2012 Human Rights Summit Bios

Mike Abramowitz directs the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum’s Committee on Conscience, which educates the public and policymakers about threats of genocide and related crimes against humanity and seeks action to prevent these crimes from occuring.

Prior to his appointment in 2009, Abramowitz worked as a reporter and editor for The Washington Post since 1985. Among the subjects he covered were local and national politics, foreign policy, health care, and business. Between 2006 and 2009, Abramowitz was White House correspondent for the Post. He also served as the National Editor of the Post between 2000 and 2006.

Aitzaz Ahsan is one of Pakistan’s leading advocates for the rule of law and an open, pluralistic society. He is a Senior Advocate before the Supreme Court, a member of the Central Executive Committee of Bhuto’s Pakistan People’s Party and having been Leader of the House and the Opposition in the Senate in the past was again elected Senator in 2012. Mr. Ahsan has been jailed several times by the military regimes of General Zia ul-Haq and General Parvez Musharraf. During one such jail term he authored his best-selling cultural history of Pakistan: “The Indus Saga” (OUP). Between 2007 and 2009 he led the Lawyers’ Movement that impelled the reinstatement of judges deposed by military decree. He is the recipient of numerous international honors defense of the rule of law and the independence of the judiciary, including the 2008 Asian Commission for Human Rights Award and the 2008 Special Award of the Washington based Middle East Institute. He has thrice served as Federal Ministerbetween 1988-90 and in 1993.

Alden is the Bernard L. Schwartz senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations in Washington, D.C., and the author of The Closing of the American Border: Terrorism, Immigration and Security Since 9/11, which was named a finalist for the 2009 J. Anthony Lukas Book Prize for non-fiction. He was the project director for the Council’s Independent Task Force on U.S. Trade and Investment Policy (2011) and for the Independent Task Force on U.S. Immigration Policy (2009). He is also the director of CFR’s Renewing America Publication Series. Prior to joining the Council in 2007, Mr Alden was the Washington bureau chief for the Financial Times. He has written extensively about the U.S. response to globalization, focusing particularly on international trade, immigration, and homeland security. He has won several national and international awards for his reporting, and has written commentary for the Washington Post, the Wall Street Journal, the Los Angeles Times and many other magazines, newspapers and websites. He lives in Bethesda, Maryland with his wife and two children.

Alya Awada is a Lebanese human and women’s rights activists. She is a founding member of Fe-male, a non-profit organization founded in 2012 by a group of young women and human rights activists, and the producer of “Sharika wa Laken,” the first feminist radio program in Lebanon. Awada works with the Collective for Research and Training on Development-Action (CRTD.A), a non-governmental organization that works to ensure equal access to health, education, and social security for all citizens, and trains women of various backgrounds in leadership and political participation. She is also part of a feminist collective, Nasawiya, which advocates for Lebanese women’s equal rights; and seeks to stop violence and exploitation through awareness campaigns and demonstrations.

Haris Azhar is the Coordinator for KontraS (The Commission for the Disappeared and Victims of Violence). He has been working with KontraS, a national wide human rights NGO in Indonesia, since 1999 as a Volunteer for the Advocacy Division. He continued as a staff member of the Monitoring & Research Bureau, Head of Documentation Research Bureau, Head of Research, Investigation and Database Bureau, and became the Vice Coordinator of KontraS before becoming the Coordinator in 2010.

Christine Bader is a Nonresident Senior Fellow with The Kenan Institute for Ethics at Duke University and a Human Rights Advisor to BSR. She also teaches Human Rights and Business at Columbia University. From 1999-2008, Christine worked for BP plc in Indonesia, China, and the U.K., managing the social impacts of some of the company’s largest projects in the developing world. In 2006 she created a part-time pro bono role as Advisor to the U.N. Secretary-General’s Special Representative for business and human rights, a role she took up full-time in 2008 until the U.N. mandate ended in 2011. Christine has also served as a corps member with City Year and a special assistant to New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani’s Chief of Staff and Deputy Mayor. She has published numerous op-eds and articles and given talks to conferences, companies, and universities around the world, including a TEDx talk entitled “Manifesto for the Corporate Idealist.”

