Speaker Biographies A through F

Earl Agron is vice president of security and environment and is responsible for worldwide security for APL, Ltd., the container shipping arm of Neptune Orient Lines. He has held various management positions at APL across Asia and the United States for over 25 years. In 2007, the U.S. Department of Homeland Security appointed Mr. Agron to the commercial operations advisory committee, which advises U.S. Customs and Border Protection on trade and security matters. In 2009, the U.S. Department of Homeland Security appointed him to the national maritime security advisory committee, which advises the Coast Guard on maritime security.

The Honourable Christopher Alexander was deputy special representative of the secretary general in Afghanistan from December 2005 until May 2009. In this position, he was responsible for political affairs, including elections, disarmament, governance, regional cooperation, rule of law and police reform, as well as cooperation with the International Security Assistance Force. Prior to this assignment, Mr. Alexander served as ambassador of Canada to Afghanistan from August 2003 until October 2005. He was number two at the Canadian Embassy in Moscow from 2000 to 2003 and second secretary at the same mission from 1993 to 1996. A career diplomat, he joined the Canadian Foreign Service in 1991. He received a bachelor’s degree from McGill University in Montreal in history and politics and a master’s degree from Balliol College at Oxford University in England in philosophy, politics, and economics. Mr. Alexander was chosen as a young global leader by the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland in 2005. He is now writing a book on Afghanistan and was recently selected to be the federal candidate for Ajax-Pickering for the Conservative Party of Canada.

James Appathurai has been the NATO spokesperson since 2004. Prior to this, he was the deputy head and senior planning officer in the policy planning and speechwriting section of NATO’s Political Affairs Division. Mr. Appathurai has also served as a policy officer in the Department of National Defence in Canada and as an editorial assistant at the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation. He has published over 25 articles and book chapters on NATO and regional security cooperation. Mr. Appathurai holds a bachelor’s degree from the University of Toronto and a master’s degree in international relations from the University of Amsterdam.

The Honorable Nelson Azevedo Jobim has been the Brazilian minister of defense since July 2007. Previously, he served as a justice and later chief justice of the Brazilian Supreme Court. He also served as the minister of justice from 1995 to 1997. Mr. Jobim was a federal deputy in the Brazilian Chamber of Deputies, as a member of the Brazilian Democratic Movement Party from 1987 to 1995. While there, he was chairman of the Chamber of Deputies Committee on the Constitution, Justice, and Legislative Drafting, a rapporteur for the special committee on the impeachment for malfeasance of Mr. Fernando Collor de Mello, and a rapporteur for several constitutional amendments. Mr. Jobim is a member of the International Advisory Council of the Forum of the Americas, the Mercosul Labor Law Institute, the International Academy of Law and Economics, and a current member and former vice president of the Rio Grande do Sul section of the Brazilian Bar Association. He is an associate professor of law at the Federal University of Brasilia. Mr. Jobim holds a master’s degree in contemporary philosophy and logic from the Federal University of Santa Maria.

The Honorable Mark Begich is a Democratic senator of the state of Alaska. He was elected to the U.S. Senate in 2008. Prior to joining the U.S. Senate, Senator Begich was chairman of the Anchorage assembly and later the mayor of Anchorage. During his time as mayor, Anchorage saw the greatest building increase in a generation, attracting millions of dollars worth of public and private investments. In October 2008, the Wall Street Journal and Business Week recognized Anchorage as a city well positioned to stand against the international economic crisis. Senator Begich currently serves on the Committee on Science, Commerce, and Transportation as well as the Subcommittee on Aviation; Subcommittee on Communications; Subcommittee on Competitiveness, Innovation, and U.S. Export Promotion; Subcommittee on Oceans, Fisheries, and Coast Guard; and the Subcommittee on Surface Transportation. In the Armed Services Committee, Senator Begich serves on the Subcommittee on AirLand, the Subcommittee on Personnel, and the Subcommittee on Strategic Forces. He also serves on the Committee of Veterans Affairs.

Peter Berkowitz is the Tad and Dianne Taube senior fellow at the Hoover Institution. His fellowship focuses on the interplay of law, ethics, and politics in modern society. His current research is concerned with the material and moral preconditions of liberal democracy in America and abroad. He is cofounder and director of the Israel Program on Constitutional Government, has served as a senior consultant to the President’s council on bioethics, and is a member of the policy advisory board at the Ethics and Public Policy Center. He is the author of Virtue and the Making of Modern Liberalism (Princeton University Press, 1999) and Nietzsche: The Ethics of an Immoralist (Harvard University Press, 1995). He is also at work on two books: The Liberal Spirit in America, which describes our liberalism and shows what is necessary to conserve it, and Rediscovering Liberalism, a collection of his essays. He holds a juris doctorate and a Ph.D. in political science from Yale University, a master’s degree in philosophy from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, and a bachelor’s degree in English literature from Swarthmore College.

