James Bishop is director of humanitarian policy and practice at InterAction, the largest alliance of U.S.-based non-governmental organizations providing humanitarian and development assistance overseas. Mr. Bishop has held this position since August 1995, working extensively with members of InterAction, officials of the United States government and the United Nations, and NGO counterpart organizations abroad, especially on disaster response. Entering the United States Foreign Service in August 1960, Mr. Bishop was assigned first as a press officer in the State Department’s News Office. His initial posting abroad was as vice consul in Auckland, New Zealand. That assignment was followed by tours in Lebanon as consul and economic officer and in Cameroon as economic officer. Returning to Washington in 1970, Mr. Bishop served as desk officer for several west and central African nations and then became deputy director for West Africa in 1974. Three years later he was named director for North African affairs. Mr. Bishop was appointed Ambassador to Niger in 1979 and remained in Niamey until 1981, when he was named deputy assistant secretary of state for African affairs. He held that post for six years and then was appointed ambassador to Liberia in 1987. Following three years in Monrovia, he served as U.S. ambassador to Somalia until evacuated by U.S. military forces in 1991. Upon his return to Washington, Mr. Bishop was appointed principal deputy assistant secretary of state for human rights and humanitarian affairs, the position he held until his retirement from the Foreign Service in 1993. After leaving the State Department Mr. Bishop became a member of a special task force on southern Africa formed by the U.S. Agency for International Development. In 1994, he left the task force to become vice president of the Congressional Human Rights Foundation. He resigned from the Foundation in April 1995 and joined InterAction in August. Mr. Bishop was a member of the international policy committee of the U.S. Catholic Bishops’ Conference for six years, terminating in 2000.

Bathsheba Crocker is the Deputy Chief of Staff in the Office of the UN Secretary-General’s Special Envoy for Tsunami Recovery, and a senior associate at the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) in Washington, D.C. Until May 2005, Ms. Crocker was a fellow and co-director of the Post-Conflict Reconstruction Project at CSIS. From 2002 to 2003, she was a Council on Foreign Relations international affairs fellow, working on post-conflict reconstruction issues. Ms. Crocker has served as an assistant professor at the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies and George Washington University’s Elliott School of International Affairs. She served as an expert for the U.S. Institute of Peace Task Force on the United Nations and as an observer to the Council on Foreign Relations Task Force on Post-Conflict Capabilities. She was a member of a CSIS-led reconstruction assessment team that went to Iraq in July 2003 at the request of the U.S. Department of Defense and the coauthor of numerous CSIS reports on post-conflict Iraq as well as a report on post-conflict Sudan. She has published several journal articles on post-conflict Iraq, chapters on Iraq, Kosovo, and Sierra Leone, which appear in Winning the Peace: An American Strategy for Post-Conflict Reconstruction (CSIS Press, 2004), and numerous op-eds on Iraq and Sudan. Before joining CSIS, Ms. Crocker worked as an attorney in the Legal Adviser’s Office at the U.S. Department of State, where she focused on foreign assistance, appropriations law, and economic sanctions issues. Prior to that, she served as the deputy U.S. special representative for the Southeast Europe Initiative, working on economic reconstruction in the Balkans. She served as the executive assistant to the deputy national security advisor at the White House from 1999 to 2000. Ms. Crocker is a Member of the Council on Foreign Relations.

James Kunder is Assistant Administrator for Asia and the Near East at the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID), where he provides leadership on the Agency’s Middle East and Asia programs. He has extensive government and private sector experience in international development. From July 2002 to July 2004, he served as deputy assistant administrator for Asia and the Near East at USAID. Previously, from January to May 2002, he was director for relief and reconstruction in Afghanistan. From 1987 to 1991, Mr. Kunder was deputy assistant administrator for USAID’s Bureau for External Affairs. He then served as director of the Agency’s office of U.S. foreign disaster assistance from 1991 to 1993. From 1993 to 1996, Mr. Kunder was vice president for program development at Save the Children Federation, an international non-governmental organization dedicated to improving the lives of children in the United States and around the world. He has also served as a legislative director in the U.S. House of Representatives, senior transportation analyst for the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, and deputy director for the National Republican Senatorial Committee. He was an infantry platoon commander in the U.S. Marine Corps from 1970 to 1973. He has published numerous articles on international humanitarian issues, peacekeeping, and crisis management.

Vance Serchuk is a research fellow in foreign policy studies at AEI, where he studies international organizations and the overlap between U.S. strategic interests and development policy. Previously he was a research associate at AEI, coordinating its defense and security policy program. He has also worked as a consultant for the Project for the New American Century and the Nonproliferation Policy Education Center. Before joining AEI, Mr. Serchuk was a Fulbright scholar in the Russian Federation. His writings have appeared in the New York Times, Washington Post, Wall Street Journal, Los Angeles Times, The Weekly Standard, New York Sun, The Forward, and other publications.

Greg Wilcock has served for the past three years as first secretary in the political affairs branch at the Australian embassy in Washington, D.C. In this time he has worked extensively on Southeast Asian issues, including Australia’s response to the tsunami. In 2002, until the time of the Bali bombings that year, he worked in the Australian embassy in Jakarta, where he reported on Islamic movements and politics. In 2000 and 2001 he was one of a small team of Australian diplomats to open Australia’s diplomatic mission in East Timor. In this time he worked with the East Timorese and the United Nations to help bring about East Timor’s transition to independence. He joined Australia’s Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade ten years ago. In Canberra he has worked on Australian foreign policy towards Iran, Indonesia, and East Timor.