Eric Biel joined the Bureau of International Labor Affairs (ILAB) at the U.S. Department of Labor in February 2012. He is part of ILAB’s senior leadership team, working on a diverse set of projects and activities, including supply chain issues across different sectors and submissions under the labor chapters of free trade agreements. Before joining the Department, Biel was Managing Director for Corporate Responsibility at Burson-Marsteller, a global consulting firm. From 2003-06 he was Deputy Washington Director and Senior Counsel of Humanx Rights First. From 1990-2000 he held several positions in government, including at the Department of Commerce, Senate Finance Committee, and as Executive Director of a bipartisan commission investigating government secrecy. Since 2008, Biel has taught a course at the Georgetown University Law Center on “Human Rights at the Intersection of Trade and Corporate Responsibility” that explores a range of business and human rights issues. He received a B.A. in history from Johns Hopkins and joint degrees in law from Yale Law School and public policy from the Woodrow Wilson School at Princeton.

Steven Clemons is the founder of the American Strategy Program at the New America Foundation, which aims to promote a new American internationalism that combines a tough-minded realism about America’s interests in the world with a pragmatic idealism about the kind of world order best suited to America’s democratic way of life. He is currently a Senior Fellow at New America, of which he previously served as Executive Vice President, and remains actively involved in the direction of the American Strategy Program.

Publisher of the popular political blog The Washington Note, Mr. Clemons is a long-term policy practitioner and entrepreneur in Washington, D.C. He has served as Executive Vice President of the Economic Strategy Institute, Senior Policy Advisor on Economic and International Affairs to Senator Jeff Bingaman (D-NM) and was the first Executive Director of the Nixon Center.

Prior to moving to Washington, Mr. Clemons served for seven years as Executive Director of the Japan America Society of Southern California, and co-founded with Chalmers Johnson the Japan Policy Research Institute. He is a Member of the Board of the Clarke Center at Dickinson College, a liberal arts college in Carlisle, Pa., as well as an Advisory Board Member of the C.V. Starr Center for the Study of the American Experience at Washington College in Chestertown, Md. He is also a Board Member of the Global Policy Innovations Program at the Carnegie Council on Ethics and International Affairs and on the advisory board of the Robert Bosch Foundation Alumni Association.

Mr. Clemons writes frequently on matters of foreign policy, defense, and international economic policy. His work has appeared in many of the major leading op-ed pages, journals, and magazines around the world.

Since 1988, Jim Clifton has served as CEO of Gallup, a leader in organizational consulting and public opinion research. His most recent innovation, the Gallup World Poll, is designed to give the world’s 7 billion citizens a voice in virtually all key global issues. Mr. Clifton has pledged to continue this effort to collect world opinion for 100 years in 150 countries.

Under Mr. Clifton’s leadership, Gallup has achieved a fifteenfold increase in its billing volume and expanded Gallup from a predominantly U.S.-based company to a worldwide organization with 40 offices in 30 countries and regions.

Mr. Clifton is the creator of The Gallup Path, a metric-based economic model that establishes the linkages among human nature in the workplace, customer engagement, and business outcomes. This model is used in performance management systems in more than 500 companies worldwide. He is also the author of many articles and of the book The Coming Jobs War.

Mr. Clifton serves on several boards and is Chairman of the Thurgood Marshall College Fund. He has received honorary degrees from Jackson State, Medgar Evers, and Bellevue Universities.

Lorne Craner returned to the International Republican Institute as President in 2004, and has since strengthened IRI’s programs in countries such as China, Colombia, Pakistan, Indonesia, Tunisia and Iraq. Previously, as Assistant Secretary for Democracy, Human Rights and Labor, Craner initiated the first U.S. government programs to advance democracy in China, helped construct the Millennium Challenge Corporation’s “good governance” criteria, and contributed to the conception and implementation of the administration’s approach to democratization in the Middle East. Upon his departure, Craner received the Distinguished Service Award, the State Department’s highest honor, from Secretary Colin Powell. Earlier in his career, Craner was a Director of Asian Affairs at the National Security Council and worked in the Senate and House.

