Richard Arndt spent 24 years in the US Foreign Service focusing on expanding the potential for cultural diplomacy. Arndt left his professorship in 18th-century French literature at Columbia University in 1961 to take up cultural diplomacy with the US Information Agency and the Department of State, serving as US Cultural Attaché in Beirut, Colombo (Sri Lanka), Tehran, Rome and Paris, and in various positions with USIA and State. On retirement in 1985, he served as Diplomat in Residence at the University of Virginia (1986-89) where he also directed mid-career educational programs and joined the permanent faculty of the Center for the Study of Mind and Human Interaction; he then taught at the George Washington University (1992-94). He served on the boards of the National Peace Foundation (NPF), Americans for the Universality of UNESCO (AUU), the Fulbright Association (FA), the Council of International Programs, the National Association of Foreign Student Affairs, the US Committee for the Preservation of Ancient Tyre, the International Society for Educational, Scientific and Cultural Interchange (ISECSI), and on the advisory bodies of the Toda Institute for Global Peace and Policy Research, the American Iranian Council, and the NPF. He is also Founding-President of the Roth Endowment, honoring his late wife and fellow cultural diplomat Lois W. Roth. Dr. Arndt's latest book is entitled, First Resort of Kings: U.S. Cultural Diplomacy in the Twentieth Century.

Leonard L. Baldyga
Board Member

Leonard Baldyga is a Senior Consultant at the International Research and Exchanges Board (IREX) specializing in Eastern Europe. He serves on the Editorial Board of Encyclopedia Britannica's Polish Edition. He is a member of the Executive Committees of Partners for Democratic Change, Sabre Foundation and the National Polish American Jewish American Council. He retired as Career Minister from the U.S. Information Agency and served as Minister-Counselor in New Delhi and Rome, as well as Public Affairs Officer in Mexico and Warsaw. He held senior positions at USIA including Director of the Office of European Affairs. He was Acting Director of the Murrow Center at the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy at Tufts where he also taught courses in international political communication and public diplomacy. He is a member of the American Foreign Service Association's speaker’s bureau.

Douglas M. Barnes
 
Douglas M. Barnes, a former Foreign Service Officer, is currently a senior advisor to the Under Secretary for Public Diplomacy and Public Affairs at the Department of State.  As a Foreign Service Officer, he most recently served as Director of the Office of Public Diplomacy and Public Affairs in the Bureau of Western Hemisphere Affairs at the Department of State (2007-08) and as Director of the Office of Brazil and Southern Cone Affairs (2005-2007) in the same Bureau.  He previously served as Charge d'Affaires (2004 to 2005) and Deputy Chief of Mission (2002-04) of the U.S. Embassy in San Jose, Costa Rica.  Prior overseas assignments include Public Affairs Officer at the U.S. Embassy in Lima, Peru (1999-2002), the U.S. Interests Section in Havana, Cuba (1997-99), the U.S. Embassy in Rangoon, Burma (1993-96), and the U.S. Consulate in Palermo, Italy.  At the U.S. Information Agency (since incorporated into the Department of State) in Washington, Mr. Barnes served as Special Assistant to the Associate Director for Educational and Cultural Affairs (1992-93) and as Country Affairs Officer for Albania, Bulgaria, Romania, and Yugoslavia (1990-92).  He joined the Foreign Service in 1981, serving his initial overseas tour as Assistant Cultural Affairs Officer at the U.S. Embassy in Warsaw, Poland, from 1983 through 1985. Mr. Barnes is an honors graduate of Vassar College, with a B.A. in history.

Martha Bayles

Robert Bemis

Robert Bemis earned a BA from Haverford College and an MA from the University of Wisconsin at Madison, both in literature. Before joining the Foreign Service in 1970, he worked as a reporter for The Boston Globe and had a two-year Fulbright Lectureship at the University of Baghdad. During a long career in public service, he served in many different capacities including Desk Officer, NEA, USIA; special assistant, associate director for programs, USIA; director for international programs and technology affairs, National Security Council; chief of policy guidance, USIA; chief of foreign service personnel, USIA; post-retirement work for the Under Secretary of State for Public Diplomacy and Public Affairs, for the Bureau of Management (State), and for the Office of the Inspector General (State).

