Voice of America Director, Amanda Bennett, speaks about global press freedoms at the First Monday Forum on May 6.

Council members will mentor two career State Department officers selected as Kathryn W. Davis Public Diplomacy Fellowship, sponsored by the Council of American Ambassadors. Council chairman, the Hon. Bruce S. Gelb, poses with new Fellows Katherine Tarr and James Wesley Jeffers, at the inaugural luncheon in Washington's DACOR-Bacon House. Photo credit: Cassia King.

Adam Clayton Powell III, an expert in international communications, digital strategy and disruptive changes, shared his insights on U.S. public diplomacy, and its implication for China and the Asia-Pacific region, in dialogue with Ms. Ying Chan, Master of Shun Hing College at The University of Hong Kong. "Technology always moves faster than we expect - even faster, now, than the President's tweets," said Powell.

Thirty years ago, a group of retired and active foreign service officers founded the Public Diplomacy Foundation. Their successors held a round-table November 5 at George Washington University (GWU), a close-up assessment of the state of this fine art of people-to- people dialogues today.