Major General Charles J. Dunlap, Jr., USAF (Ret.) is the Executive Director of the Center on Law, Ethics and National Security at Duke Law School. He is a graduate of St Joseph’s University and Villanova University School of Law. General Dunlap’s 34-year career as judge advocate included tours in both the United Kingdom and Korea, and he deployed for military operations in Africa and the Middle East. As Deputy Judge Advocate General, he assisted in the supervision of over 2,000 full and part-time attorneys assigned worldwide. A distinguished graduate of the National War College, General Dunlap’s many publications include Do We Need New Regulations in International Humanitarian Law? An American’s Perspective (Journal of International Law of Peace and Armed Conflict, 2012); The Intersection of Law and Ethics in Cyberwar: Some Reflections, (Air & Space Journal [Spanish], 2012): Perspectives for Cyber Strategists on Law for Cyberwar, (Strategic Studies Quarterly, 2011), Towards a Cyberspace Legal Regime in the 21st Century: Considerations for American Cyberwarriors (University of Nebraska Law Review, 2009), and Technology and the 21st Century Battlefield: Recomplicating Moral Life for the Soldier and the Statesman (U.S. Army Strategic Studies Institute, 1999).

Michele Dunne is Director of the Rafik Hariri Center for the Middle East at the Atlantic Council. A former specialist on the Middle East at the United States Department of State, her assignments included the US Embassy in Cairo, the US Consulate General in Jerusalem, and the National Security Council staff. She holds a PhD in Arabic language from Georgetown University.

Senator Dick Durbin, a Democrat from Springfield, is the 47th U.S. Senator from the State of Illinois, the state’s senior senator, and the convener of Illinois’ bipartisan congressional delegation. Durbin also serves as the Assistant Majority Leader, the second highest ranking position in the Senate. Also known as the Majority Whip, Senator Durbin has been elected to this leadership post by his Democratic colleagues every two years since 2006. In 2004, he was elected as Minority Whip. Durbin is only the fifth Illinois Senator in history to serve as a Senate leader. Elected to the U.S. Senate on November 5, 1996, and re-elected in 2002 and 2008, Durbin fills the seat left vacant by the retirement of his long-time friend and mentor, U.S. Senator Paul Simon. Durbin sits on the Senate Judiciary, Appropriations, Foreign Relations and Rules Committees. He is the Chairman of the Judiciary Committee’s Subcommittee on the Constitution, Civil Rights and Human Rights and the Appropriations Committee’s Financial Services and General Government subcommittee.

Michael Garland is Assistant Comptroller for Environmental, Social and Governance (ESG) for New York City Comptroller John C. Liu. The Comptroller serves as investment advisor, custodian and a trustee to the New York City Pension Funds, which have approximately $120 billion in assets and a long history of active ownership on issues of corporate governance and sustainability. Mr. Garland and his team are responsible for developing and implementing the Funds’ active ownership programs for public equities, including voting proxies and engaging portfolio companies on their ESG policies and practices. He co-chairs the Activism Committee of the Council of Institutional Investors and is on the advisory board of the American Corporate Governance Institute. Prior to joining the Comptroller’s Office in September 2010, Mr. Garland led shareowner initiatives for the AFL-CIO Office of Investment and the CtW Investment Group, which he helped establish in January 2006 as part of the Change to Win labor federation. He has also financed middle market corporations for National Westminster Bank USA, provided financial and economic consulting to corporate, union and government clients at Locker Associates, and conducted economic research for the OECD. He earned a B.A. in economics with distinction from the University of Virginia and a Master in City Planning from MIT.

Cristina Hardaga has a degree in International Relations from the Universidad Iberoamericana / Iberoamericana University specializing in Human Rights and the Democratization Process in joint program from the Faculty of Law of the University of Chile and the International Center Fro Transitional Justice. Since 2009 she has worked at the Tlachinollan Human Rights Center (THCR) a non-governmental organization dedicated for 18 years to the defense and promotion of human rights in the state of Guerrero, in Mexico’s southwest region. Prior to working at THCR she had the opportunity to work in the Mexican Commission for the Defense and Promotion of Human Rights, a non-governmental organization, as a Researcher in the Human Rights Program of the Iberoamericana University and as a consultant of Human Rights in the LX Legislature of the Congress for the Parliamentary Group of the PRD.

