Leadership

Jeffrey R. Shafer
Chairman of the Board

Jeffrey R. Shafer is Chairman of the Board of Trustees of the National Committee on American Foreign Policy. He is also a Member of the Management Board of S&P Global Ratings.

From 2011 to 2019 he provided advice on economic and political developments as principal of JRSHAFER INSIGHT.

From 1997 to 2011 he was Vice Chairman of Global Banking in Citigroup and predecessor institutions.  He served as Senior Asia Pacific Officer in New York.  Prior to this, he established and headed Citi’s Economic and Political Strategies Group. Still earlier in his fourteen years with Citi he worked with governments in Asia, Latin America and Europe on financial stabilization, liability management, debt issuance and privatization.

From 1993 to 1997, Mr. Shafer was Assistant Secretary and subsequently Under Secretary of the U.S. Treasury for International Affairs. At the Treasury Department, he focused on strengthening economic growth and financial stability in both developed and developing countries, fostering financial market development and liberalization, and strengthening the IMF and multilateral development banks. He was also responsible for the inter-agency CFIUS process to review foreign investment in the United States.

From 1984 until 1993, Mr. Shafer held a series of high-level positions at the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD).  Prior to the OECD, he served with the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, the Federal Reserve Board and the Council of Economic Advisors.

He served as an officer with the 1^st Infantry Division in Vietnam in 1967-68 and was awarded the bronze star with “V” device and oak leaf cluster.

Mr. Shafer holds a B.A. in Economics from Princeton University and M.Phil. and Ph.D. degrees in Economics from Yale University.  He has taught at Princeton, Columbia, Carnegie Mellon and Yale Universities.

In addition to his role with the NCAFP, he is a Member of the Council on Foreign Relations.

Nancy E. Soderberg
Vice Chairman

Ambassador Susan M. Elliott
President and CEO

Susan M. Elliott, Ambassador (ret.) is an accomplished diplomat with an earned doctorate from Indiana University.  During her 27-year diplomatic career, Ambassador Elliott held a variety of leadership positions at the U.S. Department of State.  She became President and CEO of the National Committee on American Foreign Policy in August 2018.

From 2015 to 2017, Ambassador Elliott served as the Civilian Deputy and Foreign Policy Advisor to the Commander of the United States European Command.  Ambassador Elliott was the U.S. Ambassador to Tajikistan from 2012 to 2015.  Prior to her Ambassadorial appointment, she served as the Deputy Assistant Secretary of State, Bureau of South and Central Asian Affairs, U.S. Department of State.

Ambassador Elliott served on the faculties of Ball State University in Muncie, Indiana and the University of Virginia in Charlottesville, Virginia before joining the U.S. Department of State in March 1990.  During her Foreign Service career, Ambassador Elliott worked in a variety of overseas and Washington-based assignments.  Her previous overseas assignments include Minister Counselor for Political Affairs in Moscow, Russia; Principal Officer in Belfast, Northern Ireland; Deputy Economic Counselor and Visa Section Chief in Athens, Greece.  Other overseas assignments include Moscow, Russia and Lima, Peru.

Ambassador Elliott worked on the staff of former Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice as a Deputy Executive Secretary and Director of the Executive Secretariat Staff.  Earlier in her career she reported on conflicts in the countries of the former Soviet Union when she worked in the Office of the Coordinator for Regional Conflicts in the New Independent States.

Richard Howe, Esq.
Executive Vice President and Treasurer

Richard R. Howe is Executive Vice President and Treasurer of the National Committee on American Foreign Policy (NCAFP).

Mr. Howe is a lawyer with the firm of Sullivan & Cromwell LLP in New York, specializing in corporate finance, mergers and acquisitions, and financial institutions.  His practice has included many international transactions in which he has represented clients in negotiations with foreign governments, including Liberia, Guinea, Turkey, Jordan, Haiti, China, Australia and Indonesia, as well as other parties.

Mr. Howe was Chair of the New York State Bar Association Business Law Section in 1992-1993, when he was a co-founder of the Soviet-American Banking Law Working Group (SABLAW) which presented a conference on Banking in a Market Economy in Moscow in May 1992.  SABLAW wrote a book on the basics of banking that was translated into Russian, printed by the Russian Central Bank and distributed to law and business schools in Russia.  In 1993, Mr. Howe participated in a similar conference in Mongolia.

