The George Washington University, Thursday, July 23, 2009, Jack Morton Auditorium

Moderators

Frank Sesno

Frank Sesno is Professor of Media and Public Affairs at George Washington University, and an Emmy-award winning journalist with more than 25 years of experience, including 18 years at CNN, where he serves as a special correspondent. His current work at CNN involves producing documentaries. Prior to working as special correspondent, Sesno served as White House correspondent, anchor, and Washington Bureau Chief. He teaches how the media affects the creation of public policy and is a host and producer of in-depth specials and mini-series on PBS and The History Channel. Before joining CNN in 1984, Sesno worked as a radio correspondent at the White House and in London for the Associated Press. He has won several prestigious journalism awards, including an Emmy, several cable ACE awards, and an Overseas Press Club Award. He is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations. Sesno holds a Bachelor's degree from Middlebury College. Marvin Kalb Marvin Kalb is a James Clark Welling Presidential Fellow at The George Washington University and Edward R. Murrow Professor Emeritus at Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government. He is also a contributing news analyst for National Public Radio and Fox News Channel. In addition, he is frequently called upon to comment on major issues of the day by many of the nation's other leading news organizations. Kalb had a distinguished 30-year broadcast career, working for both CBS News and NBC News, where he served as Chief Diplomatic Correspondent, Moscow Bureau Chief, and moderator of Meet the Press. Among his many honors are two Peabody Awards, the DuPont Prize from Columbia University, the 2006 Fourth Estate Award from the National Press Club and more than a half-dozen Overseas Press Club awards. A graduate of the City College of New York, Kalb has an M.A. from Harvard and was zeroing in on his Ph.D. in Russian history when he left Cambridge in 1956 for a Moscow assignment with the State Department. Kalb has authored or co-authored 10 nonfiction books and two best-selling novels. His latest book, The Media and the War on Terrorism (co-edited with Stephen Hess), was the recipient of the 2004 Arthur Rowse Award for Press Criticism.

Blair A. Ruble

Blair A. Ruble is a political scientist and editor. He is Director of the Kennan Institute of the Woodrow Wilson Center. Ruble has edited a dozen volumes, and is the author of four monographic studies. His expertise is in Russian domestic politics; urban patterns and urban management arrangements in post-Soviet Russia; and urban management and regional development.

Ruble previously served as Assistant Executive Director of the National Council for Soviet and East European Research. He holds a Ph.D. and M.A. in Political Science from University of Toronto.

Lunchtime Remarks Amb. Gilbert A. Robinson

Ambassador Gilbert A. Robinson is Chairman of New Realm Investments LLC. He is also President of GAR Inc., an international firm advising companies on international trade, governmental relations and communications. The company has been operating since he left the State Department. From 1998-2003, he was also National Director and Chief Operating Officer of the Center for the Study of the Presidency with headquarters in Washington, DC. From 1983-1985, Ambassador Robinson served as Special Advisor for Public Diplomacy to Secretary of State George Shultz. In February 1981, President Reagan appointed him as Deputy Director of the United States Information Agency. Ambassador Robinson was a businessman in New York City for 20 years before he returned to government. Earlier, he was a consultant to the Director of the Peace Corps and then Coordinator of the American National Exhibition in Moscow where he brought together Vice President Nixon and Russian Premier Nikita Khrushchev in the famous “Kitchen Debate.”