Saad Eddin Ibrahim has been a leading human rights and democracy activist for more than thirty years. He is a professor at the American University in Cairo and is a prolific writer and broadcaster. He was a founder of the Arab Organization for Human Rights, a precursor of human rights movements that have developed throughout the Arab region in recent decades. He is Chairman of the Ibn Khaldoun Center for Development Studies and Secretary General of the Egyptian Independent Commission for Electoral Review. Dr. Ibrahim is the recipient of many international awards for his work in support of human rights and democracy, including the 2002 Human Rights First Human Rights Award. He advises many international organizations on issues related to human rights, democracy and development.

Dr. Adel Iskandar is a scholar of Arab studies whose research focuses on media and communication. He is the author and coauthor of several works including Al-Jazeera: The Story of the Network that is Rattling Governments and Redefining Modern Journalism (Basic Books). Iskandar’s work deals with media, identity and politics and has lectured extensively on these topics at universities worldwide. His latest publication is an edited volume entitled Edward Said: A Legacy of Emancipation and Representation (University of California Press). His forthcoming books are Mediating the Arab Uprisings (2012, Tadween Publishing) and Egypt In Flux: Essays on an Unfinished Revolution (2013, Oxford University Press). He is currently an adjunct professor at the Center for Contemporary Arab Studies and the Communication, Culture and Technology program at Georgetown University in Washington, DC.

Robert Kagan is a senior fellow in the Center on the United States and Europe in Foreign Policy at Brookings. His most recent book is The World America Made. Dr. Kagan also serves as a member of Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s Foreign Affairs Policy Board and is co-chairman of the bipartisan Working Group on Egypt. He writes a monthly column on world affairs for the Washington Post, and is a contributing editor at both the Weekly Standard and The New Republic. He served in the State Department from 1984 to 1988 as a member of the policy planning staff, principal speechwriter for Secretary of State George P. Shultz, and as deputy for policy in the Bureau of Inter-American Affairs.

Elisa Massimino is President and CEO of Human Rights First, one of the nation’s leading human rights advocacy organizations. Established in 1978, Human Rights First works in the United States and abroad to promote respect for human rights and the rule of law. Massimino joined Human Rights First in 1991 and served as the organization’s Washington Director for more than a decade before being named chief executive in September 2008.
Massimino has a distinguished record of human rights advocacy in Washington. As a national authority on human rights law and policy, she has testified before Congress dozens of times and writes frequently for mainstream publications and specialized journals. In May 2008, 2009, 2011, and 2012 the influential Washington newspaper The Hill named her one of the top public advocates in the country.
Massimino holds a law degree from the University of Michigan, a Master of Arts in philosophy from Johns Hopkins University, and is a Phi Beta Kappa graduate of Trinity University in San Antonio, Texas. Massimino serves as an adjunct professor at Georgetown University Law Center, where she teaches human rights advocacy. She is a member of the bar of the United States Supreme Court.

Senator John McCain has a remarkable record of leadership and experience that embodies his unwavering lifetime commitment to service. First elected to the U.S. House of Representatives from Arizona in 1982, John has led the fight for reforming Washington, eliminating wasteful government spending, and strengthening our nation’s armed forces.
Senator McCain’s reform agenda to reduce federal spending and lower taxes quickly elevated him to statewide office and he was elected to the United States Senate in 1986, after serving two terms in the U.S. House.

In the Senate, he continued to demand that Congress put an end to loopholes for special interests and fix the broken system in Washington that too often allows lobbyists to write legislation and members of Congress to waste taxpayer money. In November of 2010, Senator McCain was overwhelmingly reelected with nearly sixty percent of the vote.
As the son and grandson of distinguished Navy admirals, John McCain deeply values duty, honor and service of country. John attended college at the United States Naval Academy, and launched a 22-year career as a naval aviator upon his graduation.

