Speaker Biographies
BAN KI-MOON of the Republic of Korea, the eighth Secretary-General of the United Nations, brings to his post 37 years of service both in government and on the global stage.
At the time of his election as Secretary-General, Mr. Ban was his country’s Minister of Foreign Affairs and Trade. His long tenure with the ministry included postings in New Delhi, Washington D.C. and Vienna, and responsibility for a variety of portfolios, including Foreign Policy Advisor to the President, Chief National Security Advisor to the President, Deputy Minister for Policy Planning and Director-General of American Affairs. Throughout this service, his guiding vision was that of a peaceful Korean peninsula, playing an expanding role for peace and prosperity in the region and the wider world.
Mr. Ban received a bachelor's degree in international relations from Seoul National University in 1970. In1985, he earned a master's degree in public administration from the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University.
DR MARGARET CHAN, from the People's Republic of China, obtained her medical degree from the University of Western Ontario in Canada. She joined the Hong Kong Department of Health in 1978, where her career in public health began.
In 1994, Dr Chan was appointed Director of Health of Hong Kong. In her nine-year tenure as director, she launched new services to prevent the spread of disease and promote better health. She also introduced new initiatives to improve communicable disease surveillance and response, enhance training for public health professionals, and establish better local and international collaboration. She effectively managed outbreaks of avian influenza and of severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS).
In 2003, Dr Chan joined WHO as Director of the Department for Protection of the Human Environment. In June 2005, she was appointed Director, Communicable Diseases Surveillance and Response as well as Representative of the Director-General for Pandemic Influenza. In September 2005, she was named Assistant Director-General for Communicable Diseases. Dr Chan was appointed to the post of Director-General on 9 November 2006. Her term will run through June 2012.
WILLIAM JEFFERSON CLINTON was elected President of the United States in 1992, and again in 1996, he was the first Democratic president to be awarded a second term in six decades. Under his leadership, the United States enjoyed the strongest economy in a generation and the longest economic expansion in U.S. history. Prior to that, President Clinton served as Arkansas Attorney General in 1976, and won the governorship in 1978. After losing a bid for a second term, he regained the office four years later, and served until 1992.
Following the 2004 tsunami, President Clinton also served as the United Nations Special Envoy for Tsunami Recovery for two years, and led a nationwide fundraising effort with President Bush and established the Bush-Clinton Katrina Fund to assist survivors of Hurrican Katrina in the rebuilding effort.
After leaving the White House, President Clinton established the William J. Clinton Foundation with the mission to strengthen the capacity of people in the United States and throughout the world to meet the challenges of global interdependence.
Following the 2002 Barcelona AIDS Conference, President Clinton began the Clinton Foundation HIV/AIDS Initiative (CHAI) to assist countries in implementing large-scale, integrated, care, treatment and prevention programs that will turn the tide on the epidemic. It partners with countries in Africa, the Caribbean and Asia to develop operational business plans to scale-up care and treatment. CHAI works with individual governments and provides them with technical assistance, human and financial resources, and know-how from the sharing of the best practices across projects. CHAI is currently bringing life-saving care and treatment to 1.4 million people around the world.
In September 2005, President Clinton hosted the inaugural meeting of the Clinton Global Initiative (CGI) a non-partisan catalyst for action, bringing together a community of global leaders to devise and implement innovative solutions to some of the world's most pressing challenges. CGI brings together current and former heads of state along with hundreds of other leaders from governments, the business community, and NGOs who contribute to innovative solutions to alleviate poverty, promote effective governance, reconcile religious conflicts, and protect the environment.
The Clinton Foundation also works to catalyze sustainable growth in Africa through the Clinton Hunter Development Initiative, fight climate change through the Clinton Climate Initiative, and create healthier school envrionments in the United States through the Alliance for a Healthier Generation.
LUCY CHESIRE is a Clinical Nutritionist by profession and has worked as a Nutritionist in charge of AMPATH (Academic Model for the Prevention and Treatment of HIV) in Eldoret, Kenya in 2000-2005. She completed a Degree in Food, Nutrition, and Dietetics from the Egerton University in Kenya and has currently been admitted to pursue Masters in Public Health at the University of Liverpool – UK. Because of her passion for Nutrition Lucy looks forward to zeroing in on Public Health Nutrition with a focus on Nutrition and HIV. In the past Lucy has been very instrumental in the implementation of Food Strategy Programs that has enabled AMPATH to address nutritional concerns among people living with HIV/AIDS. With 10 years experience now in the HIV/AIDS field, Lucy for the last 5 years has also incorporated TB activities into her work and now concentrates on TB/HIV advocacy both at international regional and national Level. Lucy since 2006 has worked for the project ACTION, Advocacy to control TB internationally and is currently working with the Kenya AIDS NGO Consortium under their TB project coordinating TB advocacy activities.