Jeffrey Biggs

Jeffrey Biggs, Director of the American Political Science Association’s Congressional Fellowship Program since 1997, received a B.A. in History at Harvard, an M.A. in Political Science on a Fulbright from Victoria University, Wellington, New Zealand, and a Ph.D. in American Studies from George Washington University. Biggs served twenty-one years in the US Foreign Service,(in Brazil, Portugal, and Bolivia). After being a Foreign Affairs APSA Congressional Fellow in 1985 (Congressman Thomas Foley, D-WA, and Senator Alan Simpson, R-WY), Biggs served on then-Majority Leader and later-Speaker Foley’s senior staff as press secretary and spokesman from 1987 to 1994. Dr. Biggs also served as senior adviser to the President’s Office of National Drug Control Policy and was a Visiting Fellow at the Freedom Forum. With Foley he is the co-author of Honor in the House: Speaker Tom Foley (Pullman, WA: Washington State University Press, 1999; the author of A Congress of Fellows: Fifty Years of the American Political Science Association Congressional Fellowship Program 1953-2003, and a number of journal articles. He is married and has two daughters.

Mary G. F. Bitterman

Paul P. Blackburn

During his 40-year career in public diplomacy with the United States Information Agency and the State Department, Paul Blackburn served as Minister Counselor for Public Affairs in the U.S. Embassies in Beijing (1997-2000), Tokyo (1992-1996), Bangkok (1984-1988), and Kuala Lumpur (1980-1984). His last Foreign Service assignment was in the State Department as Director, Office of Public Diplomacy, Bureau of East Asian and Pacific Affairs. Since retiring from the Foreign Service in 2002, he has been working part-time for the State Department’s Freedom of Information (FOIA) office and currently is building a website on "U.S. Diplomacy" for the Association for Diplomatic Studies and Training. Paul holds a Masters Degree from the School of Advanced International Studies (SAIS) of Johns Hopkins University and a PhD from the School of International Service of American University. In 1990 and 1991 he taught a Masters-level course on Public Diplomacy while at the Institute for the Study of Diplomacy, School of Foreign Service, Georgetown University, and in 2004 gave a revised version of the same course in Hanoi at the Vietnamese Foreign Ministry’s Institute for International Relations.

Harry C. Blaney III
 
Harry C. Blaney III is a Senior Fellow in the Center for International Policy National Security Program.  Mr. Blaney has forty years of experience in international affairs and has held senior positions in the federal government, policy research, and non-profit organizations.  His experience includes the White House, State Department, foreign affairs think tanks, and U.S. diplomatic posts abroad. He has been President and Chief-Executive for over a decade of the Coalition for American Leadership Abroad (COLEAD), an organization of some 50 non-profit foreign affairs groups supporting U.S. engagement in world affairs.
 
An American diplomat for over 20 years, Mr. Blaney was a Member of the Policy Planning Staff of Secretaries of State Henry Kissinger and Cyrus Vance.  He had responsibility for key global and functional issues including energy, non-proliferation, technology, environment, and Law of the Sea. He was a key advisor and architect of U.S. international energy policy during the energy crisis of the 1970s.  He served concurrently as Staff Director of the NSC Contingency Planning Working Group examining major threats of mass destruction terrorism.  He played an important role in several major international negotiations, and served overseas at U.S. Missions to the European Communities and the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO).  He also was Director of the Office of Asian Refugee Assistance in the Department of State and worked in the European Bureau's Office of Economic-Political Affairs.  He also was Senior Advisor to the Bureau of Intelligence and Research at the Department of State.
 
He was a Visiting Fellow at the Royal Institute of International Affairs (Chatham House) in London studying U.S. -European relations and other related issues.  Mr. Blaney held other prestigious fellowships at the Council on Foreign Relations and the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars at the Smithsonian Institution.   He also was a Rusk Fellow and Research Associate at Georgetown University's Institute for the Study of Diplomacy.
 
He was a White House Staff Member and Special Assistant to Daniel Patrick. Moynihan following a wide range of issues related to U.S. relations with Europe and global issues, including being Coordinator for the United States in NATO's Committee for the Challenges of Modern Society and dealing with international environmental and drug policy issues. He was also Special Assistant to the Chairman of the Council on Environmental Quality following international environmental policies.
 
Mr. Blaney holds degrees from Allegheny College (B.A. and Yale University (M.A.).  He also did graduate work and research at Johns Hopkins University's School of Advanced International Studies and at the London School of Economics and Political Science.
 
Blaney writes extensively on domestic and foreign policy issues. In addition to professional journals and book chapters, his articles have appeared in the Atlanta Constitution, Baltimore Sun, Chicago Tribune, Christian Science Monitor, Dallas Morning News, Hartford Courant, Houston Chronicle, International Herald Tribune, Newsday, Philadelphia Inquirer, San Francisco Chronicle, St. Louis Post-Dispatch, and the Washington Post.  He is author of the book, Global Challenges: A World at Risk.  He edited, The Future of Conventional Arms Control in Europe. 

John H. Brown

John Brown is currently a Research Associate at the Institute for the Study of Diplomacy at Georgetown University as well as Adjunct Professor of Liberal Studies at Georgetown's School of Continuing Studies. A consultant for the Library of Congress's "Open World" exchange program with the Russian Federation, Brown is also a member of the Public Diplomacy Council affiliated with George Washington University.  He is a Senior Fellow at the Center on Public Diplomacy at the University of Southern California.

In recent years Brown has given lectures at NYU, University of the Pacific, The University of Pennsylvania, the University of Pittsburgh, George Washington University, The Hillwood Museum, the State University of New York (SUNY), The Ohio State University, The University of California Center on Public Diplomacy, and The George Shultz National Foreign Affairs Training Center, as well as at conferences dealing with public and cultural diplomacy.
Brown was a member of the U.S. Foreign Service from 1981 until March 10, 2003 and has served in London, Prague, Krakow, Kiev, Belgrade and Moscow, specializing in press and cultural affairs.

Brown received a Ph.D. in Russian History from Princeton University in 1977.  He then worked at the Kennan Institute for Advanced Russian Studies in Washington, and served as an editor on a joint U.S.-Soviet publication, The Establishment of Russian-American Relations, 1765-1815.  Articles of his have appeared in The Washington Post, The Guardian, The San Francisco Chronicle, The Nation, The Moscow Times, and American Diplomacy.  For several years he compiled the "Public Diplomacy Press and Blog Review" (named one of the "best blogs of 06" by U.S. World and News Report) for the University of Southern California Center on Public Diplomacy.

Michael J. Canning
Board Member

Michael Canning was with the U.S. Information Agency for 28 years in eight overseas posts on four continents, with a particular geographic concentration in Latin America. On Washington assignments, he served in senior positions in the film and television service, personnel, and publications and graduated from the State Department's Senior Seminar. In retirement, he writes movie reviews for an Capitol Hill newspaper and freelances on politics and film. He has also been a public affairs consultant for the Department of State. He is a president emeritius of the USIA Alumni Association.

Brian E. Carlson
Board Member

Ambassador Brian E. Carlson, an experienced public diplomacy specialist and a Career Minister in the Foreign Service, serves the State Department as senior inspector and team leader in the Office of the Inspector General. 
 
For the last three years, Ambassador Carlson was the State Department's key liaison with the Department of Defense for strategic communication.  He worked under the direction of three Under Secretaries of State for Public Diplomacy and Public Affairs: Karen Hughes, James K. Glassman and Judith McHale.
 
Carlson served 36 years in the Foreign Service, including as the Ambassador to the Republic of Latvia 2001-2005.  Other postings abroad took him to Spain, England, Norway, Bulgaria, Yugoslavia and Venezuela.  Since returning to Washington in 2005, Ambassador Carlson has led inspection teams for the Inspector General of the Department of State and the Broadcasting Board of Governors in the Middle East and Washington.  He lectures on strategic communication and public diplomacy at the National Foreign Affairs Training Center and before public and civic groups.
 
Before going to Riga, and while managing worldwide operations for the Under Secretary of State, Ambassador Carlson co-produced President Clinton's November 2000 "White House Conference on Culture and Diplomacy."  He has advanced nine overseas trips for U.S. presidents and managed press operations for many international events.
 
His other Washington assignments include directing the State Department press office and managing public diplomacy programs in Eastern and Western Europe.  His languages are Latvian, Spanish, Norwegian, Bulgarian and Serbian.

Stephen M. Chaplin
Board Member

Mr. Chaplin was born in Charleston, South Carolina on December 28, 1940. His father was a newspaper editor and his mother a homemaker. He has one young sister, Jerri Chaplin of Charleston,S.C. He is married to Carol McCloskey Chaplin, an attorney with the Board of Veterans Appeals in the Department of Veterans Affairs and has two sons, Christoper D. Chaplin of Pasadena, California and Jonathan B. Chaplin of Glenwood Springs, Colorado. Mr. Chaplin graduated from high school in New Orleans, received his B.A. from Kenyon College in Gambier, Ohio and an M.A. in American History from the University of California at Los Angeles. He served three years as a Public Information Officer in the U.S. Air Force from 1962-65 at Maxwell AFB, Alabama. Mr. Chaplin worked at USIA as a summer intern in 1966 and entered the Foreign Service in June, 1968. After Spanish language instruction he was assigned to Buenos Aires. Next he was assigned to Mexico City and then to Hermosillo in Northwestern Mexico where he was a Branch Public Affairs Officer. Mr. Chaplin attended the Sino-Soviet Studies Institute in George Washington University for a semester prior to Romanian language training and a three year assignment as Director of the American Library in Bucharest from 1974-77. He next worked in Washington first as a Management Analyst, then Desk Officer for France/Spain/Portugal and later as Chief of Fast Policy Guidance in the P Bureau. In 1982 Mr. Chaplin studied Portuguese and was assigned as Counselor for Public Affairs in Lisbon. In 1986 he returned to become first Chief of Foreign Service Personnel, and was then Executive Assistant to the Director of USIA and Deputy Director of USIA. In 1990 he was assigned as Counselor for Public Affairs in Caracas. In 1994 he was assigned back to Washington as Chief of the Resource Management Committee staff. In 1995 he began a two year tour as Director of the Office of Inter-American Affairs where he was responsible for managing USIA staff in Washington, Latin America and the Caribbean and a $40 million annual budget. In the fall of 1997 he was again assigned as Chief of the Resource Management Committee staff and served as a steering group member for the USIA team in negotiations with the Department of State on the integration of USIA into the Department. In addition he headed the Communications Team that was responsible for keeping all USIA, State and USAID employees in Washington and abroad informed of the decisions made related to integration. He retired on October 31, 1999 and since that time, among other assignments; he has chaired the Mexican Advanced Area Studies Course at the Department of State's Foreign Service Institute.

Anne M. Chermak
 
Anne M. Chermak is an international public affairs and policy expert who in the course of her Foreign Service career served in U.S. embassies across Europe and Eurasia at a time of extraordinary transition and change.
 
As Minister Counselor for Public Affairs in Moscow, she directed the State Department's largest overseas exchange program with a budget of $40 million, promoting democratic development in Russia through academic and professional exchanges for 5,000 persons annually and the establishment of multiple small U.S. information centers, called American Corners, throughout the country.  Her advocacy and promotion of this innovative, low-cost public diplomacy platform contributed to its successful implementation by U.S. embassies around the world.
 
During her tenure as Public Affairs Minister Counselor for the U.S. Mission to Germany, encompassing Embassy Berlin and five consulates, Ms. Chermak significantly expanded the Mission's engagement with Muslim minorities, the use of new information technologies, and media outreach.   She also served as Chairperson of the German-American Fulbright Commission, largest in the world, and the RIAS (Radio in the American Sector) Commission, which supports exchanges in broadcast journalism.
 
In Washington Ms. Chermak has held senior public diplomacy positions at State and the U.S. Information Agency.   From 1989 to 1991, she was Deputy Director of the Office of the President's East European Initiative, playing a key role in shaping new programs to promote democracy and free markets in Central and Eastern Europe. 
 
She was the first U.S. diplomat to serve as visiting professor at Russia's leading university for international relations: the Moscow State Institute for International Affairs (MGIMO).  In 2007, she was selected by the State Department's Director General to serve as visiting professor at the University of Southern California's Center on Public Diplomacy at the Annenberg School, where she created and taught courses in the first of its kind Master's in Public Diplomacy degree program and advised the Center.
 
Ms. Chermak received the Secretary of State's Career Achievement Award, "in recognition of her distinguished diplomatic service to the U.S. Government in Moscow, Berlin, Belgrade, Rome, Madrid, Sofia, Bonn and Washington and with appreciation for her outstanding efforts in promoting U.S. national interests from 1975 to 2008."
 
Chermak is currently Co-Director of Dillen Associates LLC, a strategic communications consulting firm based in San Francisco and Croatia.  She is a member of Women in International Security, the International Studies Association and the USC Association of Public Diplomacy Scholars.
 
Ms. Chermak earned her B.A. degree with honors in History and Russian Language and Literature from the University of Michigan and has participated in executive leadership seminars conducted by Harvard University's John F. Kennedy School of Government.
University Courses Taught:
 

Fred A. Coffey, Jr.