On July 29, 1967, John narrowly survived the first of many near-death experiences during his lifetime while preparing to take off on a bombing mission over North Vietnam from his ship, the USS Forrestal. A missile accidentally fired from a nearby plane struck the fuel tanks on his plane.
Instead of taking the option to return home after the Forrestal disaster, Senator McCain volunteered for more combat duty – a fateful decision that stopped the clock on his life and separated him from his family, and country, for five and a half years.

During his 23rd bombing mission on October 26, 1967, a missile struck his plane and forced him to eject, knocking him unconscious and breaking both his arms and his leg. John was then taken as a prisoner of war into the now infamous “Hanoi Hilton,” where he was denied necessary medical treatment and often beaten by the North Vietnamese. He spent much of his time as a prisoner of war in solitary confinement, aided by his faith and the friendships of his fellow POWs. When he was finally released and able to return home years later, Senator McCain continued his service by regaining his naval flight status.

Senator McCain’s last Navy duty assignment was to serve as the naval liaison to the United States Senate. He retired from the Navy in 1981. His naval honors include the Silver Star, Bronze Star, Legion of Merit, Purple Heart, and the Distinguished Flying Cross.

Senator McCain currently serves on the following Senate Committees during the 112th Congress: Ranking Member on the Senate Armed Services Committee; Committee on Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions; Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs, and Committee on Indian Affairs.
Senator McCain has seven children and four grandchildren, and currently lives in Phoenix, Arizona with his wife Cindy.

Samantha Power is the Special Assistant to the President and Senior Director for Multilateral Affairs and Human Rights at the National Security Council. Power most recently served as the Anna Lindh Professor of the Practice of Global Leadership and Public Policy at Harvard’s John F. Kennedy School of Government, where she taught courses on U.S. foreign policy, human rights, and extremism and where she was the founding Executive Director of the Carr Center for Human Rights Policy.

She is the Pulitzer Prize winning author of “A Problem from Hell”: America and the Age of Genocide (2002) and Chasing the Flame: Sergio Viera de Mello and the Fight to Save the World (2008), the basis for the award-winning HBO documentary, “Sergio.” She is also the recent editor, with Derek Chollet, of The Unquiet American: Richard Holbrooke in the World (2011). Power has served as a columnist at Time Magazine and, in her journalism, has reported from such places as Bosnia, East Timor, Kosovo, Rwanda, Sudan, and Zimbabwe, and contributed regularly to the New Yorker Magazine, the New York Review of Books, and the New Republic.

Power is a graduate of Yale University and Harvard Law School. She lives with her husband, Cass Sunstein, son Declan, and daughter Rian in Washington, DC.

Ambassador Nancy Soderberg is president of the Connect U.S. Fund, an organization using grant-making and advocacy to shape U.S. foreign policy. With over twenty years of experience in foreign policy, Amb. Soderberg has served in the United States Senate, in the White House, and at the United Nations. She publishes and speaks regularly on national security policy. Amb. Soderberg has published two books on the topic: The Prosperity Agenda: What the World Wants from America and What We Need in Return (2008), co-authored with Brian Katulis, and The Superpower Myth: The Use and Misuse of American Might (2005). She is a regular commentator on national and international television and radio, including NBC, ABC, CBS, CNN, BBC, Fox, National Public Radio, the Lehrer News Hour, CNN Crossfire, and The Daily Show.

From 1993-97, Ambassador Soderberg served as the third ranking official on the National Security Council, as Deputy Assistant to the President for National Security Affairs. In 1997, President Bill Clinton appointed Soderberg to serve as Alternate Representative to the United Nations as a Presidential Appointee, with the rank of Ambassador, and from 2001-2005, Soderberg ran the New York office of the International Crisis Group as Vice President. She is also a Distinguished Visiting Scholar at the University of North Florida in Jacksonville.