Susan Bonner is one of Canada’s top political journalists, currently reporting from Washington, DC on the day’s top stories from the White House and Capitol Hill. Ms. Bonner’s reports appear on CBC News Network, as well as CBC News’ “The National.” Most recently, she was a parliamentary reporter for CBC Television, where she played a key role in all federal political coverage for the network, including live hits and analysis on throne speeches, budgets, cabinet shuffles, party leadership and policy conventions, and first ministers’ meetings. Her 20-year journalistic career has taken her from daily reporting in Saskatoon and Calgary, to political journalism in Halifax and Montreal, where she was assigned to an elite investigative documentary unit producing high-profile documentaries for CBC Television. Ms. Bonner has worked the entire editorial chain, from desk editor at “The National” to producing a daily news and current affairs program for CBC Newsworld called “The Lead.” Before taking up the national political beat in Ottawa, she was the economics reporter for “The National.”

Julian Borger is The Guardian’s diplomatic editor and also runs a blog on global security on The Guardian website. He covered the United States for the paper for more than eight years, and was Washington bureau chief during the Bush administration. Prior to that, he spent a decade as a foreign correspondent covering the Bosnian war from Sarajevo and the Middle East from Jerusalem. He started his professional life as an economist, working for two years in southern Africa, but switched over to journalism in the 1980s. He reported from Africa for the BBC, before moving to Eastern Europe after the fall of the Berlin Wall and working at The Guardian.

The Honorable Stephen G. Breyer is a graduate of Stanford, Oxford, and Harvard Law School. He taught law for many years as a professor at Harvard Law School and at the Kennedy School of Government. Additionally, Justice Breyer worked as a Supreme Court law clerk (for Justice Arthur Goldberg), a Justice Department lawyer (antitrust division), an assistant special prosecutor to the Watergate scandal, and chief counsel of the Senate Judiciary Committee. In 1980, he was appointed to the United States Court of Appeals for the First Circuit by President Jimmy Carter, becoming chief Judge in 1990. In 1994, he was appointed a Supreme Court Justice by President Bill Clinton. Justice Breyer has written books and articles about administrative law, economic regulation, and the Constitution.

Paul Brill is the editorial writer on international affairs at De Volkskrant, a leading national newspaper in The Netherlands, based in Amsterdam. He also writes a weekly column in the Saturday edition and appears regularly as a commentator on the video channel of the Volkskrant website. Over the years, he has held several positions at the paper, including staff writer at the foreign desk (special assignment: the Middle East), head of the foreign desk, Washington bureau chief, assistant managing editor, and television critic. Mr. Brill has published several books, including Amerika van A tot Z (America from A to Z—a pocket encyclopedia for discovering the United States), Kopstukken van het laagland (Big shots of the lowlands —profiles of the 100 most influential Dutchmen in the 20th century), and Zappen doe je zo (Surfing along the channels—a collection of short essays on television). He started his career at the weekly magazine De Groene Amsterdammer after graduating from the University of Amsterdam with a bachelor’s degree in political science.

Miriam Campanella is a senior lecturer in international political economy at the University of Turin and holds a Jean Monnet permanent course on EMU policies and institutions. She studied at the MIT Center for International Studies from 1980 until 1986, where she has been a guest lecturer. In 1997, Ms. Campanella held a Fulbright chair at the University of Pittsburgh. From 2001 to 2008, she was appointed by the Minister of Economy and Finance in Rome to work on topics ranging from EU budget reform and the admission of new Eastern members to European defense spending. In the wake of 2008 financial crisis, her research interests shifted from the diversification of foreign reserves in export economies to the creation of sovereign wealth funds. In July, Ms. Campanella was awarded the 2010-2011 Transatlantic Academy fellowship. She has contributed to several books and journals, including co-authoring EU Economic Governance and Globalization with Sylvester C.W. Eijffinger in 2003.

