Speaker Biographies
John R. Bolton is a senior fellow at AEI, where he studies foreign policy and international organizations. Ambassador Bolton served as the U.S. permanent representative to the United Nations (UN) from August 2005 to December 2006. From May 2001 to May 2005, he was under secretary of state for arms control and international security. Prior to this, Ambassador Bolton served as senior vice president of AEI and also held a number of positions in public service, including assistant secretary of state for international organization affairs, 1989–93; assistant attorney general, 1985–89; assistant administrator for program and policy coordination, U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID), 1982–83; and USAID general counsel, 1981–82. From 1983 to 1985, Ambassador Bolton was an associate and then member of Covington & Burling, LLP.
Norm Coleman was sworn in as a U.S. senator for Minnesota on January 7, 2003. Senator Coleman is a member of the Homeland Security and Government Affairs Committee, where he serves as the ranking member of the Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations. During his first four years in Congress, he served as chairman of the Subcommittee. Senator Coleman is also a member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, where he is the ranking member of the Senate Foreign Relations Subcommittee on Near Eastern and South and Central Asian Affairs, and the Senate Small Business and Entrepreneurship Committee. Before his election to the Senate in 2002, Coleman spent seventeen years in the Minnesota attorney general’s office, prosecuting cases all over Minnesota and getting involved in a wide variety of public policy matters, including drug abuse and civil rights. In 1993, as a Democrat, Senator Coleman was elected mayor of St. Paul, defeating the endorsed candidate of the Democratic-Farmer-Labor Party. In 1996, frustrated that the Democratic Party he had been a part of from his youth had assumed the role of defenders of the status quo, he switched to the Republican Party because he felt it held the best opportunity to bring about job growth, quality education, and greater public safety. In 1997, he was reelected mayor as a Republican with 59 percent of the vote.
Terry Miller is the director of the Center for International Trade and Economics (CITE) at the Heritage Foundation. In this position, Ambassador Miller directs the center’s ongoing research into the role of free markets and international trade in fostering economic growth around the world. Prior to joining Heritage in October 2007, he had a distinguished career as a diplomat and public servant. In 2006, President George W. Bush appointed him to be ambassador to the United Nations Economic and Social Council. Before that, he served as a deputy assistant secretary of state for economic and global Issues. Overseas, Ambassador Miller has served in Italy, France, Barbados, and New Zealand, including as head of the U.S. observer mission to the UN Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization. He also headed the U.S. delegation to the UN Conference on Trade and Development in 2004 and was the lead negotiator for the Monterrey Consensus on Financing for Development.
Welile Nhlapo currently serves as the South African ambassador to the United States after having served as South Africa’s ambassador to Ethiopia and permanent representative to the Organization of African Unity and the United Nations Economic Commission for Africa. During his term in Addis Ababa, he also served as South Africa’s non-resident ambassador to Djibouti, Eritrea, and Sudan. In 1997, he was appointed as South Africa’s special envoy on Burundi. Ambassador Nhlapo first joined the South African Department of Foreign Affairs in 1994 and was part of the delegation to the UN General Assembly in New York when South Africa was readmitted to the world body. Prior to joining the Department of Foreign Affairs, he served in various capacities with the African National Congress, including as head of the political section in the secretary general’s office, which he joined while in exile in Botswana. Most recently, Ambassador Nhlapo served as director in the Africa Division in the Department of Political Affairs at the UN.
Danielle Pletka is the vice president for foreign and defense policy studies at AEI. Her research areas include the Middle East (including Iran, Iraq, and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict), South Asia (India, Pakistan, and Afghanistan), terrorism, and weapons proliferation. While at AEI, Ms. Pletka has developed a conference series on rebuilding post-Saddam Iraq, a project on democracy for the Arab world, a roundtable of experts to discuss global energy security, and a project to develop bilateral relations between India and the United States. She recently served as a member of the congressionally mandated Task Force on the United Nations, established by the United States Institute of Peace. Before coming to AEI, she served for ten years as a senior professional staff member for the Near East and South Asia on the U.S. Senate Committee on Foreign Relations. Ms. Pletka has also been a journalist based in Washington, D.C., and the Middle East.
Brett Schaefer is the Jay Kingham Fellow in International Regulatory Affairs at the Heritage Foundation, where he analyzes a broad range of foreign policy issues, focusing primarily on international organizations and sub-Saharan Africa. A frequent visitor to the region, he has written extensively on economic development and peace and security issues there and how they affect U.S. national interests. Mr. Schaefer is a thoughtful critic of the UN and its affiliated funds and programs, and he frequently speaks and publishes analyses of the organization and how it can be reformed. He joined Heritage in 1995, working first as a research assistant in the think tank’s Kathryn and Shelby Cullom Davis Institute for International Studies. He was named a Kingham Fellow in September 1996. From March 2003 to March 2004, Mr. Schaefer worked at the Pentagon as an assistant for international criminal court policy.
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