Rich Verma is a partner at the law firm of Steptoe & Johnson LLP, where he is a member of the international and government affairs practice groups. Rich also serves as Counselor to the Albright Stonebridge Group, a global consulting firm, and is Senior Fellow at the Center for American Progress. Rich most recently served as the Assistant Secretary of State for Legislative Affairs, where he was a principal advisor to Secretary Clinton. Rich formerly was the Senior National Security Advisor to the Senate Majority Leader, Harry Reid, and he has worked in the House of Representatives for the late Congressman John P. Murtha. In 2008, he was appointed a member of the Commission to Prevent Weapons of Mass Destruction and Terrorism, and he also served as a member of the Defense Department Presidential Transition Team. Rich is a veteran of the U.S. Air Force and also a former country director for the National Democratic Institute for International Affairs (NDI). Rich is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations, and he holds degrees from the Georgetown University Law Center (LLM), the American University (JD), and Lehigh University (BS).

Nadine Wahab is the International Advocacy Officer of the Cairo Institute for Human Rights Studies. She was the deputy campaign manager for Mohamed ElBaradei’s presidential campaign. Before and during the Egyptian Revolution she was an administrator on the “Kolena Khaled Said” Facebook page. She is currently working with “3askar Kazeboon,” Military Liars, a grassroots movement aimed at exposing the lies of ruling military council. Prior to moving to Egypt Nadine was the Communications Director for Rights Working Group, a human rights coalition focused on U.S. domestic policy. Before joining Rights Working Group, She served as the Public Affairs Manager for the Arab American Institute (AAI) where she focused on utilizing both traditional and new media to activate the base and advocate for the community. During this time she help found the Egyptian Association for Change (EAC), a sister organization to the National Association for Change (NAC), where she supported the NAC’s seven demands for reforms and later the 2011 Egyptian revolution by engaging Egyptians in the U.S. and in Egypt utilizing both online and offline organizing tools.

Robin Wright is a journalist, author and foreign policy analyst. She is currently a joint USIP Senior Fellow-Wilson Center Distinguished Scholar. Her projects explore new trends in the Islamic world–the Arab revolts, the rise of political Islam and the challenges that will define the next decade, when the Middle East’s transformation will be a major policy challenge for the United States and the West. Wright has reported from more than 140 countries on six continents for The Washington Post, Los Angeles Times, The Sunday Times , CBS News and The Christian Science Monitor. She won the National Magazine Award for The New Yorker. She has also written for The Atlantic Monthly, The New York Times Magazine, TIME, The Wall Street Journal, Foreign Affairs, Foreign Policy, The International Herald Tribune and many others. She is the author of eight books, including “Rock the Casbah: Rage and Rebellion across the Islamic World, which won the 2012 Overseas Press Club award for best book on international affairs. She has also been a fellow at Duke, Yale, Dartmouth, Stanford, the Brookings Institution and the Carnegie Endowment for International Affairs.

Mr. Ziglar retired in 2008 as President and Chief Executive Officer of Cross Match Technologies, Inc., a leading provider of biometric technologies. Before joining Cross Match Technologies, Inc. in August 2005, Mr. Ziglar was a Managing Director and Chief Business Strategist at UBS Financial Services, Inc. in New York.

Mr. Ziglar had over 16 years of experience in investment banking, including 10 years with UBS, prior to departing in 1998 to serve as Sergeant at Arms of the United States Senate. From August 2001 until his retirement from federal service in December 2002, Mr. Ziglar served as the last Commissioner of the Immigration and Naturalization Service. Before rejoining UBS in 2004, Mr. Ziglar was Distinguished Visiting Professor of Law at The George Washington University Law School, and a Resident Fellow at Harvard University’s John F. Kennedy School of Government Institute of Politics. Mr. Ziglar practiced law from 1973 to 1980, providing legal services for public infrastructure, health care, and water and power projects.

In addition to his positions as Commissioner of the INS and as Sergeant at Arms of the United States Senate, Mr. Ziglar has served as Assistant Secretary of the Interior for Water and Science, as a law clerk to U.S. Supreme Court Associate Justice Harry A. Blackmun, as a congressional and public affairs officer at the Department of Justice, and as an aide to the Chairman of the U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee.