Speaker Biographies

H.E. Ambassador Johnnie Carson was sworn in as Assistant Secretary of State for the Bureau of African Affairs on May 7, 2009. Prior to this he was the National Intelligence Officer for Africa at the NIC, after serving as the Senior Vice President of the National Defense University in Washington D.C. (2003-2006). Carson’s 37-year Foreign Service career includes ambassadorships to Kenya (1999-2003), Zimbabwe (1995-1997), and Uganda (1991-1994); and Principal Deputy Assistant Secretary for the Bureau of African Affairs (1997-1999). Earlier in his career he had assignments in Portugal (1982-1986), Botswana (1986-1990), Mozambique (1975-1978), and Nigeria (1969-1971). He has also served as desk officer in the Africa section at State’s Bureau of Intelligence and Research (1971-1974); Staff Officer for the Secretary of State (1978-1979), and Staff Director for the Africa Subcommittee of the U.S. House of Representatives (1979-1982).
          Before joining the Foreign Service, Ambassador Carson was a Peace Corps volunteer in Tanzania from 1965-1968. He has a Bachelor of Arts in History and Political Science from Drake University and a Master of Arts in International Relations from the School of Oriental and Africa Studies at the University of London. Read full bio.

H.E. Ambassador Dr. Augustine P. Mahiga is the Permanent Representative of the United Republic of Tanzania to the United Nations. From 2005 to 2006, he led the Tanzania team as a Non-permanent Member of the Security Council, and in January 2006 was appointed to be the Council's President. Prior to being appointed Permanent Representative of the United Republic of Tanzania to the United Nations in May 2003, Ambassador Mahiga worked for 10 years with the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees in Geneva as Deputy Director for Africa and Representative in Liberia, India and Italy. Previous positions include teaching at the University of Dar-es-Salaam, Tanzania, Director in the President's Office, and Diplomat in Ottawa and Geneva. Dr. Mahiga was co-chair to operationalize Peacebuilding Commission in 2005, and to the General Assembly negotiations on implementation of United Nations System-Wide Coherence.
          Ambassador Mahiga has researched and written on regional cooperation, conflict resolution, peace building and related humanitarian and development issues in Africa. He studied International Relations, and holds degrees from the University of East Africa in Dar-es-Salaam and the University of Toronto, Canada.

E. Thomas Sullivan has served as the Senior Vice President for Academic Affairs and Provost of the University of Minnesota since 2004. Prior to that, he served as the Dean of the University of Minnesota Law School, Dean of the University of Arizona College of Law, and as Associate Dean at Washington University in St. Louis. Provost Sullivan is a nationally recognized authority on antitrust law and complex litigation, and has authored or co-authored 9 books and more than 50 articles and essays. Sullivan has served as a consultant to the American Law Institute’s Project on Complex Litigation and its Federal Code Revision Project, the U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee, the U.S. Senate Commerce Committee, as project director and editor for the ABA Antitrust Monograph Project on Nonprice Predation, and as chair of the Association of American Law Schools Section on Antitrust and Economic Regulation.

J. Brian Atwood is the dean of the Hubert H. Humphrey Institute of Public Affairs, University of Minnesota. He currently serves as President of the Association of Professional Schools of International Affairs (APSIA) and Chair of AFS Intercultural Program’s Board of Trustees. Atwood served for six years as Administrator of the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) during the Administration of President William Clinton. In the Clinton Administration, Atwood led the transition team at the State Department and was Under Secretary of State for Management prior to his appointment as head of USAID. In 2001, Atwood served on U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan’s Panel on Peace Operations. Atwood received the Secretary of State’s Distinguished Service Award in 1999.Dr. Robert J. Jones, Senior Vice President for System Academic Administration at the University of Minnesota, exemplifies dedication to higher education, research and scientific inquiry, and international cooperation and collaboration. After earning his Ph.D. in 1978 in crop physiology from the University of Missouri, he joined the University of Minnesota faculty as a professor of Agronomy and Plant Genetics. He is an internationally recognized authority on plant physiology, and has published more than 100 scientific papers, manuscripts, and abstracts. He has been a visiting professor and featured speaker in North America, Europe, Asia, and Africa, and served for ten years as an academic and scientific consultant for Archbishop Tutu’s South African Education Program, enabling hundreds of black students to attend American universities.

Yusuf M. Ali is the founder and CEO of SOMALIA 2020, an organization dedicated to bringing comprehensive literacy to the people of Somalia by 2020. He is also working with governments, international agencies, and universities to establish the first National Teachers College of Somalia.

Sarah M. Broom, a native of New Orleans, is Executive Director of Village Health Works. She previously worked as Communications Director at The Praxis Project, a nonprofit that works with grassroots organizations to shift policy related to health justice. Prior to Praxis, she worked for a year in Burundi, where she helped develop new programming for Burundi’s Radio Publique Africaine. She began her career in journalism, working at TIME Asia and later at O, The Oprah Magazine. Read full bio.

Bradley J. Buck is an international development professional and serves as Director, Business Development and Practice Management, for the International Development Division of Land O’Lakes, Inc. Mr. Buck has extensive Africa experience, having lived and worked in East Africa from 1997 until 2008, during which time he designed and managed projects aimed at increasing agricultural productivity and agribusiness competitiveness.