Mr. Howe was a participant in the NCAFP’s trips to Kazakhstan in 2005 and 2007 as part of its Central Asia/Caspian Sea Basin Project.  He has also participated in NCAFP projects involving U.S.-China relations, Cross-Strait relations, the Korean peninsula and U.S.-Japan relations.

In addition to continuing to practice law, Mr. Howe serves on Bar Association committees dealing with legal opinions, is President and a director of Peoples’ Symphony Concerts of New York City and is a member of The Corporation of Yaddo of Saratoga Springs, New York.

Mr. Howe is a graduate of Yale University (B.A., magna cum laude, 1964) and Harvard Law School (J.D., magna cum laude, 1967).

Donald S. Rice
Senior Vice President

Donald S. Rice is a Trustee and Senior Vice President of the National Committee on American Foreign Policy (NCAFP).  He has been actively involved in a number of the NCAFP’s Track II Projects, including U.S., China and Cross Strait Relations, Denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula, and Central Asia/Caspian Sea Basin Region, requiring travel to the involved regions and participation in numerous roundtables and preparation of reports with policy recommendations.  After the collapse of the Soviet Union, he co-chaired delegations of banking lawyers to Moscow (on behalf of the Soviet American Banking Law Working Group – SABLAW) and to Mongolia (on behalf of the Financial Services Volunteer Corps – FSVC) assisting in the drafting of banking laws and regulations and the training of bankers.  He has retired from the practice of law (formerly a partner at Chadbourne & Parke LLP) and has also been a banker (formerly Vice Chairman of The Bowery Savings Bank).  He is a Director of Flowers National Bank, a Member and former Chairman of Yaddo, the artists’ colony in Saratoga Springs New York, a Trustee of the New Bedford Whaling Museum, a member of the Council on Foreign Relations, and a former member of the Advisory Board of the Shorenstein Center for Press, Politics and Public Policy at the JFK School at Harvard University.  He holds degrees from Harvard University (ABmcl ’61 and LLB/JDcl ’64) and New York University (LLM in taxation ’65).

John V. Connorton, Jr., Esq.
Secretary

John Connorton practiced law at Hawkins, Delafield and Wood, LLP for 43 years. Specializing in the law of public finance and municipal bonds, he participated in a wide range of capital infrastructure project financings throughout the United States. Representative bond counsel clients included major power, energy, transportation, industrial development, environmental and housing public authorities and agencies, as well as various states and municipalities. Other representative clients included major investment banking firms and banks serving as underwriters for various public finance projects. He has served as special counsel to a number of large universities and corporations, including those doing business in Northern Ireland. He served as a member of the Firm’s Management Committee for over 16 years.

He served as an Assistant Counsel to the Governor of the State of New York, during which time he participated in drafting and negotiating legislation rescuing the Urban Development Corporation from insolvency; authorizing the creation of the Municipal Assistance Corporation for The City of New York; authorizing the creation of Emergency Financial Control Boards for the cities of New York and Yonkers; and authorizing the creation of the Public Authorities Control Board.

As a Naval Officer, he deployed twice to Vietnam on board USS Vancouver LPD-2. He has long been also involved in numerous charitable, cultural, and civic activities, including his involvement as a member of the Boards of the Alliance for Downtown, the Downtown Lower Manhattan Association and the National Committee on American Foreign Policy. He has also served as a Partner in the Partnership for the City of New York and a member of the Board of Directors of the Academy of Political Science, the Citizens Union, the Flax Trust, the New York City Health & Hospitals Corporation, the College of Mount St. Vincent and the Institute for Mediation and Conflict Resolution, and as a member of the New York State Health Financing Council, the New York State Temporary Commission on State and Local Fiscal Policies, the New York State Hazardous Waste Disposal Advisory Committee and the New York State Court Facilities Task Force. He has also served as the Chairman of the Committee on Energy and Chairman of the Committee on International Arms Control and Security Affairs of the Association of the Bar of the City of New York.

In recognition for services to peace and reconciliation in Northern Ireland, Queen Elizabeth II awarded Connorton an honorary “CBE” (Commander of the Most Excellent Order of the British Empire) and the University of Ulster awarded him an honorary Doctor of Laws.

Dr. George D. Schwab
President Emeritus

George D. Schwab, co-founded the National Committee on American Foreign Policy in 1974 and served as its president from 1993-2014.  In the fall of 2001 the National Committee received a private endowment designed to honor the work of Professor Schwab which led to the creation of the George D. Schwab Foreign Policy Briefings.  Speakers at the briefings range from heads of state, foreign ministers, ambassadors, officials of international organizations, and other foreign policy practitioners and experts. They are held throughout the year to give members and guests the opportunity to extend and enhance the understanding of issues that affect the national interests of the United States.

