People

Māris Selga is the Ambassador Extraordinary and Plenipotentiary of the Republic of Latvia to the United States of America since September 16, 2019 and non-resident Acting Ambassador of the Republic of Latvia to the United Mexican States. Prior to his current post, he was Ambassador to People’s Republic of China. Ambassador Selga joined the foreign service in 1994 where has held posts of Counselor at the Policy Planning Group, Head of Americas' Division, Counselor for security issues, Director of the Second Political (Bilateral) Department, as well Director General of Consular and Diplomatic Facilities Directorate. Ambassador Selga previously has been posted to the Latvian Embassies in Denmark and the United States. He has been Latvia’s first residing Ambassador in the Arab Republic of Egypt and non-resident Ambassador to the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan, and the United Arab Emirates. He has also been Observer in the League of Arab States and the African Union. In 2021 Ambassador Selga was awarded the Cross of Recognition, second class (the Grand Officer of the Cross of Recognition), State award of the Republic of Latvia. Ambassador Selga has graduated from the Faculty of History and Philosophy of the University of Latvia.

Ambassador Paula J. Dobriansky, a foreign policy expert and former diplomat specializing in national security affairs, is a Senior Fellow at Harvard University Belfer Center for Science & International Affairs and Vice Chair of the Atlantic Council's Scowcroft Center for Strategy & Security. She brings over 30 years of government and international experience across senior levels of business, diplomacy, and the defense sector. She was Senior Vice President and Global Head of Government and Regulatory Affairs at Thomson Reuters, and during this time, held the Distinguished National Security Chair at the U.S. Naval Academy. From 2001-2009, she served as Under Secretary of State for Global Affairs and the President’s Envoy to Northern Ireland (2007-2009) receiving the Secretary of State’s highest honor the Distinguished Service Medal. She also served on the Defense Policy Board, the Secretary of State's Foreign Affairs Board, Eximbank's Advisory Council and as Chair of Eximbank's Council on China Competition. Ambassador Dobriansky was Senior Vice President and Director of the CFR Washington Office and the first George F. Kennan Senior Fellow for Russian and Eurasian Studies. She received a B.S.F.S. summa cum laude, Georgetown University School of Foreign Service, and a M.A. and Ph.D. from Harvard University. She has received high-level international recognition from the governments of Poland, Ukraine, Lithuania, Romania, Hungary and Colombia.

Ambassador Blake served for 31 years in the State Department in a wide range of leadership positions. From 2013 to 2016, he served as the U.S. Ambassador to Indonesia, where he focused on building stronger business and educational ties between the U.S. and Indonesia. In this role, he worked with the CEOs of Indonesia’s largest palm oil producers to develop a major sustainable palm oil initiative to reduce Indonesia’s greenhouse gas emissions.

**Swanee Hunt’s** mission is to achieve gender parity, especially as a means to end war and rebuild societies, as well as to alleviate poverty and other human suffering. At Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government, Hunt is the Eleanor Roosevelt Lecturer in Public Policy. In 1997, she founded the Women and Public Policy Program, a research center concerned with domestic and foreign policy, which she directed for more than a decade. She teaches “Inclusive Security,” exploring how women are systematically excluded from peace processes, the impact, and the policy steps needed to rectify the problem. From 1993 to 1997, Hunt served as ambassador to Austria, where she hosted negotiations and international symposia focused on stabilizing the neighboring Balkan states. Prior to that, she made her mark as a civic leader and philanthropist in Denver, where she led initiatives on public education, affordable housing, women’s empowerment, and mental health services for two mayors and the governor. In 2007, Ambassador Hunt was inducted into the** National Women’s Hall of Fame**. She is a widely published columnist and has authored three books: the award-winning \_This Was Not Our War: Bosnian Women Reclaiming the Peace\_, her memoir, \_Half-Life of a Zealot,\_ and \_Rwandan Women Rising\_.

