David G. Newton

Ambassador David Newton is currently an adjunct scholar at the Middle East Institute in Washington DC. He returned to the United States at the end of 2004 after having served for six years in Prague as the first director of Radio Free Iraq, part of Radio Free Europe/ Radio Liberty. Shortly before that appointment he had retired from a thirty-six year career in the Foreign Service, having served as ambassador to Yemen (1994-97) and as the first ambassador to Iraq (1984-88) following the resumption of diplomatic relations. Other Foreign Service tours included deputy chief of mission in Yemen and Syria, political counselor in Saudi Arabia, and Department of State assignments as director for Lebanon, Syria and Jordan, as Near East division chief in the Bureau of Intelligence and Research and as economic officer for the Arabian Peninsula. From 1990 to 1993 he was International Affairs Advisor and Chairman of the National Security Policy Department at the National War College, also working with the Joint Chiefs of Staff and the Defense Intelligence Agency on Iraq and doing extensive public speaking in support of Desert Shield/ Desert Storm. In February 1998, immediately after Foreign Service retirement, he was appointed a Special Envoy for Public Diplomacy, traveling to twelve Arab countries to explain U.S. policy on Iraq to the media and the public. During his Foreign Service career he received a Presidential Meritorious Service award for his Iraq assignment, numerous Department of State awards and the Department of the Army medal for outstanding civilian service. Ambassador Newton is a graduate of Harvard College (archaeology and anthropology), the University of Michigan (M.A. in Islamic history and Arabic literature) and the National War College. From 1958 to 1961 he served as an artillery officer with the 3rd Armored Division in Germany. He is a member of the Middle East Institute, the Middle East Studies Association, the Public Diplomacy Council, and the Cosmos Club.

Eugene A. Nojek
President, USIA Alumni Association
Ex Officio Board Member

Mr. Novak is a retired Foreign Service Officer with the U.S. Information Agency and served with the Voice of America.

Joseph S. Nye, Jr.

Joseph Nye is the Sultan of Oman Professor of International Relations and former Dean of Harvard's Kennedy School of Government. He received his bachelor's degree summa cum laude from Princeton University, did postgraduate work at Oxford University on a Rhodes Scholarship, and earned a PhD in political science from Harvard. He has served as Assistant Secretary of Defense for International Security Affairs, Chair of the National Intelligence Council, and Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for Security Assistance, Science and Technology. He chaired the National Security Council Group on Nonproliferation of Nuclear Weapons. In recognition of his service, he received the highest Department of State commendation, the Distinguished Honor Award. A Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and of the Academy of Diplomacy, Mr. Nye has also been a Senior Fellow of the Aspen Institute, Director of the Aspen Strategy Group, and a member of the Executive Committee of the Trilateral Commission. He has served as a director of the Institute for East-West Security Studies, a director of the International Institute for Strategic Studies, a member of the advisory committee of the Institute of International Economics, and the American representative on the United Nations Advisory Committee on Disarmament Affairs. He has been a trustee of Wells College and Radcliff College. A member of the editorial boards of Foreign Policy and International Security magazines, he is the author of numerous books and more than a hundred and fifty articles in professional journals. In 2004, he published Soft Power: The Means to Success in World Politics, Understanding International Conflict (5th edition), and The Power Game: A Washington Novel. His other books include: Bound to Lead: The Changing Nature of American Power (1990), Understanding International Conflicts: An Introduction to Theory and History (2002), and The Paradox of American Power: Why the World's Only Superpower Can't Go It Alone (2002).

Donna M. Oglesby

Currently, Diplomat in Residence at Eckerd College, where she teaches courses on international relations and American foreign policy, Donna Oglesby has over twenty-five years experience in cultural and public diplomacy in representation of the United States. She served abroad in American embassies in numerous countries around the world including Austria, Brazil and Thailand. And, she held various senior positions in Washington culminating in service as Counselor of the Agency, the ranking career position in the United States Information Agency (USIA) from 1993-96. In addition to being faculty at Eckerd College, Professor Oglesby is a member of ASPEC (Academy of Senior Professionals at Eckerd College), a member of the Tampa Bay Committee on Foreign Affairs, and a member of the Public Diplomacy Council affiliated with George Washington University. Articles by Donna Oglesby on cultural and public diplomacy have been published by the United States Institute of Peace and the Foreign Service Journal. Educated in the United States and abroad, Professor Oglesby earned her BA from Washington College and a Masters in International Affairs from the Columbia University School of International and Public Affairs. She is the recipient of numerous awards including: the Alliance for International Educational and Cultural Exchange Award for Outstanding Service; USIA Distinguished Honor Award; the Edward R. Murrow Award for Excellence in Public Diplomacy from The Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy, and a Presidential Honor Award.

Victor B. Olason

Born in Seattle and a graduate of the University of Washington, Olason joined the United States Information Agency in 1959 after a six-year career as a reporter and editor at The Seattle Times. He served in three Latin American posts, Santiago, Lima and Guatemala City, was press attaché in Bonn and headed USIS posts in Reykjavik, Cairo, at USNATO in Brussels and in Rome. Among his Washington assignments were directorships of the agency’s Latin American area office, its press and publications service and its European area office. He retired from the Foreign Service in 1995 with the rank of career minister. He is proficient in Spanish and German and has a working knowledge of French and Italian.

Dell Pendergrast
Treasurer
Board Member

Dell Pendergrast was most recently the director of the George J. Mitchell Scholarships for Americans studying in Ireland and Northern Ireland. He entered the Foreign Service in 1965 and served 32 years with the U.S. Information Agency. During his last assignment he was the senior career officer in USIA responsible for all international cultural and educational exchange programs worldwide. He is a graduate of Northwestern University and Boston University.

Patti McGill Peterson

Dr. Peterson is a Vice President of the Institute of International education and the Executive Director of the Council for the International Exchange of Scholars which manages a portion of the Fulbright Academic Program under contract form the U.S. Department of state. Additional information may be found on the IIE website.

Adam Clayton Powell, III
Board Member

Director Integrated Media Systems Center Adam Clayton Powell, III is Director of the Integrated Media Systems Center, the U.S. National Science Foundation Engineering Research Center for digital media, located at the University of Southern California' Viterbi School of Engineering. He is also a Senior Fellow of the USC Center on Public Diplomacy and a Senior Fellow at the USC Annenberg Center for Communications. Before joining the USC faculty, he was Vice President/News at National Public Radio; Manager and Producer at CBS News n New York; Executive Producer at Quincy Jones Entertainment; General Manager of WHUT-TV, the first Africa American-owned PBS station, on channel 32 in Washington, D.C.; and founding General Manager of KMTP-TV in San Francisco, the nation's second African American-owned public television station, which he helped put on the air in 1991. He has written for publications including The New York Times, Wired magazine and The Industry Standard. He is the author of "Reinventing Local News: Connecting Communities through New Technologies" (Figueroa Press, 2006), co-author of Lethargy '96: How the Media Covered a Listless Campaign(Freedom Forum, 1996) and contributed to several recent books, including Democracy and New Media (MIT Press, 2003).

Anthony C. E. Quainton
Vice President
Board Member

Anthony Quainton is currently Distinguished Diplomat in Residence at American University and serves as a member of the Academy and of the Council on Foreign Relations. Before assuming these positions he was president and CEO of the National Policy Association, a Washington research and policy group committed to the promotion of business-labor dialogue. He served for 38 years in the Foreign Service of the United States with posts on every continent. He was Ambassador in Peru, Nicaragua, Kuwait and the Central African Republic. He held senior positions in the Department of State including Coordinator for Counter-terrorism, Deputy Inspector General, Assistant Secretary for Diplomatic Security, and Director General of the Foreign Service. He was educated at Princeton and Oxford Universities. He speaks French and Spanish. He is Vice President of the Public Diplomacy Council.