William Burns

William Burns William Burns holds the highest rank in the Foreign Service, Career Ambassador, and became Under Secretary for Political Affairs, the highest career position in the State Department, in May 2008. Ambassador Burns served from 2005 until 2008 as Ambassador to Russia. He was Assistant Secretary of State for Near Eastern Affairs from 2001 until 2005, and Ambassador to Jordan from 1998 until 2001. Ambassador Burns has also served in a number of other posts since entering the Foreign Service in 1982, including: Executive Secretary of the State Department and Special Assistant to Secretaries Christopher and Albright; Minister-Counselor for Political Affairs at the U.S. Embassy in Moscow; Acting Director and Principal Deputy Director of the State Department's Policy Planning Staff; and Special Assistant to the President and Senior Director for Near East and South Asian Affairs at the National Security Council staff. Ambassador Burns earned a B.A. in History from LaSalle University and M.Phil. and D.Phil. degrees in International Relations from Oxford University, where he studied as a Marshall Scholar. He is the recipient of three honorary doctoral degrees. Ambassador Burns is the author of Economic Aid and American Policy Toward Egypt, 1955-1981 (State University of New York Press, l985). He speaks Russian, Arabic, and French, and is the recipient of two Presidential Distinguished Service Awards and a number of Department of State awards, including two Distinguished Honor Awards, the 2006 Charles E. Cobb, Jr. Ambassadorial Award for Initiative and Success in Trade Development, the 2005 Robert C. Frasure Memorial Award for conflict resolution and peacemaking, and the James Clement Dunn Award.

Panelists and Presenters

Panel I: The Kitchen Debate and the Cold War Summer of 1959

Sergei N. Khrushchev

Sergei N. Khrushchev, son of former Soviet Prime Minister Nikita Khrushchev, has been a senior fellow at the Watson Institute since 1996 and a senior visiting scholar from 1991-1996. Before that, he was a fellow at the Institute of Politics at Harvard University's John F. Kennedy School of Government. From 1968-1991, he served at the Control Computer Institute in Moscow, rising from section head to first deputy director in charge of research; and from 1958-1968, he was an engineer, then deputy section head in charge of guidance systems for missile and space design, including work on cruise missiles for submarines, military and research spacecraft, moon vehicles, and the “Proton,” the world’s largest space booster.

Khrushchev is a regular commentator for the U.S. media and the author of more than 250 books and articles on engineering, computer science, history, and economy. He earned his Soviet doctoral degree from the Ukrainian Academy of Science, a PhD from the Moscow Technical University, and an MA with distinction from the Moscow Electric Power Institute. In addition to teaching courses at Brown University, he lectures at the Naval War College in Newport, R.I., on such topics as Russian economic and political reforms; U.S.-Soviet relations from 1950-1964; the history of the Soviet space program; and Nikita Khrushchev’s economic, political, and security reforms.

William Safire

William Safire joined the New York Times in 1973, won the Pulitzer Prize for distinguished commentary in 1978, and served 9 years on the Pulitzer Board. He continues to write his Sunday column, “On Language,” which has appeared in The New York Times Magazine since 1979. This column on grammar and usage has led to the publication of 14 books and makes him the most widely read writer on the English language. He was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the nation’s highest civilian award, in a White House ceremony held December 16, 2006. He is the author of four novels, including Freedom, a novel of Lincoln and the Civil War. Before joining The Times, Safire was a senior White House speechwriter for President Nixon. He had previously been a radio and television producer, a U.S. Army correspondent, and began his career as a reporter for a profiles column in The New York Herald Tribune. He has been active with the Dana Foundation, a philanthropy supporting brain science, immunology, and arts education since 1993 and currently serves as its chairman.

Tomas Tolvaisas

Tomas Tolvaisas is Assistant Professor of History at Winona State University. He was previously an instructor in History and English at Rutgers University. His areas of interest include Modern and Contemporary U.S. History; American History in Global Perspective; History of American Foreign Relations; the Cold War History; the Vietnam War History; American Political, Economic, Social, Cultural, and Intellectual History; Russian History; Soviet History; East European History; European Diplomatic History; and Global History.

Tolvaisas received his Ph.D. from Rutgers University and his M.A. from Purdue University, both in twentieth century U.S. history.