George D. Schwab earned his Ph.D. at Columbia University and taught there until he joined the faculty of the Department of History at the City College of the City University of New York (CUNY) in 1960. He is now professor emeritus of history (City College and the Graduate Center).

George D. Schwab is the author, editor, and translator of numerous books and articles. The Challenge of the Exception: An Introduction to the Political Ideas of Carl Schmitt Between 1921 and 1936 (1970, 2nd ed. 1989) has been translated into Japanese (1980) Italian (1986) and Chinese (2011). Professor Schwab’s translation (with Erna Hilfstein) of an introduction to Carl Schmitt’s The Leviathan in the State Theory of Thomas Hobbes appeared in 1996. A second printing of his translation of an introduction to Carl Schmitt’s The Concept of the Political was published by the University of Chicago Press in 1996. Two printings of his translation of an introduction to Carl Schmitt’s Political Theology: Four Chapters on the Concept of Sovereignty were issued by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) Press in 1985 and 1988 and the University of Chicago Press reissued it with a new foreward in 2005. His most recent publications include “The National Committee on American Foreign Policy’s Focus on Russia,” The Harriman Economic and Business Review, vol. 1, no. 1 (January 2000), and Carl Schmitt, A Note on a Qualitative Authoritarian Bourgeois Liberal (2000). He coauthored Journey to Belfast and London with William J. Flynn, published by the National Committee on American Foreign Policy in February 1999. Dr. Schwab has also edited and contributed chapters to books on the cold war titled United States Foreign Policy at the Crossroads; Eurocommunism: The Ideological and Political-Theoretical Foundations; Ideology and Foreign Policy; and Détente in Historical Perspective.

A member of the Council on Foreign Relations, Professor Schwab received the Ellis Island Medal of Honor in May 1998. He serves on several committees of the Holocaust Museum in Washington, D.C., and the Latvian President’s Commission of International Historians. In 2002 he received the Order of the Three Stars, Latvia’s highest honor, in a ceremony held in Riga.

Grace Kennan Warnecke
Chair Emeritus  & Trustee

Grace Kennan Warnecke has had a lifelong association with Russia and the former Soviet Union.   She is formerly Chairman of the Board of the National Committee on American Foreign Policy, and is outgoing chair of the National Advisory Council, Harriman Institute, at Columbia University, as well as a member of the Advisory Council of the Kennan Institute. She served as country director for Winrock International in Kyiv, Ukraine, from 1999 to 2003. The former president of SOVUS Business Consultants, she was also the founder and project supervisor of the Volkhov International Small Business Incubator in Russia and executive vice president of the Alliance of American and Russian Women.

She was founding executive director of the American-Soviet Youth Orchestra and associate producer of the prize-winning PBS documentary The First Fifty Years: Reflections on U.S.-Soviet Relations.  As a professional photographer she was senior editor of A Day in the Life of the Soviet Union. She has served as an election observer in Ukraine, Azerbaijan and Georgia.   In 2013 she was named a senior scholar at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars in Washington, D.C.

Grace is the author of Daughter of the Cold War, published by the University of Pittsburgh Press in 2018.

She lives in New York City and Martha’s Vineyard.

Jacqueline Adams launched a second career as a communications strategist after more than two decades as an Emmy Award winning CBS News correspondent.  A natural “connector,” she has the unique ability to hear clients’ strategic concerns and find creative solutions, drawing upon her wealth of contacts and experiences in media, business, academic and civic circles.

Through her boutique consulting firm, J Adams: Strategic Communications, LLC, she counsels a variety of corporate and non-profit clients.  She has had multi-year engagements with the global communications strategy firm then known as Burson-Marsteller, and with the Ford Foundation. She serves as a senior advisor to the new payment platform for publishers, NICKLPass  and she is a co-founder of  the training program for rising star managers of color, The Diverse Future. In 2020, she launched a bi-monthly column, #TeamUp, in The Christian Science Monitor, following the publication of the book she co-authored, “A Blessing: Women of Color Teaming Up to Lead, Empower and Thrive.”  She currently writes the Climate Stories blog for the Harvard Business School Business and the Environment Initiative.