**Ambassador Wendy R. Sherman** is a Professor of the Practice of Public Leadership and Director of the Center for Public Leadership at the Harvard Kennedy School. In addition, she is a Senior Fellow at the Belfer Center. Amb. Sherman is Senior Counselor at Albright Stonebridge Group. Amb. Sherman led the U.S. negotiating team that reached agreement on a Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action between the P5+1, the European Union, and Iran for which, among other diplomatic accomplishments, she was awarded the National Security Medal by President Barack Obama. Prior to her service at the Department of State, she was Vice Chair and founding partner of the Albright Stonebridge Group, Counselor of the Department of State under Secretary Madeleine Albright and Special Advisor to President Clinton and Policy Coordinator on North Korea.

**Amber Christoffersen** is the Greenways Director at the Mystic River Watershed Association. She is a designer and planner who has worked on active transportation, open space and affordable housing projects in the Boston area and around the country. She is leading the participatory planning process for dozens of path and park projects across the watershed. Amber holds a Master’s Degree in Landscape Architecture from the University of Georgia and a Bachelor’s Degree in Economics from the College of William and Mary. As an avid long distance runner, she is constantly exploring the region's many waterfronts and parklands, looking for opportunities to make them more beautiful and accessible.

With over 15 years of experience, Amber Harris is an award-winning producer for some of the world’s largest media companies and Fortune 500 brands. She has worked across the commercial, brand and agency sides of production, helping to guide ideas from concept through air date. Producing everything from digital, social and experiential campaigns to microsites, apps, commercials, music video, promos, live events and films. Amber is currently VP/Executive Producer and Co-Lead of Production at Digitas Boston where she works on national integrated campaigns for companies like General Motors, Ebay, Dunkin Donuts, JFK Library & Museum and more. Her work has been featured in major publications as well as Tim Cook’s keynote address at the Apple Developer’s conference. Prior to Digitas, she had multiple roles at MTV networks where she was most recently Acting Supervising Producer for VH1. There, she was responsible for managing a team of production experts to create on-air and off-air Promos, on-air branding, integrated marketing campaigns and more. Additionally, she is the Co-Founder of COLLECTIVE JUICES, where she helps find funding for independent film projects, while producing short films and music videos

Amber Jackson is an oceanographer, environmental scientist and entrepreneur. She has a B.A. in Marine Science from UC Berkeley and a M.A.S in Marine Biodiversity and Conservation from Scripps Institution of Oceanography. Her expertise is unique, using technology to facilitate to intersection of science and communication. A former Ocean Curator at Google in partnership with the Sylvia Earle Alliance, she engineered and launched intelligent layers in Google Maps that distill and relate complex concepts in ocean science for a variety of audiences. Ms. Jackson also contributed to the construction of the virtual seafloor found in Google Earth by collecting, analyzing and editing multi-beam bathymetry and acoustic backscatter data from vessels and satellites. Ms. Jackson has extensive experience as an project manager specializing in ecological impact assessments, marine biological monitoring and habitat restoration through the Rigs to Reefs program.

Amber Payne is an award-winning executive producer, editor and storyteller with a track record for creating bold content that drives conversation. Amber is the Publisher and General Manager of The Emancipator, a multimedia digital publication exploring solutions to racial inequity. Amber previously served as Executive Producer of Teen Vogue video and was a 2021 Nieman Foundation fellow at Harvard University. In 2015 she created and launched NBCBLK, a section of NBCNews.com dedicated to elevating the conversation around black identity, social issues, and culture. She spent a decade at NBC Nightly News, where she produced breaking news and feature stories. Amber and her husband run Tilt Shift Media, a small production house specializing in documentaries and narrative-driven branded content.

Self-taught artist based out of Boston, MA. She uses her paintings, illustrations, and other creative works to uplift others; especially women and people of color.

Professor Amel Ahmed is the Associate Professor of Political Science at University of Massachusetts Amherst. Her main area of specialization is democratic studies, with a special interest in elections and voting systems. She is author of “Democracy and the Politics of Electoral System Choice: Engineering Electoral Dominance".