Hans (Tom) Tuch

Hans (Tom) Tuch retired from the Foreign Service of the United States in 1985 as a Career Minister after over 35 years of service. Tuch held a variety of positions in the Department of State and the U.S. Information Agency abroad and in Washington--among them Deputy Chief of Mission in Sofia and Brasilia; Minister-Counselor for Public Affairs in Brazil and Germany; Press and Cultural Attache in Moscow; USIA director for Soviet and Eastern European Affairs; and acting director of the Voice of America. He also served as the Edward R. Murrow Fellow and Visiting Professor at the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy. Tuch is the author of "Communicating with the World: U.S. Public Diplomacy Overseas" (New York: St. Martin's Press, 1990) and "Arias, Cabalettas and Foreign Affairs: A Public Diplomat's Quasi-Musical Memoir" (Washington, D.C.: New Academia Publishing, 2008). He holds a Presidential Distinguished Service Award, USIA's Distinguished Honor Award, the Edward R. Murrow Award for Excellence in Public Diplomacy, and the Commander's Cross of the Order of Merit of the Federal Republic of Germany.

Tuch came to the United States from Germany in 1938. During World War II he served as a paratrooper in the 101st Airborne Division in Europe and was awarded a Bronze Star. He received his Bachelor of Arts degree from the University of Kansas City in 1947, and his Master of Arts from Johns Hopkins University School of Advanced International Studies in 1948. He was awarded an honorary Doctorate of Laws from the University of Missouri in 1985, and he was Adjunct Professor at Georgetown University's School of Foreign Service 1985-89 and at the University of Missouri-Kansas City 1990-95.

Return to Sokolniki: A Visual Reintroduction to the 1959 U.S. Exhibition in Moscow

Amb. William H. Luers

William Luers is president of the United Nations Association of the USA (UNA-USA), a center for innovative programs to engage Americans in issues of global concern. Prior to joining UNA-USA in February 1999, Ambassador Luers served for 13 years as president of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York City. Prior to his move to New York in 1986, Luers had a 31-year career in the Foreign Service. He served as US Ambassador to Czechoslovakia (1983-1986) and Venezuela (1978-1982) and held numerous posts in Italy, Germany, the Soviet Union, and in the Department of State, where he was the Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for Europe (1977-1978) and for Inter-American Affairs (1975-1977). Luers has been a visiting lecturer at the Woodrow Wilson School at Princeton, at George Washington University in Washington, DC, and at the School of Advanced International Studies at Johns Hopkins University. He was also the director's visitor at Princeton's Institute for Advanced Study in 1982-1983. Luers received his B.A. from Hamilton College and his M.A. from Columbia University following four years in the United States Navy. He did graduate work in Philosophy at Northwestern University and holds honorary doctorate degrees from Hamilton College and Marlboro College.

Panel II

The U.S. Exhibition at Sokolniki Park George Feifer George Feifer is the author of many successful books, including Tennozan: The Battle of Okinawa, a New York Times Notable Book; Moscow Farewell, a Book of the Month Club Main Selection; and The Girl from Petrovka, the basis of a Hollywood film. He's written for a wide variety of publications, including the New Republic, the New York Times Magazine, Harper's, and the Saturday Evening Post. He lives in Roxbury, Connecticut.

Eugene “Rocky” Staples

Eugene ("Rocky") Staples is a retired journalist, Foreign Service officer, and private foundation executive. He served abroad for many years in Latin America, Europe, the former Soviet Union, and Asia. Earlier, he fought in World War II as a Marine Corps fighter pilot, serving in combat aboard the aircraft carrier Franklin which suffered heavy losses in a Japanese dive bomber attack off the coast of Kyushu.

Staples began his career after WWII as a United Press correspondent in Mexico and Central America. In the career Foreign Service, he served in such varied assignments as the Deputy General Manager of the great 1959 American national exhibition at Sokolniki Park in Moscow, the Cultural Counselor of the American Embassy in Moscow, and Director of the U.S. Agency for International Development Mission in Islamabad during the war against the Soviets in Afghanistan. As a Ford Foundation executive, Staples oversaw the Foundation's overseas development work in Asia. He then served as the Foundation's representative in Southeast Asia, resident in Bangkok, and subsequently the representative for India, Nepal and Sri Lanka, resident in New Delhi.

