Madeleine K. Albright
Task Force Co-Chair

Madeleine Albright is a principal of The Albright Group LLC, a global strategy firm, and chair and principal of Albright Capital Management LLC, an investment advisory firm focused on emerging markets. Dr. Albright was the sixty-fourth secretary of state of the United States. In 1997, she was named the first female secretary of state and became, at that time, the highest-ranking woman in the history of the U.S. government. As secretary of state, Dr. Albright reinforced America’s alliances, advocated democracy and human rights, and promoted American trade and business, labor, and environmental standards abroad. From 1993 to 1997, Dr. Albright served as the U.S. permanent representative to the United Nations and as a member of the president’s cabinet. She is the first Michael and Virginia Mortara Endowed Distinguished Professor in the Practice of Diplomacy at the Georgetown University School of Foreign Service. She chairs both the National Democratic Institute for International Affairs and the Pew Global Attitudes Project and serves as president of the Truman Scholarship Foundation. Dr. Albright co-chairs the UNDP Commission on Legal Empowerment of the Poor and serves on the board of directors of the Council on Foreign Relations, the board of trustees for the Aspen Institute, and the board of directors of the Center for a New American Security. Dr. Albright earned a Bachelor of Arts with honors from Wellesley College and a Master degree and doctorate from Columbia University’s Department of Public Law and Government, as well as a certificate from its Russian Institute.

William S. Cohen
Task Force Co-Chair

William Cohen is chairman and chief executive officer of The Cohen Group, a business consulting firm based in Washington, DC that provides business consulting and advice on tactical and strategic opportunities to clients in quickly changing markets around the world. He serves on the board of CBS and on the advisory boards of the U.S.-India Business Council, the U.S.-China Business Council, and Barrick Gold International. He is a senior counselor at the Center for Strategic and International Studies and the weekly world affairs contributor for CNNÕs Situation Room with Wolf Blitzer. Secretary Cohen served as secretary of defense from 1997 to 2001, where he oversaw the largest organization in the United States with a budget of $300 billion and three million military and civilian personnel. Under his leadership, the U.S. military conducted operations on every continent, including the largest aerial bombardment (Kosovo and Bosnia) since World War II. His term as secretary of defense marked the first time in modern U.S. history that a president chose an elected official from the other party for his cabinet. Before his tenure at the Department of Defense, he served three terms in the U.S. Senate and three terms in the U.S. House of Representatives, where he served on the House Judiciary Committee during the 1974 impeachment proceedings and the 1987 Iran-Contra Committee. He also served as mayor of Bangor, Maine. Secretary Cohen was born in Bangor and received a Bachelor of Arts in Latin from Bowdoin College and a law degree from Boston University Law School. He has written or coauthored ten books: four nonfiction works, four novels, and two books of poetry.

John C. Danforth
Task Force Member

Former U.S. Senator John Danforth is a partner with the law firm of Bryan Cave LLP. In 2004, Danforth represented the United States as ambassador to the United Nations, where he focused on ending the North-South civil war in Sudan, a twenty-year conflict that killed two million people and displaced five million more. A peace agreement between the two sides was ultimately signed in Nairobi, Kenya on January 9, 2005. President George W. Bush appointed Danforth as special envoy to Sudan in 2001. Danforth represented the State of Missouri in the U.S. Senate for eighteen years until he retired at the end of 1994. Danforth began his political career in 1968, when he was elected attorney general of Missouri, his first race for public office. He was reelected to the post in 1972. He was elected to the U.S. Senate in 1976 and reelected in 1982 and 1988. Currently, Danforth is chairman of the Danforth Foundation, a philanthropic organization focused on strengthening the St. Louis metropolitan area. Additionally, Danforth serves on the boards of Cerner Corporation and Greenhill and Company.  He has authored two books: Resurrection and Faith and Politics. Danforth graduated with honors from Princeton University in 1958. In 1963, he received a Bachelor of Divinity degree from Yale Divinity School and a Bachelor of Laws degree from Yale Law School. Before seeking public office, Danforth practiced law in New York City and St. Louis.