Dr. Adalja is a Senior Scholar at the Johns Hopkins University Center for Health Security. His work is focused on emerging infectious disease, pandemic preparedness, and biosecurity.

Dr. Adalja is a Senior Scholar at the Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security, an Adjunct Assistant Professor at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, and an Affiliate of the Johns Hopkins Center for Global Health. His work is focused on emerging infectious disease, pandemic preparedness, and biosecurity. Dr. Adalja has served on US government panels tasked with developing guidelines for the treatment of plague, botulism, and anthrax in mass casualty settings and for the system of care for infectious disease emergencies. He also served as an external advisor to the New York City Health + Hospitals Emergency Management Highly Infectious Disease training program and on a US Federal Emergency Management Agency working group on nuclear disaster recovery. He is a spokesperson for the Infectious Diseases Society of America; he previously served on their public health and diagnostics committees and their precision medicine working group. Dr. Adalja is a member of the American College of Emergency Physicians Pennsylvania Chapter’s EMS & Terrorism and Disaster Preparedness Committee as well as the Allegheny County Medical Reserve Corps. He was formerly a member of the National Quality Forum Infectious Disease Standing Committee, where he currently serves on the Primary Care and Chronic Illness Standing Committee, and the US Department of Health and Human Services National Disaster Medical System, with which he was deployed to Haiti after the 2010 earthquake and was also selected for their mobile acute care strike team. Dr. Adalja’s expertise is frequently sought by international and national media. During the COVID-19 pandemic, Dr. Adalja has served as a member of the National Collegiate Athletic Association coronavirus advisory group; a consultant to various businesses, schools, and organizations; and an informal advisor to the International Monetary Fund. Dr. Adalja is an Associate Editor of the journal Health Security. He was a coeditor of the volume Global Catastrophic Biological Risks and a contributing author for the Handbook of Bioterrorism and Disaster Medicine, the Emergency Medicine CorePendium, Clinical Microbiology Made Ridiculously Simple, UpToDate’s section on biological terrorism, and a North Atlantic Treaty Organization volume on bioterrorism. He has also published in such journals as the New England Journal of Medicine, JAMA, Journal of Infectious Diseases, Clinical Infectious Diseases, Emerging Infectious Diseases, Annals of Emergency Medicine, and Health Security. Dr. Adalja is a Fellow of the Infectious Diseases Society of America, the American College of Physicians, and the American College of Emergency Physicians. He is a member of various medical societies, including the American Medical Association, the HIV Medicine Association, and the Society of Critical Care Medicine. He is a board-certified physician in internal medicine, emergency medicine, infectious diseases, and critical care medicine. Dr. Adalja completed 2 fellowships at the University of Pittsburgh—one in infectious diseases, for which he served as chief fellow, and one in critical care medicine. Prior to that he completed a combined residency in internal medicine and emergency medicine at Allegheny General Hospital in Pittsburgh, where he served as chief resident and as a member of the infection control committee. He was a Clinical Assistant Professor at the University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine from 2010 through 2017 and is currently an Adjunct Assistant Professor there. He is also an Adjunct Assistant Professor in the Department of Biological Sciences at Carnegie Mellon University. He received an MD from the American University of the Caribbean School of Medicine and a BS in industrial management from Carnegie Mellon University. Dr. Adalja is a native of Butler, Pennsylvania, and actively practices infectious disease, critical care, and emergency medicine in the Pittsburgh metropolitan area, where he was appointed to the City of Pittsburgh’s HIV Commission and the advisory group of AIDS Free Pittsburgh.

**Amir D. Aczel** is the author of numerous nonfiction books, including the international bestseller *Fermat's Last Theorem*, which was nominated for a Los Angeles Times Book Award and has been translated into 22 languages. Aczel has appeared on more than 30 television programs, including nationwide appearances on the CBS Evening News, CNN, CNBC, and Nightline, and on more than a hundred and fifty radio programs, including NPR's *Weekend Edition* and *Morning Edition*. Aczel is a Fellow of the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation.