Speaker Biographies
Catherine Bennett is the senior vice president of the National Foreign Trade Council, which was founded in 1914 to advocate for trade liberalization and a rules-based world economy. Before joining the council this past October, Ms. Bennett was a partner with Venable LLP in Washington, D.C., where she focused on a wide range of legislative and regulatory issues. Prior to that, she served for several years as vice president of government relations for Pfizer Inc., where she had global responsibility for issues relating to international trade, taxation, and intellectual property. Ms. Bennett also served on the National Security Council staff at the White House and as an aide to Representative Peter H. B. Frelinghuysen (R-N.J.).
Leonard Condon joined Altria Corporate Services in 2002 as director of international business relations. In August 2006, he became vice president of international business relations; in this role he provides advice on international trade issues to the parent company and to its worldwide operating units, including Kraft Foods and the Philip Morris companies. From February 1997 until he joined Altria, Mr. Condon was vice president of international trade for the American Meat Institute (AMI), the national association representing U.S. meatpackers. Prior to AMI, he served at the Office of the U.S. Trade Representative (USTR), first as an adviser to the assistant U.S. trade representative for agricultural affairs from 1981 to 1985 and then as deputy assistant U.S. trade representative for agricultural affairs from 1985 to 1997. While at USTR, Mr. Condon participated in the negotiation of the agricultural provisions of both the World Trade Organization Uruguay Round Agreement and the North American Free Trade Agreement. In addition, he was a central U.S. official in a number of high-profile agricultural trade disputes, including the infamous European Union ban on U.S. beef and Canadian restrictions on imports of dairy and poultry products. Before joining USTR, he served as assistant to the deputy administrator of the Department of Agriculture’s Agricultural Marketing Service. Mr. Condon also chairs the Agricultural Technical Advisory Committee on Trade in Processed Foods.
Charles F. Conner was sworn in as deputy secretary of agriculture on May 2, 2005, by Agriculture Secretary Mike Johanns. Prior to his tenure at the Department of Agriculture, Mr. Conner served on the National Economic Council beginning in November 2001 as a special assistant to the president for agricultural trade and food assistance, focusing primarily on Farm Bill issues. From 1997 to 2001, Mr. Conner was president of the Corn Refiners Association, Inc., a national trade association representing the corn refining industry. Prior to his tenure there, Mr. Conner held several staff positions with the Senate Agriculture, Nutrition, and Forestry Committee. Mr. Conner served as both the majority staff director (1995–97) and the minority staff director (1987–95), of the Senate Agriculture, Nutrition, and Forestry Committee. He also worked as a professional staff member for the committee from 1985 to 1987. Prior to joining the committee, Mr. Conner worked as an agricultural legislative assistant to Senator Richard G. Lugar (R-Ind.).
Calvin M. Dooley was named president and CEO of the Food Products Association in 2005 and is now the president and CEO of Grocery Manufacturers of America/Food Products Association. Mr. Dooley served as a member of the House of Representatives from 1991 to 2004, representing the twentieth district of California. He served on the House Agriculture Committee and was ranking minority member of the Agriculture Subcommittee on Department Operations, Oversight, Nutrition, and Forestry. He also served on the House Resources Committee. Mr. Dooley is a fourth-generation farmer and partner in Dooley Farms, growing cotton, alfalfa, and walnuts in California’s San Joaquin Valley.
Joseph Glauber currently serves as special Doha agricultural envoy at the office of the U.S. Trade Representative. He is on detail from the Office of the Chief Economist at the Department of Agriculture, where he has served as deputy chief economist since 1992. In addition to his work in the Doha negotiations, he served as economic adviser at the so-called Blair House agreements leading to the completion of the Uruguay Round negotiations. Mr. Glauber is the author of numerous studies on crop insurance, disaster policy, and U.S. farm policy. Prior to his current position, he served as senior staff economist for agriculture, natural resources, and trade at the President’s Council of Economic Advisers and as an economist at the Economic Research Service of the Department of Agriculture.
