Speaker biographies

Mauro De Lorenzo is a resident fellow in foreign and defense policy studies at AEI, where he studies private sector-based approaches to development in postconflict and post-Socialist countries; Chinese investment and political influence outside the Pacific region, particularly in Africa; and democratic accountability in aid-receiving countries. In 2005, Mr. De Lorenzo worked as a consultant to Afghan construction companies in Kabul, and prior to that he was a research associate at both the American University in Cairo and the Makerere Institute of Social Research in Kampala, Uganda, focusing on refugee policy and the wars in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Rwanda, and Burundi. In 2002, he researched and was associate producer of The Price of Aid, a BBC documentary about U.S. food aid to Africa.

Nicholas Eberstadt holds the Henry Wendt Chair in Political Economy at AEI and is a senior adviser to the National Bureau of Asian Research in Seattle. He serves on the advisory board of the Korea Economic Institute of America and is a founding member of the U.S. Committee for Human Rights in North Korea. Mr. Eberstadt is regularly consulted by governmental and international organizations, including the U.S. Census Bureau, the U.S. State Department, the U.S. Agency for International Development, and the World Bank. He has published over three hundred studies and articles in scholarly and popular journals, mainly on topics in demography, international development, and East Asian security. His dozen-plus books and monographs include The Poverty of Communism (Transaction, 1988), The Tyranny of Numbers (AEI Press, 1995), The End of North Korea (AEI Press, 1999), Korea's Future and the Great Power (National Bureau of Asian Research, 2001), The North Korean Economy: Between Crisis and Catastrophe (Transaction, 2007), and, most recently, Europe's Coming Demographic Challenge: Unlocking the Value of Health (AEI Press, 2007).

Kenneth P. Green studies public policy with respect to air pollution and climate change, energy and the environment, transportation and the environment, and environmental chemicals as a resident scholar at AEI. His work includes analysis of Canadian environmental policy. He has authored numerous policy studies, newspaper and magazine articles, several encyclopedia entries and book chapters, and a textbook for middle-school students titled Global Warming: Understanding the Debate (Enslow Publishers, 2002). Mr. Green has worked on both U.S. and Canadian policy, first at California's Reason Foundation, then for nearly three years at British Columbia's Fraser Institute.

Kevin A. Hassett is the director of economic policy studies and a resident scholar at AEI. He is also a weekly columnist for Bloomberg. Before joining AEI, Mr. Hassett was a senior economist at the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System and an associate professor of economics and finance at Columbia Business School. He was an economic adviser to the George W. Bush campaign in the 2004 presidential election and was the chief economic adviser to Senator John McCain during the 2000 presidential primaries. He has also served as a policy consultant to the U.S. Department of the Treasury during both the former Bush and Clinton administrations. Mr. Hassett is a member of the Joint Committee on Taxation's Dynamic Scoring Advisory Panel. He is the author, coauthor, or editor of six books on economics and economic policy, including Toward Fundamental Tax Reform (AEI Press, 2005). He has published scholarly articles in the American Economic Review, Economic Journal, the Quarterly Journal of Economics, the Review of Economics and Statistics, the Journal of Public Economics, and many other professional journals. Mr. Hassett's popular writings have been published in the Wall Street Journal, The Atlantic Monthly, USA Today, the Washington Post, and numerous other outlets. His economic commentaries are regularly aired on radio and television, including recent appearances on the Today Show, CBS's Morning Show, The NewsHour with Jim Lehrer, Hardball, Moneyline, and Power Lunch.

Suzanne Hunt is an independent consultant who works with the U.S. Department of Energy, the Sustainable Energy and Climate Change Initiative of the Inter-American Development Bank, and other nonprofit and private-sector clients. Ms. Hunt directed the Worldwatch Institute's bioenergy program for two years, where she coordinated the landmark study Biofuels for Transportation: Global Potential and Implications for Energy and Agriculture. Before joining Worldwatch, she worked at Environmental Defense Fund on social and environmental safeguard policy reform at the international finance institutes. Ms. Hunt has appeared on CNN International, CNN en Español, MTV, Voice of America, and public radio.

Anne Krueger is a professor of international economics at the School of Advanced International Studies at John Hopkins University. She served as first deputy managing director of the International Monetary Fund from 2001 to 2006. Previously, Ms. Krueger was the founding director of Stanford University's Center for Research on Economic Development and Policy Reform and a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution. She has also been the World Bank's vice president for economics and research. A recipient of a number of economic prizes and awards, she has published extensively on policy reform in developing countries, the role of multilateral institutions in the international economy, and the political economy of trade policy.

Asma Lateef is the director of the Bread for the World Institute and the director of policy and programs for Citizens for Global Solutions. Formerly, she was a consultant for the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development and the International Labour Organization in Geneva and senior international policy analyst at Bread for the World.

Peter McPherson is president of the National Association of State Universities and Land-Grant Colleges, an association of public research universities, land-grant institutions, and state public university systems. He is also the former chair of the board of directors of Dow Jones; the founding cochair of the Partnership to Cut Hunger and Poverty in Africa; chair of the board of IFDC, an international center dealing with soil fertility and agricultural development; and chair of the board of HarvestPlus, an organization working on breeding crops for better nutrition. In 2003, he served as the director of economic policy for the Coalition Provisional Authority of Iraq. He was administrator of the U.S. Agency for International Development from 1981 to 1987 and in that role was responsible for the U.S. effort for famine relief in Africa.

Namanga Ngongi is the president of the Alliance for a Green Revolution in Africa. He has been involved in international organizations throughout his career, including serving as deputy executive director of the United Nations (UN) World Food Programme. Previously, Mr. Ngongi served as first secretary at the Cameroon Embassy in Rome and with the Cameroon Ministry of Agriculture. He has also served as under-secretary-general of the UN and head of the organization's peacekeeping mission in the Democratic Republic of the Congo. Early in his career, Mr. Ngongi worked with village farmers for Cameroon's Ministry of Agriculture and headed a joint soils research project aimed at ensuring sustained production of basic food crops across the country's agro-ecological zones.

Robert Paarlberg is the Betty Freyhof Johnson '44 Professor of Political Science at Wellesley College and a visiting professor of government at Harvard University. He is also a member of the Board on Agriculture and Natural Resources at the National Research Council and has been a frequent consultant to the U.S. Agency for International Development, the International Food Policy Research Institute, the World Bank, the U.S. Department of State, the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations, and the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. He is the author of several books on agricultural trade policy, U.S. foreign economic policy, and environmentally sustainable farming in developing countries. His new book, Starved for Science: How Biotechnology Is Being Kept out of Africa, was published in March 2008 by Harvard University Press.

Robert Zoellick is the president of the World Bank. Previously, he was the vice chairman of Goldman Sachs Group and a managing director and chairman of Goldman Sachs's board of international advisers. He has served in a number of senior government positions, including as deputy secretary at the U.S. Department of State and as U.S. trade representative. He also served as deputy assistant secretary for financial institutions policy at the U.S. Department of the Treasury and undersecretary for economic and agricultural affairs and counselor at the U.S. State Department. He was executive vice president of Fannie Mae, as well as vice president and assistant to the chairman and CEO. In addition, he served as Olin Visiting Professor at the U.S. Naval Academy, senior adviser at Goldman Sachs, and research scholar at the Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs at Harvard University.

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