Speakers S
Sima Samar
Sima Samar was born in Jaghori, Ghazni, Afghanistan, on 4 February 1957. She obtained her degree in medicine in February 1982 from Kabul University, the first Hazara woman to do so. After living in refuge for over a decade, Samar returned to Afghanistan in 2002 to assume a cabinet post in the Afghan Transitional Administration led by Hamid Karzai. In the interim government, she served as Deputy President and then as Minister for Women's Affairs. She was forced into resignation from her post after she was threatened with death and harassed for questioning conservative Islamic laws, especiallysharia law, during an interview in Canada with a Persian-language newspaper. She currently heads the Afghanistan Independent Human Rights Commission (AIHRC).
David Sanger
David Sanger is one of the most trusted correspondents in Washington, one to whom presidents, secretaries of state, and foreign leaders talk with unusual candor. In a quarter century career at the paper, he has reported from New York, Tokyo and Washington, covering a wide variety of issues surrounding foreign policy, globalization, nuclear proliferation, Asian affairs, often focusing on the confluence of economics and foreign policy. He has been on two Pulitzer Prize winning teams and won the Weintal Prize for Diplomatic Reporting, for coverage of the Korean and Iraq crises in 2003, and several awards from the White House Correspondent's Association.
Jeremy Scahill
Scahill is a Puffin Writing Fellow at the Nation Institute and a frequent contributor to The Nation magazine. He has been interviewed on radio and TV, including The Bill Moyers Journal.
Dr. Klaus Scharioth
Dr. Klaus Scharioth is Ambassador of the Federal Republic of Germany to the United States. Ambassador Scharioth received his law degree in 1973 and has a PhD from the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy at Tufts University. He has served as a legal representative of Germany to the United Nations and was the Vice Chairman of the United Nations Legal and Charter Committees from 1986 to 1990. In addition, he acted as Chef de Cabinet to the NATO Secretary-General in Brussels. He presented his credentials as German Ambassador to the United States in 2006.
Eric Schmitt
Eric Schmitt is a senior writer for The New York Times covering domestic and international terrorism issues, and military and national security affairs. Since 9/11, he has made 10 reporting trips to Iraq and five trips to Afghanistan to cover American military operations. Mr. Schmitt has shared two Pulitzer Prizes—for coverage of the transfer of sensitive military technology to China and for coverage of Afghanistan and Pakistan.
Mark Schneider
Mr. Mark L. Schneider has a long-standing career, which includes serving as the Assistant Administrator for Latin America and the Caribbean with the U.S. Agency for International Development and Director of the Peace Corps. He joined the International Crisis Group (ICG), a multinational non-governmental conflict prevention organization, in spring 2001 as Senior Vice President. Schneider’s areas of expertise include post-conflict reconstruction and nation-building and U.S. foreign policy in the 21st century.
Amartya Sen
Amartya Sen is Lamont University Professor, and Professor of Economics and Philosophy, at Harvard University and was until recently the Master of Trinity College, Cambridge. He has served as President of the Econometric Society, the Indian Economic Association, the American Economic Association and the International Economic Association. He was formerly Honorary President of OXFAM and is now its Honorary Advisor. Born in Santiniketan, India, Amartya Sen studied at Presidency College in Calcutta, India, and at Trinity College, Cambridge.
Nabeel Shaath
Born in Safed, Galilee; leader of the PLO Planning Centre in Beirut; sought a dialogue with Israelis on the democratic state idea he was championing in the late sixties; chairman of the Political Committee of the PNC; coordinator of the Palestinian peace talks negotiating team; Cairo businessman and Senior Advisor to Arafat; PA Minister of Planning and International Cooperation.
His Excellency Shankar Sharma
His Excellency Shankar Sharma has been serving as the Ambassador of Nepal to the United States since January, 2010. Previously, he was Vice-Chairman of the National Planning Commission of Nepal from 2002 to 2006, where he provided leadership for national planning, policy guidance, program development and monitoring.
Ralph Shaw
Mr. Ralph Shaw formed Shaw Management Company, an investment counseling firm in 1980. In 1983, he formed his first venture capital fund with US Bancorp, with emphasis in the Pacific Northwest and was a leading venture capitalist in the Western United States through 2005. He currently serves on the boards of Schnitzer Steel, Inc., Telestream, FiveCubits (formerly BMG Seltec), Rentrak Corporation, Optimum Energy, and One-to-One Interactive. He also serves as a trustee of St. Vincent’s Medical Foundation and the Tax-Free Trust of Oregon.
Vandana Shiva
Vandana Shiva is one of the world’s most respected environmental activists and feminists. A trained physicist, she received her PhD. at the University of Western Ontario, and since the 1970s, has been a vocal figure in the conservation movement.
Noah Siegel
Working out of the Mayor’s Office, Noah plays a pivotal role in the implementation of the Metropolitan Export Initiative, a collaborative strategy developed in cooperation with the Brookings Institution that seeks to double regional exports in the next five years. Before joining the Mayor’s Office, Noah served as a political and economic officer in the U.S. Foreign Service, with an expertise in international banking, economic development, and democratic reform.
Noah Siegel
Before joining the Mayor's Office, Noah Siegel served as a political and economic officer in the U.S. Foreign Service. With a focus on the Middle East, Mr. Siegel served tours in Yemen and Israel, and worked at the State department in Washington, D.C. His specific areas of expertise included international banking, economic development, and democratic reform. Mr. Siegel speaks fluent French, Hebrew and Arabic.
President Ellen Johnson Sirleaf
Ellen Johnson Sirleaf was schooled in the U.S. before serving in the government of her native Liberia. A military coup in 1980 sent her into exile, but she returned in 1985 to speak out against the military regime. She was forced to briefly leave the country again. When she won the 2005 election, Johnson-Sirleaf became the first female elected head of state in Africa. In 2011, she was one of a trio of women to win the Nobel Peace Prize, "for their nonviolent struggle for the safety of women and for women's rights to full participation in peace-building work."
Wayne Smith
Wayne Smith is a Professor of Latin American Studies at Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies (SAIS) and a Senior Fellow at the Center for International Policy. In the State Department, he has served as head of the Cuba desk and chief of the U.S. Interests Section in Havana.
Stephen Stedman
A leading expert on civil wars and conflict management, Stephen J. Stedman was research director of the United Nations High-level Panel on Threats, Challenges and Change from 2003—2004, and in 2006 became Assistant Secretary General and Special Advisor to Kofi Annan, then Secretary General of the United Nations. Professor and Senior Fellow at Stanford University's Center for International Security and Cooperation, he directs the Ford Dorsey Program in International Policy Studies and is co-director of the Managing Global Insecurity Project.
Joseph Stiglitz
The most cited economist in the world, Joseph Stiglitz served as Chief Economist of the World Bank and chaired President Clinton’s Council of Economic Advisors. Always controversial, he is sharply critical of current international economic policies, global enforcement institutions, and the Obama Administration’s financial industry rescue plan. He currently heads a UN Commission charged with reforming the global financial system.
Ambassador WEGGER CHR. STROMMEN
Wegger Christian Strommen, who was born on June 14, 1959, in Larvik, Norway, has been ambassador to the US since October 2007. Strommen has a distinguished career in the Norwegian Foreign Service including positions as Deputy Foreign Minister and representing Norway in the United Nations Security Council. He earned his Master’s of Law from the University of Oslo Law School in 1984, and joined the Norwegian Foreign Service the same year.
Consul General Elin Suleymanov
A graduate of the Fletcher School of Laws and Diplomacy, Mr. Suleymanov is Azerbaijan's first Consul General to serve as Envoy Extraordinary and Plenipotentiary to the West Coast of the United States. His prior diplomatic assignments include Senior counselor for foreign affairs in the office of the President in Baku and Press Officer to the Azerbaijani embassy in Washington. Prior to joining the diplomatic service, Mr. Suleymanov worked with the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees.
John Sullivan
Dr. Sullivan has been the executive director of The Center for International Private Enterprise, an affiliate of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, since 1991. Sullivan holds a PhD in political science from the University of Pittsburgh and is the author of numerous publications on the transition to democracy, corporate governance, and market-oriented democratic development. He is an adjunct faculty member at Johns Hopkins University School of Advanced International Studies as well as at George Mason University Graduate School of Public Affairs and is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations and the Russian Institute of Directors’ Advisory Board.
David Suzuki
David Suzuki is an award-winning scientist, environmentalist and broadcaster. Born in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada, he earned a B.A. at Amherst College (Mass.) in 1958, followed by a PhD in genetics at the University of Chicago in 1961. He was a professor of genetics at the University of British Columbia from 1969 until 1993, when he became an Associate in the University of British Columbia's Sustainable Development Research Institute, while continuing to pursue his international environmental and media work. He has written 32 books, including 15 children's books.