David W. Chapman is the Birkmaier Professor of Educational Leadership in the Department of Organizational Leadership, Policy and Development at the University of Minnesota. He has specialized in development assistance activities in over 45 countries and has authored or edited ten books and over 100 journal articles, many related to the development of education systems in international settings.

Felly Chiteng Kot is a Ph.D. candidate in Higher Education Policy and Administration at the University of Minnesota. He is from the Democratic Republic of Congo.

Dr. Joan DeJaeghere’s research focuses on gender and ethnic inequalities in societies, and how education can provide possibilities for individual and societal change toward equality. She currently leads a research project on education for marginalized girls and boys, with Chris Johnstone (U of MN) and Miske Witt and Associates (St. Paul), in which they are collaborating with CARE, USA and their local staff in four countries in Africa (Ghana, Malawi, Mali, and Tanzania).

Diana DuBois has been the Executive Director of Minnesota International Health Volunteers (MIHV) for the past nine years. She holds a joint Master’s degree in International Affairs and Public Health from Columbia University and has spent more than twenty years in the international public health arena, including five years of work in Africa.

Karlyn Eckman is a Senior Fellow at the University of Minnesota Water Resources Center. Karlyn has lived in a number of African countries since 1986, working on water, agriculture, and forestry projects for the United Nations. View web pages here and here.

Paul Glewwe is a professor in the Applied Economics Department at the University of Minnesota. Most of his research is on education in developing countries, especially the determinants of school enrollment and academic achievement (test scores) of students. View web page.

Suzanne Grant Lewis aims to improve educational opportunity in sub-Saharan Africa through her work in philanthropy, academia, and as an advisor to ministries of education. She has developed multi-stakeholder collaborations and strives to apply theory to educational practice on the ground. Read full bio.

Trevor Gunn is International Relations Director of Medtronic and Adjunct Professor, School of Foreign Service (CERES), Georgetown University. He sits on several key boards, including the U.S. State Department’s Advisory Committee on International Economic Policy, and is an official Trade Advisor to the Office of the U.S. Trade Representative/U.S. Department of Commerce.

Cindy Howard, M.D., MPHTM, is a pediatrician who worked in Nigeria for four years and later Uganda for eight years. She is presently the Associate Director of the Center for Global Pediatrics at the Univ. Of Minnesota and the parent of two second graders from the Democratic Republic of Congo.

Douglas A. Johnson, MPPM, has served as Executive Director of the Center for Victims of Torture since 1988. A committed advocate of human rights since the 1970s, he chaired the Infant Formula Action Coalition (INFACT) and was an original member of the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) Advisory Panel on the Prevention of Torture.

Alan R. Lifson, MD, MPH, is a Professor in the School of Public Health’s Division of Epidemiology and Community Health, and an Adjunct Professor in the School of Medicine’s Division of Infectious Diseases and International Health. He has conducted research, taught, or consulted in multiple countries, including Ethiopia, Tanzania, Kenya, South Africa, Rwanda, Zimbabwe, Guyana, Trinidad, Bahamas, Costa Rica, Ukraine, Romania, Philippines, Vietnam, India, and China.

Tade O. Okediji holds a joint appointment as Associate Professor in the Departments of African American and African Studies and Applied Economics at the University of Minnesota. He is also an affiliate faculty member of the Interdisciplinary Center for the Study of Global Change at the University of Minnesota. Professor Okediji’s research and scholarship focus on comparative institutional economic development with specific emphasis on Sub-Saharan Africa and Latin America. His articles have appeared in The American Journal of Economics and Sociology, Journal of Economic Issues, Journal of Socio-Economics, The American Economist,and The Chicago-Kent Law Review.

Claudia Parliament is Executive Director of the Council and Professor, Department of Applied Economics, University of Minnesota. Her Ph.D. is in agricultural and resource economics from the University of California, Berkeley. She received her B.S. and M.S. from the University of Minnesota. She taught mathematics in the Minneapolis Public Schools and in the Peace Corps in Nigeria, Ethiopia, and Liberia.

Patrick Plonski is Executive Director of Books For Africa (BFA), a post he has held for the past six years. He holds a Ph.D. from the University of Minnesota focusing on Education in Africa and has served as principal investigator for BFA literacy grants funded by USAID, OPEC, the United Nations World Food Programme, the United Nations Development Programme, and U.S. missions across Africa.

Christopher J. Thomas is the World Bank Sector Manager for Education in Africa. In this capacity he supervises a team of specialists that provide analytical and advisory services, technical assistance, and financing to improve education systems. Mr. Thomas has also managed the World Bank’s education development programs in East Asia, and has worked in South Asia and Northern Africa. Prior to joining the World Bank, he served as a consultant to the U.S. government and the U.N., and as a Peace Corps Volunteer in Sierra Leone. Mr. Thomas holds an M.A. in International Affairs from Johns Hopkins University and a Ph.D. in Education from Stanford University.

Frances Vavrus is an Associate Professor in the Department of Organizational Leadership, Policy and Development at the University of Minnesota. Her research and teaching interests for the past two decades have focused on gender, education, and development in Sub-Saharan Africa with a focus on Tanzania.

Daniel Wordsworth joined the American Refugee Committee in 2009 as President & CEO, after a 12-year tenure with the Christian Children’s Fund, where he most recently served as Vice President of the Asia Region. Over the last 15 years, Wordsworth has worked in China, India, Vietnam, and Thailand, and has written numerous articles on children and poverty.