Paula Dobriansky Keynote Speaker

Ambassador Paula J. Dobriansky is a US diplomat, Senior Fellow in the Future of Diplomacy Project at the JFK Belfer Center for Science & International Affairs at Harvard University, and is a leading keynote speaker on foreign policy, trans-Atlantic relationships, Russia/Ukraine, Geopolitical trends and NATO.

Ambassador Dobriansky was Senior Vice President and Global Head of Government and Regulatory Affairs at Thomson Reuters between 2010-12, and was responsible for implementing a corporate approach in Washington and other capitals across the globe. Prior to this, from 2001-09, Ambassador Dobriansky was the US Under Secretary of State for Global Affairs. In this role she was dedicated to working on issues relating to the environment, energy, health, humanity and development and she established and led the US-India, US-China and US-Brazil Global Issues Fora.

Dobriansky held many senior-level positions throughout 25-year career in national security affairs, including in the White House, where she was Director of European and Soviet Affairs at the National Security Council, Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for Human Rights and Humanitarian Affairs, Deputy Head of the U.S. Delegation to the 1990 Copenhagen Conference on Security and Cooperation in Europe (CSCE) and Associate Director for Policy and Programs at the United States Information Agency.

Ambassador Dobriansky has received several awards and honors in recognition for her work, including the Foreign Policy Association Medal for services to her country and the International Republican Institute’s Women’s Democracy Network Jeane J. Kirkpatrick Awards (2008). She is also the recipient of several prestigious national medals, including Poland’s highest medal of merit, and others from Lithaunia, Romania, Hungary and Ukraine. In 2007, for her services to the historic devolution in Belfast, as the President’s Special Envoy to Northern Ireland, she received the highest honor for a Secretary of State, the Distinguished Service Medal.

She is the distinguished National Security Chair at the US Naval Academy, a Fulbright-Hays scholar, a Ford and Rotary Foundation Fellow and a member of Phi Beta Kappa.

Ambassador Dobriansky sits on several boards including IRI’s International Advisory Council, the Atlantic Council, Middle East Institute, IDS International and the Advisory Board of Georgetown University’s School of Foreign Service. She is also a member of the Council on Foreign Relations, the American Academy of Diplomacy and a trustee of the Trilateral Commission and Chair of the Bush Center’s Women’s Initiative Policy Advisory Council.

She completed a PhD and a MA in Soviet political/military affairs from Harvard University. Prior to that she received a BSFS summa cum laude in International Politics from the School of Foreign Service, Georgetown University. In addition, Dobriansky has received three Honorary Doctorates of Humane Letters, an Honorary Doctorate of Laws and of International Affairs.