Thomas A. Daschle
Task Force Member

Born in Aberdeen, South Dakota, Tom Daschle graduated from South Dakota State University in 1969. Upon graduation, he entered the United States Air Force, where he served as an intelligence officer in the Strategic Air Command until mid-1972. After serving on the staff of Senator James Abourezk, Daschle was elected to the U.S. House of Representatives in 1978, serving eight years. In 1986, he was elected to the U.S. Senate. In 1994, Senator Daschle was elected by his colleagues as their Democratic leader. Senator Daschle is one of the longest-serving Senate Democratic leaders in history and the only one to serve twice as both majority and minority leader. Today, Senator Daschle is an advisor to the law firm of Alston & Bird, where he provides strategic advice on public policy issues such as climate change, energy, health care, trade, financial services, and telecommunications. He is also a distinguished fellow at the Center for American Progress, a visiting professor at Georgetown University, and a public speaker. In 2007, he joined with former majority leaders George Mitchell, Bob Dole, and Howard Baker to create the Bipartisan Policy Center. He is also co-chair of the ONE Vote ‘08 Campaign, along with former Senate majority leader Bill Frist. Senator Daschle has published articles in numerous newspapers and periodicals and is the author of two books, Critical: What We Can Do About the Health-Care Crisis and Like No Other Time. He also serves on the boards of multiple foundations and businesses. He is married to Linda Hall Daschle and has three children and four grandchildren.

Stuart E. Eizenstat
Task Force Member

Stuart Eizenstat is a partner at Covington and Burling LLP, where he heads the firm’s international practice.  During a decade and a half of public service in three U.S. administrations, Ambassador Eizenstat held a number of key senior positions, including chief White House domestic policy advisor to President Jimmy Carter (1977-81), ambassador to the European Union, under secretary of commerce for international trade, under secretary of state for economic, business, and agricultural affairs, and deputy secretary of the Treasury in the Clinton Administration (1993-2001). During the Clinton Administration, he had a prominent role in the development of a number of key international initiatives. Much of the interest in providing belated justice for victims of the Holocaust and other victims of Nazi tyranny during World War II was the result of his leadership as special representative of the president and secretary of state on Holocaust-era issues. He successfully negotiated major agreements with Switzerland, Germany, Austria, France, and other European countries covering restitution of property, payment for slave and forced laborers, recovery of looted art, bank accounts, and payment of insurance policies. Ambassador Eizenstat has received seven honorary doctorates from universities and academic institutions. He has been awarded high civilian awards from the governments of France (Legion of Honor), Germany, and Austria, as well as from Secretary of State Warren Christopher, Secretary of State Madeleine Albright, and Secretary of the Treasury Lawrence Summers. He is a Phi Beta Kappa, cum laude graduate of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and a graduate of Harvard Law School.

Michael J. Gerson
Task Force Member

Michael Gerson is the Roger Hertog Senior Fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations. His work focuses on issues of global health and development, religion and foreign policy, and the democracy agenda. He is the author of Heroic Conservatism (HarperOne, October 2007), a columnist syndicated with the Washington Post Writers Group, and a contributor to Newsweek. He serves on the United States Holocaust Memorial Council, the Holocaust Memorial Museum’s Committee on Conscience, and USAID’s Advisory Committee on Voluntary Foreign Aid. Before joining the Council on Foreign Relations in July 2006, Mr. Gerson was a top aide to President George W. Bush as assistant to the president for policy and strategic planning (February 2005 to June 2006). Prior to that appointment, he served in the White House as deputy assistant to the president and director of presidential speechwriting (January 2001 to July 2002) and assistant to the president for speechwriting and policy advisor (July 2002 to February 2005). Mr. Gerson joined Bush’s presidential campaign in early 1999 as chief speechwriter and senior policy advisor. He was previously senior editor covering politics at U.S. News and World Report. Mr. Gerson was a speechwriter and policy advisor for Jack Kemp and a speechwriter for Bob Dole during the 1996 presidential campaign. He has also served Senator Dan Coats from Indiana as policy director. Mr. Gerson is a graduate of Wheaton College in Illinois. He grew up in the St. Louis area and now lives with his wife and sons in northern Virginia.

Daniel R. Glickman
Task Force Member

Dan Glickman is chairman and chief executive officer of the Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA) Inc.  Prior to joining the MPAA, Mr. Glickman was the director of the Institute of Politics at Harvard University’s John F. Kennedy School of Government (August 2002-August 2004). Mr. Glickman served as the U.S. secretary of agriculture from March 1995 until January 2001. Before his appointment as secretary of agriculture, Mr. Glickman served for eighteen years in the U.S. House of Representatives, representing Kansas’s fourth congressional district. During that time, he served as a member of the House Agriculture Committee and was also an active member of the House Judiciary Committee. Before his election to Congress in 1976, Mr. Glickman served as a member and president of the Wichita, Kansas school board; was a partner in the law firm of Sargent, Klenda, and Glickman; and worked as a trial attorney at the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission. Secretary Glickman serves on the board of directors of the Faith and Politics Institute, Food Research and Action Center, Friends of the World Food Program, and RFK Memorial Foundation. He received his Bachelor of Arts in history from the University of Michigan and his Doctor of Law degree from The George Washington University. He has been a senior fellow and part-time instructor in the public policy departments at Georgetown University and Wichita State University, and in 2006 received an honorary Doctor of Laws from The George Washington University Law School.