At CBS News, Ms. Adams covered the groundbreaking campaigns of Jesse Jackson for President and Geraldine Ferraro for Vice President before spending five years as a White House correspondent during the Ronald Reagan and George H. W. Bush administrations.  In the 1990s, she was a prolific contributor to the CBS Evening News with Dan Rather and CBS News Sunday Morning. She won a News and Documentary Emmy Award for the 48 Hours broadcast, “The Search for Matthew.”

A graduate of Harvard Business School, Ms. Adams deliberately saves time for a number of non-profit activities in the arts, education and foreign policy sectors. Currently, she serves on the Board of Directors of the Harvard Business School Club of New York and was among the alumnae profiled during the school’s 50^th anniversary celebrations of women and African-American students . She recently retired as communications officer of the Harvard Business School African-American Alumni Association (HBSAAA) after 20 years of service.

She has served on the boards of NYC Global Partners during the Bloomberg administration and the Off-the-Record Lecture Series, the oldest, largest women’s foreign policy lecture series in the United States.  For a decade, Ms. Adams co-led HBSAAA alumni in a mentoring program with  200+ 7th graders at KIPP Academy, the highest performing middle school in the Bronx and also served on the Board of the KIPP Charter Schools in NYC. She  founded the Frederick Douglass Council of the New-York Historical Society while a member of its major donor group, the Chairman’s Council.  Twice, she has traveled to the Venice Biennale, the international arts festival, as a member of the Studio Museum in Harlem’s Global Council.

Ms. Adams is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations, the International Advisory Committee of the United States Institute of Peace, and the Advisory Council of the Milken Center for Advancing the American Dream. She was recently named to the board of the National Committee on American Foreign Policy  She is a patron of the Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater and is in the seventh year of a planned decade-long study of classical composers at the Juilliard School of Music’s Extension Division.

Andrew L. Busser
Trustee

Andrew L. Busser is Managing Director of Strategy located in Pitcairn’s New York office. Andy’s primary roles are to advise wealthy families on long-term strategic investment and wealth matters as well as to cultivate, manage, and deepen relationships with families and single family offices both in the New York region and nationally.

With over 25 years as an advisor, investment manager, and strategy consultant, Andy has extensive experience advising families, individuals, and single family offices. Most recently, Andy was a partner at Symphony Capital, a healthcare-focused investment manager of private equity and hedge funds. Prior to that, he co-founded Wilkerson Partners, a management consulting and advisory firm that worked with wealthy families, investors and management teams with a focus on the healthcare industry, and he served as a management consultant at The Wilkerson Group/IBM Healthcare Consulting. Andy began his career in commercial management at The DuPont Merck Pharmaceutical Co.

Andy holds an AB in History from Colgate University. Outside his professional duties, he has served on multiple boards of both public and private companies and on the boards of the Colgate University Alumni Corporation and Lincoln Center Education.

Karl Eikenberry
Trustee

Karl Eikenberry is a former U.S. Ambassador to Afghanistan and Lieutenant General, U.S. Army (retired).  He is a senior advisor to the Saudi Arabia Ministry of Defense on its defense and military transformation plan.  He is also a faculty member of Schwarzman College, Tsinghua University, Beijing, China.

From 2011-2019 he was the Director of the U.S.-Asia Security Initiative at the Walter H. Shorenstein Asia-Pacific Research Center, Stanford University.  He was also an affiliate with the Stanford University Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies' Center for International Security and Cooperation; Center for Democracy, Development, and Rule of Law; and The Europe Center.

Prior to his arrival at Stanford, he served as the U.S. Ambassador to Afghanistan from 2009 until 2011.  Before appointment as Chief of Mission in Kabul, Ambassador Eikenberry had a thirty-five year career in the United States Army, retiring with the rank of lieutenant general.  His military operational posts included as commander and staff officer with mechanized, light, airborne, and ranger infantry units in the continental U.S., Hawaii, Korea, Italy, and as the Commander of the American-led Coalition forces in Afghanistan.  He held various policy and political-military positions, including Deputy Chairman of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) Military Committee in Brussels, Belgium; Director for Strategic Planning and Policy for U.S. Pacific Command at Camp Smith, Hawaii; U.S. Security Coordinator and Chief of the Office of Military Cooperation in Kabul, Afghanistan; Assistant Army and later Defense Attaché at the United States Embassy in Beijing, China; Senior Country Director for China, Taiwan, Hong Kong and Mongolia in the Office of the Secretary of Defense; and Deputy Director for Strategy, Plans, and Policy on the Army Staff.

