the Council of American Ambassadors. Schneider received her B.A. and Ph.D. from Harvard University. She speaks fluent French, as well as Italian, Dutch, and some German.
Adam Weinberg
President & CEO, World Learning
Adam Weinberg is the President & CEO of World Learning, one of the oldest and largest citizen diplomacy organizations. Weinberg oversees programs in more than 70 countries that enhance the capacity and commitment of individuals, institutions, and communities to create a more peaceful and just world through education, training, and exchange. Prior to joining World Learning in 2005, Weinberg spent 11 years at Colgate University as faculty member and Vice President and Dean of the College. A leading voice on the role of higher education and educational institutions as catalysts for social and economic development, Weinberg has been involved in the development of numerous organizations and initiatives that connect universities with communities, including Colgate’s Residential Education program, which has attracted significant national attention for its innovative approach to civic education. Most recently, he has been writing and speaking about the ways that educational institutions can serve as critical portals for citizen diplomacy.
Melissa Conley Tyler
National Executive Director, Australian Institute of International Affairs, Deakin, Australia
Melissa Conley Tyler is a lawyer and specialist in conflict resolution, including negotiation, mediation and peace education. Prior to her position as National Executive Director for the Australian Institute of International Affairs, she was Program Manager of the International Conflict Resolution Centre and a Senior Fellow in the Faculty of Law at the University of Melbourne. Melissa has over ten years experience working in the community sector in Australia, South Africa and the U.S., with organizations such as Sydney City Mission and Reconciliation Australia. She has a strong interest in non-profit management and results, and has published on the use of benchmarking in Australia in Benchmarking: An International Journal. Melissa is also an Associate of the University of Melbourne’s Centre for Program Evaluation and a member of the Australasian Evaluation Society.
Steve Vetter
CEO & President, Partners of the Americas – Washington, DC
Steve Vetter is the CEO and President at Partners of the Americas, a volunteer organization that works toward promoting economic and social development in the Western Hemisphere, and creating people to people program to expand opportunity across the Americas. Vetter oversees the work of 60 citizen-led partnerships between 45 US states and 31 Latin American and Caribbean countries. He has a rich background in international and domestic leadership experiences focused on reducing poverty and improving the economic and social development of disadvantaged populations. From 1996-2005, Vetter was president of Eureka Communities, where support was provided for nonprofit leaders and community-based organizations to improve conditions of children and families living in poverty. Prior to joining Eureka Communities, he held several executive-level positions with the Inter-American Foundation (IAF), and served on a number of philanthropic, nonprofit and corporate boards and committees, including the steering committee of the Council on the Foundation’s “Philanthropy along the Border” initiative. Vetter served as a Peace Corps Volunteer in Columbia, and holds an MA in economics from Ohio University.
Keith Reinhardt
Chairman Emeritus of DDB Worldwide | President, Business for Diplomatic Action
Keith Reinhard is Chairman Emeritus, DDB Worldwide, one of the largest advertising firms in the world, and is President of Business for Diplomatic Action (BDA). BDA, founded by Reinhard, is a nonprofit organization that addresses the decline of the United States’ standing in the world and engages the business community in citizen diplomacy. BDA serves a range of multinational members, among them McDonald’s, ExxonMobil, and Microsoft Corporation.