Fluent in Spanish and Russian, Staples is a graduate of Mexico City College. He did intensive postgraduate work in Russian at the State Department's Foreign Service Institute and the U.S. Army "Detachment R" in Oberammergau, Germany. Staples has received a number of Presidential and other awards for his work. He is the recipient of the U.S. Agency for International Development distinguished honor award. For his work in development as the AID Mission Director in Islamabad, the Pakistan government awarded him its highest civil award, the Quaid-e-Izam.

Tatiana Sochurek

Tanya Sochurek was one of the original American guides at the Moscow Exhibition, stationed in the constantly jam-packed model home.  Besides representing “the face of America” to the Russian fairgoers, she became one the main faces that Americans at home saw in coverage of the Exhibition through the many photographs of her taken by Howard Sochurek that ran in Life Magazine at the time (they later wed, in 1965).

Ms. Sochurek enjoyed working as a guide so much that when the opportunity came up to work on subsequent U.S.I.A. shows in Russia, she jumped at the chance, and ended up spending nearly two years traveling the country with exhibitions on transport, medicine, and plastics.

After returning to the United States, Ms. Sochurek pursued a Masters degree at Columbia, beginning in Russian literature but switching to history and receiving her degree in 1965.  After marrying Mr. Sochurek and staying at home raising a young daughter for a few years she spent two years teaching in Westchester County in New York, followed by work with Merrill Lynch in New York.

Since 1990 Ms. Sochurek has resided in Florida, where she is in the process of organizing her husband's photographic archive.

Clay Shirky

Mr. Shirky divides his time between consulting, teaching and writing on the social and economic effects of Internet technologies. His consulting practice is focused on the rise of decentralized technologies such as peer-to-peer, web services, and wireless networks that provide alternatives to the wired client/server infrastructure that characterizes the Web. Current clients include Nokia, GBN, the Library of Congress, the Highlands Forum, the Markle Foundation, and the BBC.

In addition to his consulting work, Mr. Shirky is an adjunct professor at NYU’s graduate Interactive Telecommunications Program and a widely-published writer about social networks. His recent book, “Here Comes Everybody,” published in hard and soft-cover, has been widely praised.

Mr. Shirky frequently speaks on emerging technologies at a variety of forums and organizations, including PC Forum, the Internet Society, the Department of Defense, the BBC, the American Museum of the Moving Image, the Highlands Forum, the Economist Group, and several O’Reilly conferences on Peer-to-Peer, Open Source, and Emerging Technology. He is a graduate of Yale with a degree in art, and prior to falling in love with the Internet, worked as a theater director and designer in New York.

“Emergence:” The Debut of a Massively Multi-Player Online Game Designed for Public Diplomacy

Tim Lenoir

Tim Lenoir is University Professor and the Kimberly Jenkins Chair for New Technologies in Society at Duke University. In addition to publishing several books and articles on the history of biomedical science from the nineteenth century to the present, he has been involved in digital archiving and web-based collaborations, including projects with Stanford University, MIT, funded by the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation and the NSF-sponsored Center for Nanotechnology in Society at UC Santa Barbara. His current research centers on the use of text-mining and visualization tools for mapping the recent history of bio-and nanotechnology, the use of computers and digital imaging in biomedical research, and the history of interactive simulations and video games.

Lenoir is co-founder of the innovative company SparkIP, based in Atlanta. Lenoir also teaches courses on interactive simulation and video games. As recipient of the MacArthur Foundation Digital Millennium Award, Lenoir recently completed work on Virtual Peace: Turning Swords to Ploughshares, a training and simulation game-based learning environment for workers and students in the field of peace and conflict resolution.