He is a graduate of the U.S. Military Academy, has earned master’s degrees from Harvard University in East Asian Studies and Stanford University in Political Science, and was a National Security Fellow at the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard.  Ambassador Eikenberry earned an Interpreter’s Certificate in Mandarin Chinese from the British Foreign and Commonwealth Office while studying at the United Kingdom Ministry of Defence Chinese Language School in Hong Kong and has an Advanced Degree in Chinese History from Nanjing University in the People’s Republic of China.

His military awards include the Defense Distinguished and Superior Service Medals, Legion of Merit, Bronze Star, Ranger Tab, Combat and Expert Infantryman Badges, and master parachutist wings.  He has received the Department of State Distinguished, Superior, and Meritorious Honor Awards, Director of Central Intelligence Award, and Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Joint Distinguished Civilian Service Award.  He is also the recipient of the George F. Kennan Award for Distinguished Public Service and Harvard University Graduate School of Arts and Sciences Centennial Medal.  Ambassador Eikenberry has been awarded an Honorary Doctorate of Humane Letters Degree from North Carolina State University, an Honorary Doctorate of Laws Degree from Ball State University, and an Honorary Doctorate of Humane Letters Degree from the University of San Francisco.

His foreign and international decorations include the Canadian Meritorious Service Cross, French Legion of Honor, Afghanistan’s Ghazi Amir Amanullah Khan and Akbar Khan Medals, and the NATO Meritorious Service Medal.

Ambassador Eikenberry is a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, co-directs the Academy’s project on civil wars, violence, and international responses, and serves on the Academy’s Committee on International Security Studies.  He is member of the Task Force on Prevention and Fragility mandated by the United States Congress, and of the Task Force on U.S. Policy Toward China sponsored by the Asia Society and University of California San Diego 21^st Century China Program.

He belongs to the boards of the Centre for Humanitarian Dialogue in Geneva, The Asia Foundation, American Councils for International Education, Asia Society of Northern California, National Bureau of Asian Research, and National Committee on American Foreign Policy; is a Non-Resident Fellow at the Liechtenstein Institute for Self-Determination, Princeton University; serves on the United States Institute of Peace’s Flag Officer Advisory Group; and is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations and American Academy of Diplomacy.  He was previously the President of the Foreign Area Officers Association and a board member of the International Institute for Strategic Studies.

His articles and essays on U.S. and international security issues have appeared in Foreign Affairs, The Washington Quarterly, The American Interest, American Foreign Policy Interests, Lawfare, The New York Times, The Washington Post, Lawfare, Foreign Policy, Survival, Dædalus, The Financial Times, Parameters, and Military Review.

Thomas S. Hexner
Trustee

Thomas Hexner is the founder and Chief Executive Officer of Value Trust Capital LLC, a New York based investment firm. He also serves as President of the Hexner Foundation. Mr. Hexner was formerly the President of Bernstein Investment Research and Management where he was responsible for their global private client business for over 15 years.

Mr. Hexner has been involved with a variety of organizations and currently serves on the Board of Regents of Georgetown University. He spent 12 years on the Board of Trustees of The Browning School in Manhattan, most recently as Treasurer. His family foundation supports several educational initiatives with a focus on promoting awareness of and fostering communication on global issues.

Mr. Hexner is a graduate of Hamilton College.

Kimberly Kriger
Trustee

Kimberly Kriger brings more than 20 years of experience advising C-suites and boards of directors of U.S. and multinational companies and institutions facing complex crises and issues related to capital markets, reputation management, sustainable value creation, stakeholder engagement, commercial disputes, M&A, corporate governance and emerging regulatory and public policy concerns — many of which are greater challenges than ever before.

Kimberly was a Partner at Kekst CNC, where in addition to advancing her clients’ interests and goals, with sophisticated communications strategies, she helped build new capabilities and offerings for the firm, including in its restructuring, ESG and business transformation practices. As a Partner at Dentons Global Advisors, she leveraged her experience while helping the firm integrate sustainability and ESG strategy into its legal practice offerings.

David Lakhdhir, a partner in Paul, Weiss, Rifkind, Wharton & Garrison LLP for over 30 years, is an international lawyer with a practice that spans three continents and a wide range of cross-border M&A, foreign investment, and other international business transactions.  He is currently based in the firm’s London and New York offices, co-founded its London office, and previously led its office in Tokyo.  His clients have included several of the world’s largest financial institutions and private equity houses, major U.S., European and Asian multinational enterprises, and several arms of the U.S. government.

Mr. Lakhdhir is also Chair of the board of trustees of the American University of Central Asia in Bishkek, Kyrgyz Republic; a director of Human Rights Watch, Inc. and Chair of its Policy Committee; and a member of the advisory Council of JUSTICE, a U.K. law reform and human rights organization.

A graduate of Harvard College and the Harvard Law School, before entering private practice Mr. Lakhdhir served as a Teaching Fellow in Harvard’s Government Department, assisting in courses on “War” and U.S. foreign policy, and spent a year as a Visiting Scholar at the Indian Law Institute in New Delhi, India.

Brendan R. McGuire, Esq.
Trustee

Brendan R. McGuire is a partner with the law firm WilmerHale.  Mr. McGuire advises clients on managing, anticipating and mitigating complex legal and regulatory issues related to white-collar enforcement, as well as money laundering, national security, cybersecurity and privacy, and export controls and economic sanctions. An accomplished trial lawyer and litigator, he joined the firm after serving for more than 10 years as an Assistant US Attorney in the US Attorney's Office for the Southern District of New York.

During his tenure as Assistant US Attorney, Mr. McGuire was appointed to lead the two most sensitive units within the Southern District's Criminal Division. First, he served as Chief of the Public Corruption Unit for three years, and then, more recently, as Chief of the Terrorism and International Narcotics Unit. Prior to his supervisory positions, as a member of the Terrorism Unit, Mr. McGuire handled some of the most significant terrorism cases within the Department of Justice, including the 2009 kidnapping of Captain Richard Phillips by Somali pirates on the Indian Ocean, the 2010 prosecution of Faisal Shahzad for the attempted bombing of Times Square, and the 2011 prosecution of Russian arms dealer Viktor Bout for conspiring to kill Americans.

As Chief of the Public Corruption Unit, Mr. McGuire led some of the most notable investigations and prosecutions of New York officials in recent years, as well as cases involving violations of the federal fraud and bribery statutes, including the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act, securities fraud, healthcare fraud and tax evasion. He also oversaw multiple corporate prosecutions, including the settlement of the largest municipal fraud case in history.

During his tenure as Chief of the Terrorism and International Narcotics Unit, Mr. McGuire supervised investigations and prosecutions of international and domestic terrorism, money laundering, violations of economic sanctions and export control laws, espionage and global narcotics trafficking. In that position, he regularly coordinated criminal investigations with the intelligence community, the Department of the Treasury, the Department of Defense, the Department of State and foreign governments.

Prior to his government service, Mr. McGuire practiced as a litigator at two prominent New York law firms where he specialized in white-collar defense and corporate investigations. He also clerked for the Honorable Peter K. Leisure of the US District Court for the Southern District of New York.

Thomas Pickering
Trustee

Ambassador Thomas Pickering retired from the State Department as Under Secretary of State for Political Affairs. In a diplomatic career with service in each of the major continents, Ambassador Pickering reached the rank of Career Ambassador, the highest in the U.S. Foreign Service. He served as U.S. Ambassador to the Russian Federation, India, Israel, El Salvador; Nigeria, and Jordan. He also was the U.S. Ambassador and Representative to the United Nations in New York, where he led the U.S. effort to build a coalition in the UN Security Council during and after the first Gulf War. He has held additional positions in Tanzania, Geneva, and Washington, including as Assistant Secretary of State for the Bureau of Oceans, Environmental and Scientific Affairs and as Executive Secretary of the Department and Special Assistant to Secretaries of State William P. Rogers and Henry A. Kissinger.

Ambassador Pickering was awarded the Distinguished Presidential Award in 1983 and 1986, and the Distinguished Service Award, the U.S. Department of State’s highest honor, in 1996. He also holds the rank of Career Ambassador, the highest in the U.S. Foreign Service. Ambassador Pickering was presented with the Hans J. Morgenthau Award for Distinguished Public Service from the National Committee on American Foreign Policy in 1993.

After retiring from the State Department in 2000, Ambassador Pickering joined The Boeing Company as Senior Vice President International Relations and member of the Executive Council, where he was responsible for the Company’s relations with foreign governments and the globalization of Boeing. Ambassador Pickering holds a B.A. from Bowdoin College, an M.A.L.D. from the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy, and a second M.A. from the University of Melbourne in Australia, where he studied under a Fulbright Scholarship. He speaks French, Spanish, and Swahili fluently and also is proficient in Arabic, Hebrew and Russian.