Jim Lyons is the vice president for policy and communications at Oxfam. Before joining Oxfam he was the executive director of the Casey Tree Endowment Fund, a Washington, D.C.–based nonprofit committed to restoring the city’s tree canopy. He led the growth and development of this organization into one of the nation’s largest urban conservation and ecological restoration NGOs. Earlier, Mr. Lyons served in the Clinton administration as under secretary for natural resources and environment in the Department of Agriculture. The many highlights of his time in that position include drafting the conservation and forestry titles of the 1990 Farm Bill, cochairing an interagency effort to develop the Clean Water Action Plan, assisting in the restructuring of the Department of Agriculture, promoting national conservation and environmental leadership at the USDA, and facilitating major land acquisitions for the national forest system. Mr. Lyons has been teaching at Yale’s School of Forestry and Environmental Studies since 2001.
Dan Morgan has been a reporter, editor, and foreign correspondent with the Washington Post for more than forty years. He covered the 1968 Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia and the 1970 Polish workers uprising that presaged the Solidarity movement and the breakup of the Soviet Union. In Washington, he pioneered his paper’s coverage of trade and agriculture issues, leading to the publication of a best-selling book, Merchants of Grain, which was nominated for the American Book Award in 1980. Since then, he has covered a variety of economic and political stories, using Congress as a base. His series on technology competition between Japan and the United States won the Gerald Loeb Award in 1982. Mr. Morgan won the Dirksen Award for his series detailing the operations of the congressional appropriations committees. He is a coauthor of the Harvesting Cash series on waste and abuse in the farm-subsidy program, a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize for public service in 2007.
Daniel A. Sumner is the director of the University of California Agricultural Issues Center and the Frank H. Buck Jr. Professor in the Department of Agricultural and Resource Economics at the University of California, Davis, where he has been since 1993. Mr. Sumner is the author of scores of professional articles, chapters, and reports and is the author, coauthor, or editor of several books, including the AEI Press volume Agricultural Trade Policy: Letting Markets Work. Mr. Sumner was previously a senior economist at the President’s Council of Economic Advisers and assistant secretary for economics at the Department of Agriculture, where he supervised the department’s economic and statistical work and provided policy advice to the secretary and other officials regarding General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade negotiations and the Farm Bill, among other issues.
Ann Tutwiler is the managing director for trade and development at the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation. Prior to joining Hewlett, she was president and CEO of the International Food and Agriculture Trade Policy Council, an organization that she cofounded in 1987. Ms. Tutwiler was associate director of the International Policy Council—an organization dedicated to developing and advocating policies that support an efficient and open global food system and sustainable production and distribution of safe, accessible food supplies—from its inception until 1992. She has published dozens of articles and edited two books on international agriculture policies, and she speaks widely on a variety of agricultural policy issues. Ms. Tutwiler recently received the John W. Kuykendall Alumni Service Award from Davidson College for her work in agricultural trade and development. She is a member of the advisory council for the Dean Rusk International Studies Program at Davidson College and serves on the boards of directors of the International Fertilizer Development Center and the Grains and Oilseeds Agricultural Trade Advisory Committee
Christopher Wenk is the senior director of international policy at the Chamber of Commerce. In that capacity, Mr. Wenk is responsible for promoting the organization’s international trade agenda—including bilateral Free Trade Agreements, Trade Promotion Authority, and the Doha Round of World Trade Organization negotiations—on Capitol Hill and within the business community. Previously, Mr. Wenk served as the director of international trade policy at the National Association of Manufacturers (NAM), where he advocated on behalf of the NAM’s members on international trade issues with the administration and Congress. He also worked with NAM policy organizations to formulate positions on trade issues and managed industry group coalitions on behalf of the NAM. Before joining the NAM, Mr. Wenk spent more than five years working on Capitol Hill for the House Small Business Committee; Congressman Steve Chabot (R-Ohio); and Congressman Dave Camp (R-Mich.), a senior member of the House Ways and Means Committee.
Paul Wolfowitz is a visiting scholar in foreign and defense policy studies at AEI, where he studies development issues. He has spent more than three decades in public service and higher education. Most recently, Mr. Wolfowitz served as president of the World Bank and deputy secretary of defense. Prior to that, he was dean and professor of international relations at the Paul H. Nitze School of Advanced International Studies at Johns Hopkins University. He has also served as under secretary of defense for policy (1989–93) and U.S. ambassador to Indonesia (1986–89). Mr. Wolfowitz was the assistant secretary of state for East Asia and Pacific Affairs (1982–86) and director of policy planning at the Department of State. He worked as deputy assistant secretary of defense for regional programs at the Department of Defense and as special assistant to the Strategic Arms Limitation Talks, Arms Control and Disarmament Agency (1973–77).
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