Stephen M. Carmel is senior vice president of maritime services at Maersk Line, Ltd. He previously held positions in operations and finance for U.S. Marine Management, Inc. and Maersk Line, Ltd. Mr. Carmel began his career sailing as a deck officer and master, primarily on tankers. He is a 2009 senior fellow at the Homeland Security Policy Institute at George Washington University, a member of the Chief of Naval Operations Executive Panel, and a member of the Marine Board of the National Research Council. His research and publishing interests are in maritime security, trade and conflict, and arctic regional issues. Mr. Carmel graduated from the U.S. Merchant Marine Academy. He also holds a master’s degree in economics and a master’s degree in business administration from Old Dominion University. He is currently a Ph.D. candidate in international studies with an emphasis in international political economy and second emphasis in conflict. Mr. Carmel is a certified management accountant and is certified in financial management.

Roger Cohen is a columnist for The New York Times and The International Herald Tribune. In 1979, Mr. Cohen became a foreign correspondent for Reuters based in various cities across Europe. In 1983, he began working for The Wall Street Journal in Europe, and opened a bureau in Rio de Janeiro. In 1990, he took a position with The New York Times working out of Berlin, Paris and Zagreb, Croatia, and became the The Times’ foreign editor in 2001. Mr. Cohen has also authored several books, including Hearts Grown Brutal: Sagas of Sarajevo and In the Eye of the Storm: The Life of General H. Norman Schwarzkopf. He holds a master’s degree in history and French from Oxford University.

Gregory B. Craig was recently appointed as White House counsel to U.S. President Barack Obama. Under the Clinton administration, he served as an assistant to the president and special counsel. In 1997, then-U.S. Secretary of State Madeleine Albright appointed Mr. Craig to be a senior advisor subsequently serving the secretary as director of policy planning from 1997 to 1998. Prior to working for the administration, Mr. Craig served as a senior adviser on defense, foreign policy, and national security to U.S. Senator Edward M. Kennedy. He is also a partner at the law firm of Williams & Connolly.

Heidi Cullen is a senior research scientist with Climate Central, a nonprofit research and communications organization headquartered in Princeton, New Jersey. Climate Central combines sound science and vivid media to increase public understanding and attention to the climate challenge. Dr. Cullen currently provides reports on climate for The NewsHour with Jim Lehrer. Before joining Climate Central, she helped create “Forecast Earth” on The Weather Channel, the first weekly television series to focus on issues related to climate change and the environment. Dr. Cullen worked as a research scientist at the National Center for Atmospheric Research in Boulder, Colorado. She holds a bachelor’s degree in engineering/operations research from Columbia University and a doctorate in climatology and ocean-atmosphere dynamics from the Lamont- Doherty Earth Observatory at Columbia University.

The Honorable Pieter De Crem was appointed Belgium’s minister of defense in December 2007. He has an extensive career in government and politics beginning in 1989 as an attaché in both the office of the former Belgian Prime Minister Wilfried Martens and later moving to the office of the former Minister of Defense, Leo Delcroix, in 1992. Later, Minister De Crem became involved in municipal politics and was elected mayor of Aalter, being re-elected in both 2000 and 2006. He concurrently served as a member of the Belgian Parliament representing the Christian People’s Party and later under the Christian Democratic and Flemmish (CD&V) parliamentary party. In May 2003, he became CD&V chairman and held this position until he took over his current responsibilities as minister of defense. Minister De Crem holds a master’s degree in romance philology from Katholieke Universiteit Leuven and a master’s degree in European and international law from Vrije Universiteit Brussel. He is also an officer in the Order of Leopold.

The Honorable Bill Delahunt is a Democratic representative of the state of Massachusetts. He was elected to Congress in 1997, making this his sixth re-election. Congressman Delahunt graduated from Middlebury College in Vermont and later attended Boston College where he earned his law degree. He served in the Coast Guard Reserve from 1963 to 1971 and is a strong advocate for heritage tourism, wetlands restoration, and a defender of ocean sanctuaries and national parks. Congressman Delahunt recently negotiated an agreement to cut the cost of home heating oil imported from Venezuela to low income families. He serves as a member of the House Committee on Foreign Affairs and as chairman of the Subcommittee on International Organizations, Human Rights, and Oversight. He is also a member of the Subcommittee on the Western Hemisphere. Congressman Delahunt is a member of the Judiciary Committee, where he brings two decades of experience in law and civil rights to the federal arena.

Francis Delon was appointed secretary general for national defense in July 2004. Before this appointment, he served as president of subsection five of the Litigation Division of the Council of State from 1997 to 2004. Concurrently, he was president of the Appeal Committee of the Organization for Joint Armament Cooperation, and a member of the Board of Directors of the French National Library. Prior to this position, Mr. Delon was the principal chief of staff for the Minister of National Education, Higher Education, and Research from 1995 to 1997. He had previously served as director for international affairs and cooperation at the Ministry of National Education from 1994 to 1995 and was its senior civil servant for defense issues. From 1988 to 1994, Mr. Delon held the position of first counselor and legal adviser at the Permanent Mission of France to the United Nations in New York. He graduated from ENA, France’s school of public management. He is a member of the French Council of State. Additionally, Mr. Delon is an officer of the national order of the Legion of Honor and a commander of the Ordres des Palmes Académiques.

Major-General Peter Devlin has been the deputy commander of the Canadian Expeditionary Force Command since August 2008. He started his military career by enrolling in the Canadian Forces in 1978 under the regular officer training program and was commissioned as an infantry officer into the Royal Canadian regiment. Major-General Devlin has spent the majority of his career in the field. He has commanded from the platoon to brigade group level, most notably commanding 1st battalion of the Royal Canadian regiment from 1997-1999 and 2nd Canadian mechanized brigade group from 2002 to 2004. He also served as deputy commanding general of III (U.S.) corps and Fort Hood from 2005 to 2008 and deployed with the corps to Iraq. He has several operational tours including UN tours in Cyprus (1984-1985) and the former Yugoslavia (1992), two NATO tours in Bosnia (1996-1997) including one as the Canadian battle group commanding officer (1998), an International Security Assistance Force tour as commander of the Kabul multinational brigade in Kabul, Afghanistan (2003-2004), and most recently a 15-month tour as the deputy commanding general of the multi-national corps – Iraq (2006-2008). Major- General Devlin is a graduate of the University of Western Ontario, the Canadian Forces Staff School, the Canadian Land Forces Command and Staff College, the Canadian Forces College, and the U.S. Army War College.

Darrell Dexter is the premier of Nova Scotia. He was sworn in June 19, 2009. He is also the leader of Nova Scotia’s New Democratic Party. Mr. Dexter was first elected to the provincial legislature in 1998 as a member of the legislative assembly for Dartmouth-Cole Harbour. He became the leader of the opposition in May 2001. Prior to entering provincial politics, he served on the Dartmouth city council. A practicing lawyer before he entered public life, Mr. Dexter also served as an officer in the Canadian navy. He attended the University of King’s College where he received a bachelor’s degree in journalism. Mr. Dexter also earned bachelor’s degrees in education and laws from Dalhousie University.

Karen Donfried is the executive vice president of the German Marshall Fund of the United States (GMF) and also served as the organization’s director of foreign policy and senior director for policy programs. In 2003, she took a two-year leave of absence in which she handled the European portfolio on the Policy Planning Staff in the Office of the Secretary of State. Prior to her work for the U.S. Department of State and GMF, Dr. Donfried worked as a European affairs specialist in the foreign affairs, defense and trade division of the Congressional Research Service. She writes extensively and appears on radio and television shows, discussing German foreign and defense policy, European integration, and transatlantic relations, and is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations and the American Council on Germany. Dr. Donfried holds a bachelor’s degree in government and German from Wesleyan University, and a Ph.D. and MALD from the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy at Tufts University, and a magister from the University of Munich.

The Honorable Pierre Duquesne is the ambassador for economic issues related to reconstruction and development in the Ministry of Foreign and European Affairs in France. Previously, he was the French executive director at the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the World Bank, where he also served as chairman of the audit committee of the World Bank and chairman of the Ethics Committee of the IMF. Mr. Duquesne has also been a senior advisor to the Prime Minister for economic and financial affairs. Prior to his work in the IMF and World Bank, he was the deputy general secretary of the banking commission at the Banque de France, as well as a member of the Basle Committee and Banking Supervision Subcommittee of the European Monetary Institute. He has also been a lecturer in economics at the Institut d’Etudes Politiques. Mr. Duquesne is a graduate of the Ecole Nationale d’Administration and Institut d’Etudes Politiques, and holds a masters degree in economics, specializing in econometrics.

Lyse Doucet is a presenter and correspondent for BBC World television and BBC World Service. In 2002, she and her team were nominated for a Royal Television Society Award for their exclusive coverage of the attempted assassination of the Afghan President Hamid Karzai. The following year, Ms. Doucet was awarded a Silver Sony Award for News Broadcaster of the Year. She is also a regular presenter on the BBC’s “Have Your Say” program and she occasionally presents “HARDtalk.” Before joining the BBC’s team of presenters in 1999, she spent 15 years as a BBC foreign correspondent. Ms. Doucet has an honorary doctorate in civil law from the University of King’s College in Halifax, Nova Scotia; a master’s degree in international relations from the University of Toronto; and a bachelor’s degree from Queen’s University at Kingston.

Representing the Labour Party, Espen Barth Eide has been the deputy minister of defense since 2005. He served as deputy minister of foreign affairs from 2000 to 2001. Mr. Eide is a member of the presidency of the Party of European Socialists (PES), the party grouping of the Social Democratic parties in the European Union and the second largest party group in the European Parliament. In PES, he is responsible for foreign affairs. Mr. Eide was a senior researcher at the Norwegian Institute of International Affairs (NUPI) from 1993 to 1999 and a director of the department of international politics at NUPI from 2002 to 2005. Over the last 15 years, he has had several engagements with the United Nations, including directing the policy review on “integrated missions” commissioned by the UN Secretariat in 2004. He also served as an expert advisor to the highlevel panel on UN reform that concluded in 2005. Mr. Eide is a political scientist, educated at the Universities of Oslo and Barcelona.

Daniel P. Fata is a transatlantic fellow with the German Marshall Fund of the United States and is vice president at the Cohen Group in Washington, DC. He served as the U.S. deputy assistant secretary of defense for Europe and NATO policy from September 2005 to September 2008. Mr. Fata assumed his duties at the Pentagon on September 7, 2005, after working on Capitol Hill for four years as policy director for national security and foreign affairs on the U.S. House of Representatives’ Republican policy committee and policy director for national security and trade on the U.S. Senate Republican policy committee, chaired by Sen. Jon Kyl (R-AZ). Earlier in his career, he served as director of corporate relations and special projects manager at TechFoundation, a Boston-based international public charity providing technology to U.S. nonprofit organizations. From 1997 to 2001, he was assistant to the vice president and Washington director of the Council on Foreign Relations, research associate to the George F. Kennan Senior Fellow for Russian and Eurasian Studies, and consultant to the National Program. Mr. Fata also served as an adjunct research fellow with the Potomac Foundation from 1998 to 1999, where he conducted extensive studies of both Lithuanian and Swedish foreign policy at the Lithuanian Ministry of Foreign Affairs in Vilnius and at the Swedish Riksdagen in Stockholm.

Admiral Mark Fitzgerald is commander of U.S. naval forces in Europe and Africa. He is responsible for providing overall command, operational control, and coordination of U.S. naval forces in the European and African Command area of responsibility. As commander of Allied Joint Force Command Naples, Admiral Fitzgerald currently has operational responsibility for NATO missions in the Balkans, Iraq, and the Mediterranean. He assumed his duties on November 30, 2007. Admiral Fitzgerald graduated from Northeastern University, Boston. He holds a master’s degree in aeronautical systems engineering from the University of West Florida and attended the Naval War College, Newport, Rhode Island. He was designated a naval aviator in October 1975. He flew the A-7E Corsair II during sea assignments in VA-195 (1976-1979), Carrier Air Wing 17 (1982-1984), and VA-105 (1985-1988) embarked aboard USS Kitty Hawk (CV 63), USS America (CV 66), and USS Forrestal (CV 59). He led the first Navy strike on Baghdad during the opening hour of Operation Desert Storm. Fitzgerald’s awards include the Navy Distinguished Service Medal, Defense Superior Service Medal, Legion of Merit (four awards), Distinguished Flying Cross with Combat V (two awards), Bronze Star, Defense Meritorious Service Medal (two awards), Air Medals, and numerous individual, campaign, and unit awards. He has logged over 4,800 flight hours and has made over 1,100 carrier arrested landings from the decks of 13 aircraft carriers.

Glyn Ford is currently a partner in Polint, a public relations consultancy in Brussels. He is a former leader and foreign affairs spokesman for the European Parliamentary Labour Party, deputy leader of the Party of European Socialists, and a member of the Council of Ministers Consultative Committee on Racism and Xenophobia. Mr. Ford was also a former member of the National Executive Committee of the British Labour Party. He was appointed by the EU Council of Ministers as chief election observer for the Indonesian elections of 2004, and later as chief election observer for Aceh Province, Indonesia from 2006 to 2007. He has been the European Parliament rapporteur on many reports including the EU-ASEAN Free Trade Agreement, the EU-ROK Science and Technology Agreement, the European Arms Trade, and EU membership of the Korea Energy Development Organisation (KEDO). A former visiting professor at Tokyo University, Mr. Ford has been active in the European Parliament’s delegations with Japan and the Korean Peninsula and the Group of the PES Delegations to China. He published North Korea on the Brink; Struggle for Survival (2008), which has been translated into Japanese (2008), Korean (2009), and will be published in Chinese (2010). He also has written extensively about East Asia in the European and East Asian press.