Jack F. Kemp (1935 - 2009)
Task Force Member

Jack Kemp was founder and chairman of Kemp Partners. From 1993 to 2004, he served as codirector of the public policy institute Empower America, which he founded with former secretary of education Bill Bennett and former U.S. ambassador to the United Nations Jeane Kirkpatrick. Both in and out of public office, Jack Kemp has been a major contributor in nurturing democratic capitalism, not only in the United States, but throughout the world. Mr. Kemp, who ran for president in 1988, gained further prominence in the national spotlight in 1996, when he was selected to be the Republican Party’s candidate for vice president of the United States. Prior to cofounding Empower America, Mr. Kemp served four years as secretary of housing and urban development under President George H.W. Bush and proved to be one of our nation’s most innovative leaders in that role. Before his appointment to the cabinet, Mr. Kemp represented the Buffalo area and western New York for eighteen years in the U.S. House of Representatives. Mr. Kemp serves on a number of corporate boards and travels extensively in the United States and around the world for lectures as well as business. He was a nationally syndicated columnist focusing on economic issues and trade and foreign policy, while also appearing on a variety of political talk shows. He was also the chair for Habitat for Humanity’s More than Houses campaign and served as a board member for Howard University as well as for the schools of public policy at Pepperdine and UCLA.

Gabrielle Kirk McDonald
Task Force Member

Gabrielle Kirk McDonald currently serves as a judge with the Iran-United States Claims Tribunal in The Hague, The Netherlands. This is Judge McDonald’s second assignment in The Hague. Her first was with the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia as one of the original judges elected by the General Assembly of the United Nations in 1993. She presided over the first trial and in 1997 she was elected president of the tribunal. From 1979 to 1988, she served as a judge in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Texas. She is a member of the bars of New York and Texas. Judge McDonald began her legal career as a staff attorney with the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund in New York City and continued as a civil rights attorney with firms in Texas. Besides having taught law at several law schools in the United States, Judge McDonald has written many articles and edited a book on international criminal law. She is also a frequent lecturer on the work of international criminal tribunals and a business and human rights consultant. Judge McDonald has received numerous awards and honors in recognition of her achievements. A member of the board of trustees of Howard University, she has also served on the executive board of the American Bar Association Center for Human Rights and on the board of directors of the American Arbitration Association. Judge McDonald attended Hunter College and Boston University and is a graduate of Howard University School of Law, first in her class.

Thomas R. Pickering
Task Force Member

Thomas R. Pickering is a former U.S. under secretary of state and ambassador and is currently vice chairman at Hills & Company. Before joining Hills & Company, Ambassador Pickering was senior vice president for international relations at the Boeing Company. Ambassador Pickering held the personal rank of career ambassador, the highest in the U.S. foreign service. He has served as U.S. ambassador to the Russian Federation, India, Israel, El Salvador, Nigeria, and the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan. From 1989 to 1993, he served as U.S. ambassador to the United Nations. His service in the U.S. government began in 1956 in the U.S. Navy. On active duty until 1959, he later served in the Naval Reserve to the grade of lieutenant commander. Between 1959 and 1961, he served in the Bureau of Intelligence and Research of the State Department and in the Arms Control and Disarmament Agency. Ambassador Pickering received a Bachelor’s degree, cum laude, with high honors in history, from Bowdoin College in 1953. In 1954, he received a Master’s degree from the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy at Tufts University. He was awarded a Fulbright Scholarship to the University of Melbourne in Australia and received a second Master’s degree in 1956. In 1984, he was awarded an honorary Doctor of Laws degree from Bowdoin College and has received similar honors from twelve other universities. 

Julia V. Taft (1942—2008)
Task Force Member

Julia Taft, a leading authority on humanitarian and international development issues, held senior positions in both government and the private sector throughout her career. During 2006, she served as interim president and chief executive officer of InterAction, a coalition of more than 160 U.S.-based private voluntary organizations working on development, refugee assistance, and humanitarian relief. From 2001 to 2004, Ms. Taft was the assistant administrator and director in the UNDP Bureau for Crisis Prevention and Recovery, which addresses issues of crisis prevention, postconflict recovery, institution building, and natural disaster mitigation. In January 2002, she headed the UN Task Force coordinating and formulating a single, coherent recovery effort for Afghanistan in support of the work of the special representative of the United Nations secretary general for Afghanistan. She led similar efforts for Iraq, Haiti, and Liberia. Prior to joining UNDP, Ms. Taft served as assistant secretary of the Bureau of Population, Refugees, and Migration at the U.S. State Department from 1997 to 2001. She was president and chief executive officer of InterAction from 1993 to 1997. She also served as director of USAID’s Office of U.S.Foreign Disaster Assistance. Ms. Taft received several awards, including a White House Fellowship (1970), One of the Ten Most Outstanding Men and Women in Federal Service (1976), the Presidential End Hunger Award (1989), the USAID Distinguished Service Award (1989), and the USSR Award for Personal Courage for her relief efforts in the Armenian earthquake (1990). Ms. Taft is survived by her husband, William Taft IV, and three adult children.