Walter R. Roberts
Emeritus Board Member

Walter R. Roberts is a foreign policy consultant and a former Foreign Service officer who began his government career with the Voice of America and retired as Associate Director of the U.S. Information Agency, then USIA's top career position. He was appointed by President George H.W. Bush and reappointed by President Bill Clinton to the U.S. Advisory Commission on Public Diplomacy. He taught public diplomacy at George Washington University and is the author of Tito, Mihailovic and the Allies, 1941-1945 and of numerous articles on various aspects of foreign policy in professional publications. He is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations and of the Washington Institute of Foreign Affairs and served on the board of George Washington University's Public Diplomacy Institute.

Dorothy Robins-Mowry
Emerita Board Member

Dorothy Robins-Mowry, with a Ph.D. in International Relations, is a Phi Beta Kappa lecturer at American universities on Asian affairs, Japanese Women, and International Communication. A former senior Foreign Service Officer with the United States Information Agency, she served in Japan and Iran with extensive temporary duty in South Korea, Southeast Asia, and India. In the U.S., she directed programs for overseas posts on U.S. political and social processes and served as policy officer for North Africa, the Middle East, and South Asia. Author of a series of books and pamphlets on Japan, Asia, and the United Nations, she also worked with a number of think tanks including the Aspen Institute and the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars.

William Rugh
Board Member

William Rugh, who holds a PhD in political science, is the author of "Arab Mass Media" and many articles on Middle Eastern subjects. He was a U.S. Foreign Service officer for 30 years, and during that time he served at embassies in six Arab countries, including as American Ambassador to the United Arab Emirates (1992-95) and Ambassador to Yemen (1984-87). During his career he held several public diplomacy positions, including Area Director for Near East and South Asia (1989-92), and PAO in Egypt and Saudi Arabia. Between 1995 and 2003 he was President of AMIDEAST, an American non-profit organization.

McKinney H. Russell
Board Member

McKinney Russell, a retired Foreign Service officer, is a consultant on US exchanges and training programs overseas. In his final Foreign Service post as Counselor of the US Information Agency, that organization's senior career position, he set up the first American cultural centers in the newly independent states during the early 1990s. As the US Embassy's Minister Counselor for Public Affairs, he headed US information, cultural, and exchange programs in the USSR, Germany, Brazil, Spain, and China. His career also included directing the television and film service of USIA and Voice of America broadcasts to the Soviet Union. He achieved the rank of Career Minister in the Foreign Service. He serves on the board of directors of George Washington University's Public Diplomacy Institute and is the immediate past president of the Public Diplomacy Council.

Juliet Antunes Sablosky

Juliet Antunes Sablosky is Adjunct Professor of Liberal Studies at Georgetown University, where she teaches courses in European politics and cultural diplomacy. She is the author of European and Portuguese Socialists: Party Links in the Transition to Democracy, several journal articles, and chapters in Political Parties and Democracy in Portugal and the Library of Congress’s Handbook of Portuguese Studies. As a Foreign Service Officer with the U.S. Information Agency for twenty-two years, she served in a number of European posts and in Mexico City. Her Washington assignments included director of the Arts America Program, deputy director of academic exchanges, and director of Equal Employment Opportunity. She holds a Ph.D. in Government (1994) from Georgetown University.

Michael Schneider
Board Member

Michael Schneider is a professor of practice at the Maxwell School of Citizenship and Public Affairs at Syracuse University and director of the University's Washington International Program. In the 1980s Schneider was deputy associate and acting associate director of USIA for policy and programs and served as USIA liaison with the National Security Council. He was senior advisor to the Under Secretary of State in the mid-1990s. He served as executive secretary of a panel of U.S. and international leaders who examined the Fulbright Exchange Program, and authored the report, Fulbright at Fifty, and a subsequent report to the State Department, Others' Open Doors.

Jill A. Schuker
Board Member

Jill A. Schuker (The Hon.) is President of JAS International Group, an international strategic communications, issue management, message, media and counseling firm based in Washington, D.C. She has worked with both governments and societies in transition on a range of civil society, reform, policy, media and leadership issues. She served in the Clinton Administration as Special Assistant to the President for National Security Affairs and Senior Director for Public Affairs at the National Security Council. Earlier in the Administration she served as head of Public Affairs for Secretary of Commerce Ronald H. Brown. She previously served in government as Counselor for Press and Public Affairs at the U.S. Mission to the United Nations, and as Deputy Spokeswoman at the U.S. Department of State. She also was Press Secretary to Governor Hugh L. Carey of New York and Executive Director of the bipartisan New England Congressional Caucus on Capitol Hill. Ms. Schuker has published numerous articles on public diplomacy, civil liberties and security issues and served as an Adjunct Associate Professor at the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy at Tufts University. She is a Fellow at the University of Southern California Center for Public Diplomacy. She was both a Ford Foundation and European Community Fellow, has served as an official international election observer, and is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations and a Board member of the Atlantic Council of the United States and the Public Diplomacy Council as well as a member of other non-profit Boards, Advisory Boards and Councils including the International Women’s Media Foundation, the Women’s Commission for Refugee Women and Children, Vital Voices Global Partnership, the National Security Network, and the Sargent Shriver National Center on Poverty Law. She received her B.A. in government from Skidmore College and her M.A. from Tufts University.

Marylou Sheils

Marylou Sheils is a former Chief of Staff to the Director, U.S. Information Agency, executive assistant to the U.S. Ambassador to the United Kingdom, and Special Assistant for Public Affairs, Department of Defense.

Stanley Silverman

Mr. Silverman served as Comptroller of the U.S. Information Agency among his many positions in the Federal government.

Pamela Smith
Board Member

Currently a scholar in residence at the Georgetown University School of Foreign Service, Ambassador Smith served as the Chief of Mission in Moldova after a Foreign Service career with the Department of State and the U.S. Information Agency.

Paul R. Smith

Paul R. Smith, a retired Minister-Counselor in the U.S. Foreign Service, served in public diplomacy positions in Moscow, Kiev, East Berlin, Warsaw and Bonn. Before retiring in 2002, his last two assignments were as Consul General in St. Petersburg and Deputy Chief of Mission in Moscow. Paul currently provides consulting services to a variety of USG and private sector organizations involved in Eurasian professional development and exchange programs and lives with his wife Christine near Harrisburg, PA. Paul earned a BA in Journalism from the University of Missouri and BA and MA degrees in Russian from the University of Illinois. He served in the U.S. Army from 1966 to 1970.

Tara Sonenshine

Tara Sonenshine has had a highly distinguished career in media and policy.  She is a strategic communications adviser to many international organizations including The U.S. Institute of Peace, where she is focusing on projects related to programmatic outreach and growth.  In recent months she has served as a strategic communications advisor to The International Crisis Group, Internews Networks, The Academy of Diplomacy and Women of Washington.

Tara Sonenshine has served in various White House capacities, including transition director for the National Security Council (NSC). In that position, she was responsible for coordinating an interagency process to review foreign policy goals and priorities for the Clinton administration's second term. Before that, she served as special assistant to President Clinton and deputy director of communications for the NSC (1994–95).

In 1998, Sonenshine was at the Brookings Institution studying foreign policy and communications. Her career began in broadcast journalism in 1982 at ABC News in New York, where she served as assistant to David Burke, the vice president of news. Sonenshine went on to become editorial producer of ABC News' Nightline, where she worked for more than a decade. She was also an off-air reporter at the Pentagon for ABC's World News Tonight. During her tenure at ABC News, Sonenshine earned ten News Emmy Awards for coverage of China, Iran, the Philippines, and South Africa. She also won the Columbia-DuPont Award for coverage of the Los Angeles riots. A former contributing editor for Newsweek, Sonenshine is the author of numerous articles on foreign affairs published in New York Times, Washington Post, and other newspapers.

Tara is a graduate of Tufts University with a major in political science.  She is married with 2 children. 

Maria Elena Torano

Ms. Torano served as a member of the Advisory Commission on Public Diplomacy.