Casey Alt

Casey Alt is an artist whose work explores how interface mediates power and culture. Though primarily engaging in problematics and processes of computational media, his works often span multiple mediums, including software, design, installation, and performance. He was an Electronic Warfare Cryptolinguist in the US Army and trained at the Defense Language Institute Foreign Language Center, where he graduated with honors as an advanced Arabic linguist. Alt was a cadet at the United States Military Academy in West Point, New York, where he received numerous awards and distinctions

Alt holds an M.A. from Stanford University in History & Philosophy of Science & Technology, and an M.A. from UCLA in Design/Media Arts. Currently based in New York, Casey is Assistant Professor of the Practice in the Department of Art, Art History & Visual Studies at Duke University and is also an Adjunct Assistant Professor of Architecture in the Graduate School of Architecture, Planning & Preservation at Columbia University.

Patrick Jagoda

Patrick Jagoda is a writer and a graduate student at Duke University. His scholarly work explores the way that metaphors and representations of network structures have influenced fiction, film, and new media from the end of World War II through the early twenty-first century.

He is currently working on his Ph.D. in English at Duke University. He is a HASTAC (Humanities, Arts, Science, and Technology Advanced Collaboratory) Scholar and an editorial assistant for the journal American Literature. Related to his new media work, his research and teaching interests have included video game studies, the culture of online synthetic worlds, electronic fiction, and speculative literature. Along with his academic pursuits, Patrick is completing a final draft of a near-future techno-science fiction novel about the future of online military games that is entitled NecroNexus.

Harrison Lee

Harrison Lee is an undergraduate student in the fields of information science and critical studies of new media. He enrolled at Duke University with a full scholarship as a member of the Robertson Scholars program, a unique academic collaboration between Duke University and the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill that includes a one-semester "study abroad" program at the sister college.

Lee has been working with Professor Tim Lenoir on a number of different projects, including the MacArthur Foundation-funded Virtual Peace simulation and a yet-unreleased video on the development of gaming as a unique medium for narrative. His other work include online social network-based viral marketing for the Thousand Kites Project, a nonprofit social justice movement based in Kentucky, and developing computerized cost-tracking and analysis systems for fuel expenditures at the Cincinnati Jewish Community Center.

Panel III: Opportunities for Public Diplomacy in the Digital World

George Clack

George Clack is director of the Office of Publications in the State Department’s Bureau of International Information Programs. Among the publications he has edited are: Abraham Lincoln: A Legacy of Freedom; Being Muslim in America; Focus on Intellectual Property Rights; Handbook of Independent Journalism; Writers on America; and Outline of the U.S. Economy. He also serves as creative director for the monthly Internet magazine eJournal USA. Clack recently received the Public Diplomacy Alumni Association 2009 Award for Achievement in Public Diplomacy for imaginative use of new media technologies in the Democracy Video Challenge, a worldwide video contest run in partnership with YouTube. Clack joined the State Department in October 1999 when the U.S. Information Agency merged into the Department. He had come to USIA in 1983 as a magazine editor. Among his positions with USIA was editor-in-chief of America Illustrated, a Russian-language magazine distributed in the former Soviet Union.

Adam Conner

Adam Conner is the Washington DC Associate for Privacy and Global Public Policy at Facebook, where he focuses on privacy and regulatory issues, political outreach and directed the company's 2008 election efforts. Prior to opening Facebook's Washington DC office, Adam was the Director of Online Communications for Congresswoman Louise Slaughter, Chairwoman of the Rules Committee in the U.S. House of Representatives. He previously served as the Deputy Director of Online Communications for Forward Together, the presidential exploratory committee for former Virginia Governor Mark Warner. Adam holds a bachelor’s degree in political communication from the George Washington University.

Nina L. Khrushcheva

Nina L. Khrushcheva is an Associate Professor in the Graduate Program of international Affairs at The New School and senior fellow of the World Policy Institute. She is also an editor of and a contributor to Project Syndicate: Association of Newspapers Around the World. After receiving her Ph.D. from Princeton University, she had a two-year appointment as a research fellow at the School of Historical Studies of the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton and then served as Deputy Editor of East European Constitutional Review at the NYU School of Law.