Ambassador Harry K. Thomas, Jr.
Trustee

Harry K. Thomas Jr. is a Senior Kissinger Fellow at Yale University’s Jackson Institute, a private business consultant and an international affairs lecturer.  Over his 34-year Foreign Service career, he represented the United States abroad as Ambassador three times and served in senior positions at the State Department and the White House. He retired in March 2018 with the rank of Career Minister.

He served as ambassador to Zimbabwe, the Philippines and Bangladesh. Ambassador Thomas also served as the State Department’s Executive Secretary and Special Assistant to Secretary Rice, Director General of the Foreign Service and Director of Human Resources, Director for South Asia at the National Security Council and Director of the Operations Center.

Ambassador Thomas speaks Spanish, Hindi, Bengali and conversational Tagalog.  He is a graduate of the College of the Holy Cross and holds a master’s from Columbia University.  Ambassador Thomas holds Honorary Doctorates from the College of the Holy Cross, Loyola University of Maryland and Angeles University Foundation of the Philippines and was the Commencement Speaker at these institutions.

He is a member of the College of the Holy Cross and Care for the Homeless Board of Trustees and Chairperson of the Winter4Kids Board of Trustees.  Ambassador Thomas is the recipient of the Secretary of State’s Distinguished Service Award; the Arnold L. Raphel Memorial Award for Mentoring; the Senior Foreign Service Presidential Award and several Superior Honor and Meritorious Honor Awards; the Order of Sikatuna of the Philippines for Exceptional Service and the In Hoc Signo Vinces Award from the College of the Holy Cross.

He is married to Mithi Aquino-Thomas and has three adult children.  They reside in Fairfax, Virginia. He is a fervent fan of New York sports teams, enjoys snorkeling, golf and connecting with social media friends in the global community.

Nicholas Thompson
Trustee 

Nicholas Thompson is the CEO of The Atlantic, a position he has held since February 2021. He was previously the editor-in-chief of WIRED. Under his leadership, WIRED broke massive, and much-lauded, stories about Facebook, cyber-warfare, the Robert Mueller investigation, and numerous other topics. During Thompson’s tenure, Wired’s digital subscriptions climbed almost 300 percent. The magazine won a National Magazine Award for design and photography and been named a finalist for General Excellence. Wired was also named one of Ad Age’s A-List digital publishers and won numerous honors from The Webby Awards, The Shorty Awards, and The Society of Publication Designers. Thompson’s most recent story about Facebook was a finalist for a Loeb Award. Upon leaving, he wrote a note to staff about his experience reading and running the magazine.

Mr. Thompson previously served as the editor of newyorker.com from 2012 to 2017, where he oversaw and managed the magazine’s fast-growing Web Site. During that time, the number of monthly readers increased seven-fold. He also led the redesign and replatforming of the site, the launch of the New Yorker Today app, and the introduction of a metered paywall. The work he led is summarized in this article: "How the New Yorker grew its digital audience by focusing on quality." Previously, he was a senior editor at The New Yorker where he edited stories about Earl Sweatshirt, Mullah Omar, Barack Obama’s foreign policy, and many other topics.

Mr. Thompson is also a contributor for CBS News, where he discusses technology on CBS This Morning and the CBS Evening News. He is also a co-founder of The Atavist, a software company and National Magazine Award-winning digital publication that was acquired by WordPress in 2018. His book, “The Hawk and the Dove: Paul Nitze, George Kennan, and the History of the Cold War,” was published in 2009 and hailed as “brilliant” by The Washington Post. The Washington Times said it “may be the most important political biography in recent memory.”

He has also been a senior editor at WIRED, a senior editor at Legal Affairs and an editor at the Washington Monthly. Stories that he has edited and assigned have won many major awards and been made into films—including Ben Affleck’s Argo. Prior to becoming a journalist, Mr. Thompson released three albums of acoustic guitar music, worked at Penguin Computing, and co-wrote a book about comparative economic development in West Africa and Southeast Asia. He is an avid runner, and in 2019 he finished the Chicago Marathon with a time of 2:29. In 2020, he set the American record for men 45+ in the 50k race.