Vin Weber
Task Force Member

Vin Weber is managing partner of Clark & Weinstock’s Washington office and is also chairman of the National Endowment for Democracy, a private, nonprofit organization designed to strengthen democratic institutions around the world through non-governmental efforts. He is a senior fellow at the Humphrey Institute at the University of Minnesota, where he is codirector of the Policy Forum (formerly the Mondale Forum). Mr. Weber is a board member of several private sector and nonprofit organizations, including ITT Educational Services, Department 56, and the Aspen Institute. He also serves on the board of the Council on Foreign Relations and co-chaired a major independent task force on U.S. Policy Toward Reform in the Arab World with former U.S. secretary of state Madeleine Albright. In addition, Mr. Weber is a member of the U.S. secretary of energy’s advisory board. Prior to opening Clark & Weinstock’s Washington office in 1994, Mr. Weber was president and codirector with Jack Kemp, Jeane Kirkpatrick, and Bill Bennett of Empower America, a public policy advocacy group. Mr. Weber served in the U.S. House of Representatives from 1981 to 1993, representing Minnesota’s second congressional district. He was a member of the Appropriations Committee and an elected member of the House Republican leadership. Prior to his congressional service, he served as campaign manager and chief Minnesota aide to Senator Rudy Boschwitz (1978-1980) and as the copublisher of The Murray County Herald (1976-1978).

Anthony C. Zinni
Task Force Member

General Anthony Zinni, USMC (Ret.) is executive vice president of DynCorp International Inc. General Zinni retired from the U.S. Marine Corps in 2000 after thirty-nine years of service. He served as commanding general, First Marine Expeditionary Force, from 1994 to 1996, and as commander-in-chief, U.S. Central Command, from 1997 to 2000. Over his career, General Zinni’s military service took him to over seventy countries and included deployments to the Mediterranean, the Caribbean, the Western Pacific, Northern Europe, and Korea. He also participated in numerous humanitarian operations. General Zinni holds twenty-three personal military awards and thirty-seven unit, service, and campaign awards. In November 2001, General Zinni was appointed senior adviser and U.S. envoy to the Middle East. He has also participated in presidential diplomatic missions to Somalia, Pakistan, Ethiopia, and Eritrea, and State Department missions involving conflicts in Indonesia and the Philippines. General Zinni serves on the boards of several corporations, universities, and other organizations. He holds a Bachelor’s degree in economics from Villanova University and Master’s degrees in international relations from Central Michigan University and in management and supervision from Salve Regina University. General Zinni has written numerous articles, op-ed pieces, and monographs. He has also coauthored a New York Times Bestseller book on his career with Tom Clancy entitled Battle Ready and a foreign policy book entitled The Battle For Peace that was also a New York Times Bestseller and a Foreign Affairs Bestseller.

Brandon H. Grove
Task Force Executive Director

Ambassador Grove's diplomatic career spans 35 years in the United States Foreign Service under 9 presidents and 12 secretaries of state. Born in Chicago, he holds degrees from Bard College and the Woodrow Wilson School at Princeton. During the Korean War he served as a boat group commander in the Navy's amphibious force in the Pacific. His diplomatic assignments took him to posts in Africa, India, East and West Berlin, and Jerusalem, where he was consul general during Israel's war with Lebanon. In 1974, Brandon Grove became the first U.S. diplomat accredited to East Germany, where he opened the American embassy in Berlin. Later he served as President Reagan's ambassador to Zaire. During the first Bush administration, he was responsible for foreign affairs training throughout our government, coordinating the design and construction of a permanent campus for the Foreign Service Institute at Arlington Hall, Virginia. Ambassador Grove is president emeritus of the American Academy of Diplomacy in Washington, DC. He is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations, and the Washington Institute of Foreign Affairs. In June 2005, the University of Missouri Press published his acclaimed autobiography, Behind Embassy Walls: The Life and Times of an American Diplomat.

Expert Group Leads

Expert Group 1 (Early Warning): Lawrence Woocher, U.S. Institute of Peace

Expert Group 2 (Pre-Crisis Engagement): J Alexander Thier, U.S. Institute of Peace

Expert Group 3 (Preventive Diplomacy): Paul Stares, Council on Foreign Relations

Expert Group 4 (Military Intervention): Victoria Holt, Henry L. Stimson Center

Expert Group 5 (International Institutions): Tod Lindberg, Hoover Institution