Fred A. Coffey, Jr. joined USIA, following the Foreign Service exam, in August 1956. Assignments were junior officer trainee in Rio de Janeiro; Assistant PAO - Managua; Branch PAO - Medan, Sumatra; Branch PAO - Surabaya , Indonesia (then the largest branch post in East Asia); Director Indonesian Language Service - VOA; Press Attaché, Chief Information Officer, Deputy PAO and Acting PAO - Thailand; Deputy and Acting PAO - Brasilia; Director East Asia Pacific Division - VOA; PAO - Indonesia; TDY Grenada; PAO - Argentina. Along the 35 years with USIA, he worked to establish permanent bilateral institutions in every country where he served. Mr. Coffey's father was an agricultural economist and his family lived in various parts of the US and Paraguay where Fred Jr. attended high school; taught "Americana" at the Paraguay-Estados Unidos Cultural Center and worked on a ranch. Finishing high school in Denton, TX, Coffey attended the University of North Texas and the University of Texas, earning a BA in International Relations. He served in the Marine Corps during the Korean War and achieved the rank of captain. Later he earned an MA in International Economics at Louisiana State University prior to USIA. Other educational experiences included graduate courses at American University, Senior Executive Seminar at Harvard, student at The National War College and later four years as Professor of International Relations at The National War College teaching the "Media and the Military," among other subjects. Overseas Coffey worked in Spanish, Portuguese, Indonesian and Thai languages. Following retirement from USIA, he established Coffey Associates to promote business activities in several countries. Current main projects have been to reform the Public Diplomacy process within the Department of State, promote free and transparent elections in 12 overseas elections through monitoring and supervising, overseeing Texas ranch activities, singing in the Singing Capital Chorus (barbershop), assisting the United States - Indonesia Society, chairing a large McLean discussion group (Tertulia) and doing volunteer work. He lives with his wife Jane in McLean, VA. Four children, born overseas, live in various parts of the US. In early years Fred became an Eagle Scout and today enjoys tennis, jogging and other sports.

Scott Cohen
Emeritus Board Member

Scott Cohen served as senior national security advisor to a U.S. Senator, as spokesman and staff director of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, as an open source intelligence specialist with the CIA, and as a political press secretary and speechwriter. In recent years as an independent public affairs consultant, his clients have included a council of 32 former presidents and prime ministers chaired by Helmut Schmidt, a committee of 17 Nobel laureates, and an array of government and private sector organizations in the fields of foreign affairs, international development, education, broadcasting and commerce.

Robert T. Coonrod
President
Board Member

Robert T. Coonrod was President and CEO of the Corporation for Public Broadcasting (CPB) from 1997 to 2005. He served as the Corporation's executive vice president and chief operating officer from December 1992. Prior to joining CPB, he was deputy managing director of the Voice of America (VOA). He joined the United States Information Agency (USIA) in 1967, serving as a Foreign Service officer in Italy and Yugoslavia. He has also held senior positions in USIA's Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs. He graduated from Fordham University in 1966. He has also studied Arabic, Italian, Serbian and Slovene.

Sally Grooms Cowal

Ambassador Cowal retired from the Foreign Service in 1995 after serving as Ambassador to Trinidad and Tobago. She was a Career Minister and had also been Deputy Assistant Secretary for Latin America and the Caribbean. Ambassador Cowal’s assignments included Minister-Counselor for Public Affairs in Mexico. After retiring from the Foreign Service, she became the deputy director of the United Nations Program on HIV/AIDS (UNAIDS) where she was responsible for the organization’s public affairs and for heightening world awareness to the emerging HIV/AIDS crisis. From 1999-2001 Ambassador Cowal was the President of Youth For Understanding International Exchange and from 2001-02 she was President of the Cuba Policy Foundation. Since October 2002, she has been the regional director for Latin America and the Caribbean of Population Services International, a large NGO involved in social marketing of health care in the developing world.