Mr. Thompson has written about politics, technology, and the law for numerous publications, and was for many years a senior fellow in the American Strategy Program at the New America Foundation. One favorite piece was this one on his long friendship with Svetlana Stalin. He also wrote the introduction  to “The Best Magazine Writing of 2017,” published by Columbia University Press. He has appeared multiple times on every major cable and broadcast news network. He has given public speeches on numerous topics including the most important issues facing the tech industry, the future of narrative journalism, the way computers are changing our minds, the role of technology in political revolutions, and the way that Silicon Valley thinks about circular economics. He has testified in front of the Mexican Senate about fake news and moderated, or spoken at, numerous events including those hosted by WIRED, The New Yorker, the World Economic Forum, CES, Google Zeitgeist, Google I/O, Techonomy, The 92nd Street Y, Aspen Ideas, Aspen Ideas Abu Dhabi, West Point, Columbia Journalism School, The New York Public Library, and The Council on Foreign Relations. Thompson currently serves on the boards of The Stanford Daily and the National Committee on American Foreign Policy. He was a United States Truman Scholar and graduated Phi Beta Kappa and with honors from Stanford University where he earned a double major in Earth Systems and Political Science, while also completing a third degree in Economics. At Stanford, he cofounded a bipartisan publication for thought and debate called The Thinker and supported it by selling ads.

Nicholas Thompson is represented by the Lavin Agency and Helen Shabason. To inquire about speaking engagements, please visit Mr. Thompson’s speaker page. Mr. Thompson can also be found on Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn, where he was named the fourth most influential person of 2018.

Susan A. Thornton
Director, Forum on Asia-Pacific Security

Susan A. Thornton is Project Director of the Forum on Asia-Pacific Security at the NCAFP, Visiting Lecturer in Law at Yale Law School and Senior Fellow at the Paul Tsai China Center. In 2018, she retired from the State Department after a 28-year diplomatic career focused primarily on East and Central Asia. In leadership roles in Washington, Thornton worked on China and Korea policy, including stabilizing relations with Taiwan, the U.S.-China Cyber Agreement, the Paris Climate Accord and led a successful negotiation in Pyongyang for monitoring of the Agreed Framework on denuclearization.

In her 18 years of overseas postings in Central Asia, Russia, the Caucasus and China, Thornton’s leadership furthered U.S. interests and influence and maintained programs and mission morale in a host of difficult operating environments. Prior to joining the Foreign Service, she was among the first State Department Fascell Fellows and served from 1989–90 at the U.S. Consulate in Leningrad. She was also a researcher at the Foreign Policy Institute from 1987–91. Thornton holds degrees from the National Defense University’s Eisenhower School, the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies, and Bowdoin College. She speaks Russian, Mandarin Chinese and French, is a member of numerous professional associations and is on the Board of Trustees for the Eurasia Foundation.

Donald S. Zagoria
Director Emeritus, FAPS

Donald S. Zagoria was Senior Vice President of the NCAFP, and served as the Project Director for the Forum on Asia-Pacific Security (FAPS) from its founding until 2020.  Under his direction, FAPS initiated and continues to run six major Track II dialogues on regional security issues in the Asia-Pacific.

Prior to joining the NCAFP, Professor Zagoria was a consultant during the Carter Administration to both the National Security Council and the Bureau of East Asian and Pacific Affairs of the State Department. He has also worked for the RAND Corporation and taught courses on United States foreign policy and international relations of East Asia at Hunter College for many years. Professor Zagoria is also actively associated with the East Asian Institute of Columbia University, has been a member of several Columbia University study groups and is actively involved with the Asia Society and the Council on Foreign Relations in New York. He has written or edited four books and more than 300 articles on relations among the great powers in the Asia-Pacific region.

Professor Zagoria earned his B.A. at Rutgers University and his M.A. and Ph.D. at Columbia University.

Hans J. Morgenthau, (1904-1980) was a founder of the National Committee on American Foreign Policy in 1974 and its first chairman. As he defined and illuminated the national interests of the United States from the perspective of political realism, he became a seminal theorist of international relations. Accordingly, the National Committee's Hans J. Morgenthau Award is presented in his memory to individuals whose intellectual and practical contributions to American foreign policy have been judged to be so exemplary in the tradition of Professor Morgenthau that they merit the singular award.

Born and educated in Germany, he fled his country at the age of 33 and settled permanently in the United States where he was appointed to prestigious university positions, including chairs named for the Albert A. Michelson Distinguished Service Professor of Political Science and Modern History at the University of New York (CUNY). In addition to teaching at CUNY's Graduate Center, he served as a visiting professor at Harvard, Columbia, Northwestern, the University of California, and Yale. Professor Morgenthau was an adviser to both the U.S. State Department and the Defense Department.

His acclaimed work in the fields of international relations and foreign affairs includes Politics Among Nations; Science: Servant or Master?; A New Foreign Policy for the United States; Politics in the Twentieth Century; and, In Defense of the National Interest.