Dr. Khrushcheva’s articles have appeared in The Los Angeles Times, The Washington Post, The New York Times, The Nation, The Wall Street Journal, International Herald Tribune, Financial Times and other international publications. She is the author of Imagining Nabokov: Russia Between Art and Politics (Yale University Press, 2007), and is currently working on a new book project “Russia’s Gulag of the Mind.”

Marc Lynch Marc Lynch is associate professor of political science and international affairs at George Washington University. He is cochair of the Institute for Public Diplomacy and Global Communications, and director of the Institute for Middle East Studies. He publishes frequently on the politics of the Middle East, with a particular focus on the Arab media and information technology, Iraq, Jordan, Egypt, and Islamist movements. His most recent book, Voices of the New Arab Public: Al-Jazeera, Iraq, and Middle East Politics Today, was selected as a Choice Outstanding Academic Book. Lynch began writing his influential Middle East politics blog Abu Aardvark under a pseudonym in 2002, and began blogging under his own name in the spring of 2005. Professor Lynch received his B.A. in Political Science from Duke University and his M.A. and Ph.D. in Government from Cornell University.

Ivan Sigal

Ivan Sigal is the Executive Director of Global Voices, a non-profit online global citizens media project founded at Harvard Law School’s Berkman Center for Internet and Society. Previously he spent ten years working in media development in the former Soviet Union and Asia, supporting and training journalists and working on media co-productions. As a Senior Fellow at the U.S. Institute of Peace, he focused on how increased media and information access and participation using new technologies affect conflict-prone areas. Prior to USIP, Sigal was the Internews regional director for Asia, Central Asia, and Afghanistan.

Sigal has designed and implemented numerous media assistance projects, including helping to create more than thirty Afghan-run radio stations; a project to provide humanitarian information to victims of the 2005 South Asian earthquake in Pakistan-administered Kashmir; and a post-2004 tsunami humanitarian information radio program in Sri Lanka.

Original Documentary Film, Directo Nina Gilden Seavey

Nina Gilden Seavey is an Emmy Award-winning filmmaker and a 25-year veteran of the documentary world. Her work can be seen in theaters, on television, on DVD, and in museum exhibitions across the globe. She is the director of The Documentary Center at The George Washington University, Washington, DC, which she founded in 1991.  In 2006, she became the co-director of the Center for Innovative Media in the School of Media and Public Affairs at GWU.  In 2003, Seavey took a leave-of-absence from GWU to become the founding director of SILVERDOCS: The AFI/Discovery Channel Documentary Festival.  She has continued to Executive Produce and serves as Senior Advisor to the festival for the past six years, as it has become the largest documentary festival in the U.S.

Seavey's credits over the past nearly quarter century include:  THE MATADOR (2008), A SHORT HISTORY OF SWEET POTATO PIE AND HOW IT BECAME A FLYING SAUCE (2006), THE OPEN ROAD: AMERICA LOOKS AT AGING (2005), THE BALLAD OF BERING STRAIT (2002), A PARALYZING FEAR: THE STORY OF POLIO IN AMERICA (1998), THE BATTLE OF THE ALAMO (1995).  She is currently in production on 4TH AND GOAL, the story of five African American football players in their quest to achieve a coveted spot in the NFL. 

As Director of the Documentary Center over the past nearly 20 years, Seavey has launched the careers of over 400 aspiring non-fiction filmmakers who have come from across the U.S. to study in her unique, intensive six-month program.  In 2008, she expanded her commitment to nurturing the work of new filmmakers through a grant awarded by the Department of State that created the International Emerging Filmmakers Fellowship Program. In its inaugural year, the program hosted 10 filmmakers from Kenya, Lebanon, Kyrgistan, Somalia, Jordan, Malaysia, Uzbekistan, India, Ethiopia, and Indonesia in a six-week production fellowship.

Conference Organizers

Sean Aday

Sean Aday joined The George Washington University's School of Media and Public Affairs in 2000, after completing his Ph.D. and a post-doctoral fellowship at the Annenberg School for Communication at the University of Pennsylvania. His work focuses on the intersection of the press, politics, and public opinion, especially in relation to war and foreign policy. He has published widely on subjects ranging from the effects of watching local television news to coverage of American politics to media coverage of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. He has been involved in media and government capacity training projects globally, including in Iraq and Afghanistan. He currently serves as the co-director of GW’s Institute for Public Diplomacy and Global Communication and chairs the Global Communication Master’s Program. As part of a National Science Foundation grant, he, along with two colleagues, conducted a series of surveys about Americans' attitudes about government and media following the September 11th terrorist attacks. Aday was also the principle investigator for DC Student Voices, a curriculum-based project in Washington DC high schools that aimed to get students more involved in politics. He has been a frequent commentator in the press on news coverage of elections, crime, and war. Before entering academia, Aday served as a general assignment reporter for the Kansas City Star, Kansas City, MO, the Milwaukee Journal in Milwaukee, WI, and the Greenville News, Greenville, SC. He graduated from the Medill School of Journalism at Northwestern University in 1990.

Mark Taplin

Mark Taplin is the Public Diplomcy fellow at George Washington University's School of Media and Public Affairs, on loan from the U.S. Department of State.

He is a career Foreign Service Officer with the rank of minister counselor.  He joined the U.S. Foreign Service in 1980.

From 2005-2008, he served as Deputy Chief of Mission at the U.S. Embassy in Bucharest, Romania.  During his tenure, he helped promote a close partnership between the U.S. and Romania.  In April 2008, he served as the overall U.S. control officer for the visit of PResident Bush to Romania and for the Bucharest NATO summit, the largest ever held by the Alliance.

From 2002-2004, he served as Director for Ukraine, Moldova, and Belarus at the U.S. Department of State.

He also served as Deputy Director of the Office of Press and Public Diplomacy in the State Department's Bureau of European and Eurasian Affairs (2001-2002) and Counselor for Public Affairs at the U.S. Embassy in Kiev, Ukraine (1999-2001).  His past overseas assignments also include two tours in Moscow, as well as public diplomacy assignments in Brazil, Haiti and Mauritius.

He holds a bachelor's degree in humanities and itnernational affaris from the Georgetown University School of Foreign Service and a master's degree in strategic studies from the University College of Wales (Aberystwyth).  He is the author of Open Lands: Travels Through Russia's Once Forbidden Places (Steerforth Press, 1997).

Linda Gottlieb

As a commentator for the fashion show at the Moscow 1959 Exhibition, Linda Gottlieb experienced first-hand the Russians’ hunger for information about America. After earning her M.A. in Russian history from Columbia University (as a Woodrow Wilson Fellow), Ms. Gottlieb went on to a distinguished career in film and television, producing the feature “Dirty Dancing,” “Citizen Cohn” for HBO, and numerous movies and mini-series for television, garnering many Emmys and Peabodys. She also wrote articles for publications such as “Life,” “Mademoiselle” and “The Reporter;” a novel for Viking, and co-authored “When Smart People Fail” for Simon and Schuster. She has taught screenwriting at Yale Drama and is currently on the faculty of the Tisch School of NYU, where she teaches a graduate master-class in screenwriting.

A communicator and a marketer, Ms. Gottlieb has consulted for companies as diverse as I.T.T., ABC, and Auburn Theological Seminary to help them develop branding and marketing opportunities. This GWU conference came out of just such a challenge. When a group of ex-Moscow guides asked themselves why today’s public diplomacy seemed unable to reach large foreign audiences as the Moscow Exhibition once did, Ms. Gottlieb suggested exploring the ways new media could be used to create personal public diplomacy on a large scale. Ms. Gottlieb is a member of the Women and Foreign Policy Group at the Council on Foreign Relations.

Jack Masey

Jack Masey served with the U.S.I.A. from 1951-1979 as design director of many major exhibitions mounted by the U.S. overseas. As USIA Chief of Design of the 1959 American National Exhibition in Moscow, Masey recruited R. Buckminster Fuller, George Nelson and Charles and Ray Eames to conceptualize the design of the American effort in Moscow. He later served as USIA Design Director of the American pavilions at the 1967 Canadian World Exhibition in Montreal and at the 1970 Japan World Exposition in Osaka in 1970 (Expo ’70). Both U.S. pavilions were accorded Honor Awards by the American Institute of Architects.

In 1979 he became a founding principal of MetaForm, Inc. in New York City in partnership with Chermayeff & Geismar, Inc. The partnership designed the exhibitions in the Statue of Liberty Museum and the Ellis Island Immigration Museum both of which won Presidential Design Awards. In 1989, MetaForm, Inc. designed the Johnstown Flood Museum for which Masey commissioned the Academy Award-winning Charles Guggenheim documentary.

Masey co-authored, with Conway Lloyd Morgan, the 2008 book, “Cold War Confrontations: U.S. Exhibitions and Their Role in the Cultural Cold War.” Since 2001, Masey has served as a Board Member and consultant to the Deutsches Auswanderer Haus Museum in Bremerhaven, Germany.

Beverly Payeff-Masey

Beverly Payeff-Masey is a designer with more than three decades of international experience who now works in New York City as Research Associate for MetaForm Design International. She recently contributed to the 2008 book, “Cold War Confrontations: U.S. Exhibitions and Their Role in the Cultural Cold War,” by Jack Masey and Conway Lloyd Morgan, and is currently collaborating with Jack Masey, former USIA Design Chief for the 1959 American National Exhibition in Moscow, on a book commemorating the 1959 Moscow event that is being underwritten by PepsiCo.

From 1977-1979 she was posted to the American Embassy in Paris, where her late husband served as Director of the United States Information Service. An Indonesian speaker, from 1982-1986 she served at the American Embassy in Indonesia, where she was the design principal for projects that included the renovation of the offices of the U.S. Library of Congress and the residence of the United States Ambassador.

In addition to her work in New York, she has a consulting practice for architects and designers in New Hampshire. Her recent work connecting brain research to perception of the spatial environment has led to the development of the ArchiMap, the first scientifically based diagnostic tool for design professionals. From 1989-1999, she taught design history at the University of New Hampshire and wrote for Boston Magazine and numerous other newspapers and periodicals.

Sarah Brown O’Hagan

Sarah O’Hagan is a strategic communications consultant who has worked for the past decade as a board member, fund-raiser and advocate for non-profit organizations involved in international relief and education. A member of the International Rescue Committee (IRC) board since 1998, Ms. O’Hagan travels frequently to visit IRC programs in the field and regularly speaks to IRC supporters and audiences about aspects of the agency’s work with refugees. She serves as chair of the IRC Board’s Program Committee, and is actively involved in the governance of the organization.

Ms. O'Hagan worked in print and television journalism for Institutional Investor magazine, CNN, and ABC NEWS, Tokyo. A graduate of the Paul H. Nitze School of Advanced International Studies (SAIS) at Johns Hopkins University, Ms. O'Hagan currently serves on the Board of the Louis and Nancy Hatch Dupree Foundation for the Afghanistan Center at Kabul University; on the SAIS Advisory Council; and Catholics in Alliance for the Common Good. She is a graduate of Wesleyan University with Honors in the College of Letters.

Walter Roberts

Walter R. Roberts is a foreign policy consultant and a former Foreign Service officer who began his public diplomacy career with the Voice of America and retired as associate director of the U.S. Information Agency (USIA), then USIA's top career position.  He was appointed by President George H.W. Bush and reappointed by President Bill Clinton to the U.S. Advisory Commission on Public Diplomacy.  He taught public diplomacy for 10 years at GW's Elliott School of International Affairs.  Roberts is the author of the book, Tito, Mihailovic and the Allies, 1941-1945, and numerous articles on foreign policy and public diplomacy.   He is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations and the Washington Institute of Foreign Affairs and served on the board of The George Washington University's Public Diplomacy Institute.  Roberts received a Ph.D. from Cambridge University.