Geoffrey Cowan

For more than 30 years, Geoffrey Cowan has been an important force in almost every facet of the communication world—as a public interest lawyer, academic administrator, best-selling author and award-winning teacher, playwright, television producer, and government official. Since 1996, he has been dean of the University of Southern California’s Annenberg School for Communication, which includes a School of Journalism and a School of Communication. The School has a full-time faculty of more than 60 and nearly 1,900 graduate and undergraduate students. In 2006, he was named the inaugural holder of the Annenberg Family Chair in Communication Leadership at the Annenberg School and director of the School's Center on Communication Leadership. He holds a joint appointment in the USC Gould School of Law, teaches courses in journalism, and is directly involved in the work and research of a number of major centers and projects at the Annenberg School, including the USC Center on Public Diplomacy, which he founded, the Norman Lear Center, the USC Center on Communication Law and Policy, the Charles Annenberg Weingarten Program on Online Communities and the USC Annenberg School Center for the Digital Future. An award-winning author, Dean Cowan wrote See No Evil: The Backstage Battle Over Sex and Violence on Television (Simon & Schuster, 1980), and the best-selling The People v. Clarence Darrow: The Bribery Trial of America's Greatest Lawyer (Random House, 1993). Prior to becoming dean, Cowan served the nation as director of the Voice of America. He was appointed to the position by President Clinton in March 1994. He served as the 22nd director of the VOA, the international broadcasting service of the U.S. Information Agency, broadcasting nearly 900 hours of programming in 52 languages, to a weekly audience of about 100 million. He also served as associate director of the USIA and as director of the International Broadcasting Bureau, with responsibility for WORLDNET TV and Radio & TV Marti as well as VOA. Dean Cowan previously taught communication law and policy at UCLA, where he was founding director of the university's Center for Communication Policy. He was honored with several teaching awards during his 20 years at UCLA. Concurrently with his teaching at UCLA, Cowan was a television producer. He received an Emmy Award as executive producer of the television movie Mark Twain & Me, which was voted the Outstanding Prime Time Program for Children by the Academy of Television Arts and Sciences. From 1979-84, he was a member of the Board of Directors of the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, playing a key role in the development of National Public Radio. He co-wrote the radio play, Top Secret: The Battle for the Pentagon Papers, which won CPB's Gold Medal for Excellence in Best Live entertainment. A major production of the play will be presented at venues around the country next year, along with seminars designed to explore the sometimes delicate balance between the press, public's right to know, and the government's need to protect some vital national secrets. Dean Cowan served as chairman of the Los Angeles commission that wrote the city's ethics code—cited as a model for the nation—for which he was awarded "Man of the Year" by the Council of Government Ethics Leaders. He also chaired the California Bipartisan Commission on Internet Political Practices. Dean Cowan serves on the boards of the Center Theatre Group, California HealthCare Foundation, Children Now, Common Sense Media, and the Susan Thompson Buffett Foundation. He is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations and the Pacific Council on International Policy. Dean Cowan spent four years as principal owner of the Stockton Ports, a Class A farm team for the Milwaukee Brewers. During that time the Ports won two championships and held the best overall record of any team in professional baseball. He is a graduate of Harvard College and Yale Law School. He is married to Aileen Adams, former Secretary of State and Consumer Affairs for the State of California and former director of the Justice Department's Office for Victims of Crime. She is currently director of arts and culture outreach at USC. They have two children.

Nicholas Cull

James Dandridge II
 
Jim Dandridge joined the Office of the Inspector General, US Department of State in 1997 as a senior inspector after completing 44 years of government service with the US Army, USIA, and the Department of State.  He retired as a career senior Foreign Service officer with the personal grade of Minister Counselor after several public diplomacy assignments abroad, including charge d;affaires a.i. to US Embassies La Paz and Santiago and final USIA assignment as the director of the Office of Policy Guidance.  He served as the senior advisor to the assistant secretary of state for International Narcotics and Law Enforcement Affairs.  In addition to several awards, citations and decorations, he was awarded the U.S. Department of State Director Generalís Cup for the Foreign Service in 2008 for promotion of the Foreign Service as a U.S. diplomat in retirement.  He was a pioneer U.S. Army Special Operations officer and retired in 1978 from the Organization of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, J-3 Special Operations Division.  Jim is chairman of the board of directors of the Association for Diplomatic Studies and Training at the Foreign Service Institute, president of the National Ambassador Club of the USA, Associate of the InterAmerican Dialogue, member of the Washington Institute of Foreign Affairs, the World Affairs Council, and the Public Diplomacy Council.  Dandridge has post graduate degrees and studies in government, national security, international relations, and Sociology from Howard University, Georgetown University, The American University and the US Air War College.  Dandridge is also a FAA licensed commercial pilot.