John H. Trattner
Board Member

From 1987-2005, Trattner served as vice president and senior editor and writer of the nonprofit Council for Excellence in Government, where he has authored eight books dealing with various dimensions of politically appointed service in the federal executive branch. A former 20-year career diplomat in the U.S. Information Agency and the Department of State, he held the posts of press attaché at U.S. embassies in Warsaw and Paris, deputy public affairs counselor at the U.S. Mission to NATO, executive assistant to the deputy secretary of state, and State Department press spokesman, among others. Earlier, as a journalist, he worked for daily and weekly newspapers and a news agency in the U.S. and freelanced in Europe for network radio and two U.S. news magazines. After his diplomatic service, he was press secretary to former Senator George Mitchell before heading the writers group of a Washington public affairs firm. He has taught graduate-level public affairs and journalism at the American University, authored op-ed and analysis articles in publications that include the New York Times and Christian Science Monitor, appeared in numerous radio and television discussions on media and government topics, and spoken to business, editorial board, and student audiences around the country.

Hans "Tom" N. Tuch
Emeritus Board Member

Hans N. Tuch, a retired Career Minister in the U.S. Foreign Service, served in public diplomacy positions in Germany, the Soviet Union, and Brazil. He was Deputy Chief of Mission and charge in Bulgaria and Brazil. In Washington, he served as Deputy and Area Director for the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe in USIA, and as Deputy and Acting Director of the Voice of America. After his retirement in 1985, he taught public diplomacy and intercultural communications at Georgetown University and the University of Missouri-Kansas City. He is the author of Communicating with the World: U.S. Public Diplomacy Overseas.

Richard Virden

Dick Virden retired from the Department of State in 2004 after more than 38 years in the Foreign Service, the final two as the Deputy Chief of Mission in Brasilia. He had a previous tour in Brazil as well as postings in Portugal, Romania, Poland (twice), Thailand (twice) and Vietnam. From 1986 to 1997, Virden directed public diplomacy programs successively at American embassies in Lisbon, Bucharest and Warsaw. From 1998 to 2000, he was deputy director of public diplomacy for Europe at the time the U.S. Information Agency was incorporated into the State Department. A graduate of the National War College, Virden also served on the faculty of that senior service college for two years and as a diplomat-in-residence at Georgetown University, where he created and taught a course on the evolution of public diplomacy. A native of Minnesota, Virden now lives in the Minneapolis suburbs and serves as a volunteer diplomat-in-residence at his alma mater, St. John’s University, and its sister college, St. Benedict’s. He also co-teaches a course on the foreign policy process at the Hubert Humphrey Institute of the University of Minnesota. Virden has received a series of U.S. government superior, meritorious, and Senior Foreign Service performance awards. In 1999, President Aleksander Kwasniewski decorated him with Poland’s Knight’s Cross for his leadership in advancing relations between the countries as president of the bilateral Fulbright educational commission during the mid-90s. Mr. Virden is married to the former Linda Larson, who is also from Minnesota. They have a son, Andrew, who was born in Brazil in 1974.

Myrna R. Whitworth

Myrna Whitworth, a 28 year veteran of the Voice of America, served as acting director of the agency on three separate occasions, including in the fall of 2001. At the time of her retirement in 2002, she was VOA Program Director. Prior to being named to that position in 1998, she was the International Broadcasting Bureau's first Director of Affiliate Relations and Media Training from 1992-1998. Her early career was spent in VOA News where she served as Executive Producer of VOA's flagship news program. Whitworth traveled extensively on behalf of VOA, meeting with government and broadcasting officials, addressing international gatherings and serving as a member of various international broadcasting committees. Since retirement, she has tutored ESL students and teaches a course in International Media and Politics at Mount St. Mary's University.

Barry Zorthian
Emeritus Board Member

Barry Zorthian’s extensive background in government, journalism, and communications includes a variety of assignments in the United States and abroad. He was Vice President of Time, Inc. (now AOL Time Warner) and minister-counselor at the U.S. mission to Saigon from 1964-1968. He served as a U.S. Foreign Service Officer in India and as program manager at the Voice of America. He is the a past President of the Public Diplomacy Council and a former member of the board of directors of George Washington University’s Public Diplomacy Institute.