Having been through the phase of TB/HIV co-infection, Lucy’s passion for TB/HIV has made her determined to push for TB/HIV solutions to reach the people most in need of it. With her experience and training in TB/HIV advocacy, she was the first ever Community Representative for Stop TB Partnership Coordinating Board, and also served as Community Representative on the TB/HIV Working Group. Both these bodies are part of the global Stop TB Partnership, a network of more than 300 organizations. Besides her international work, she is also on Kenyan TB/HIV Steering Committee and in the past been a member of the AMPATH TB/HIV Working Committee.
AMBASSADOR MARK R. DYBUL serves as the United States Global AIDS Coordinator, leading the implementation of President Bush's Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief. From March to August 2006, he served as Acting U.S. Global AIDS Coordinator, and prior to that he held the positions of Deputy U.S. Global AIDS Coordinator and Assistant U.S. Global AIDS Coordinator.
Before coming to the Coordinator's Office, Ambassador Dybul served on the Planning Task Force for the Emergency Plan, and was the lead for the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) for President Bush's International Prevention of Mother and Child HIV Initiative.
At HHS, he also served as the Assistant Director for Medical Affairs, National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID), National Institutes of Health (NIH), as well as Co-Executive Secretary of the HHS HIV therapy guidelines for adults and adolescents. He continues to be a Staff Clinician in the Laboratory of Immunoregulation at NIAID/NIH and maintains an active role as the principal investigator for clinical and basic research for U.S. and international protocols with an emphasis on HIV therapy, particularly those that may be applicable in resource-poor settings, including intermittent therapy and HIV reservoirs and immunopathogenesis. Ambassador Dybul holds the rank of assistant surgeon general and rear admiral in the U.S. Public Health Service Commissioned Corps, the uniformed service of HHS. He is also a former member of the World Health Organization's Writing Committee to develop global HIV therapy guidelines.
Ambassador Dybul received his A.B. (1985) and M.D. (1992) from Georgetown University before completing his residency in internal medicine at the University of Chicago Hospitals (1995) and a fellowship in infectious diseases at the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (1998).
SIR DAVID FROST has not only won all the major television awards, his professional activities have been so diverse that he has been described as “a one man conglomerate.”
Host and co-creator of That Was The Week That Was, producer of countless television programs, author of 17 books, producer of seven films, publisher, lecturer, impresario and the joint founder of two major network companies in the United Kingdom, Sir David Frost is ubiquitous.
Landmark interviews have always been the most prominent feature of Sir David’s remarkable career. Among the many world figures that he has interviewed are the six most recent Presidents of the United States and the five most recent Prime Ministers of Britain as well as Prince Charles, the Duke and Duchess of York, and The Princess Royal of the United Kingdom, Robert F. Kennedy, Henry Kissinger, Pierre Trudeau and Brian Mulroney in North America; Mikhail Gorbachev in Russia; Robert Hawke, Malcolm Fraser and Gough Whitlam in Australia; Indira Gandhi and Benazir Bhutto in Asia; King Hussein, Golda Meir, Moshe Dyan, Menachem Begin, Yassir Arafat and Yitzhak Rabin in the Middle East; and President Nelson Mandela and former President F.W. de Klerk.
Most recently, Sir David has garnered yet more attention for his outstanding PBS series, … Talking with David Frost, which has attracted monthly news headlines and critical plaudits since it debut in January, 1991.To date, the guests have included former President and Mrs. George Bush, Andrew Lloyd Weber, General H. Norman Schwarzkopf, Prime Minister John Major, Robin Williams, Margaret Thatcher, Ben Bradlee, Ted Turner, Elton John, Norman Mailer, Warren Beatty, Patrick J. Buchanan, Ross Perot, Governor Bill Clinton, Sir Anthony Hopkins, Sir John Gielgud, former Vice President Dan Quayle, Vice President Al Gore, Isaac Stern, Reverend Billy Graham, Clint Eastwood, President F.W. de Klerk , Nelson Mandela, Chief Mangosutho Buthelezi, Boutros Boutros-Ghali, President Carlos Salinas, Salman Rushdie, Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin, PLO Chairman Yassir Arafat, Garth Brooks and Vladimir Zhirinovsky.
FAURE ESSOZIMNA GNASSINGBE (born June 6, 1966) has been the President of Togo since May 4, 2005. Mr Gnassingbé was previously president for twenty days from February 5 to February 25, 2005. He is the son of President Gnassingbé Eyadéma, and was named President immediately following his father's death. Born in Afagnan in the Lacs Prefecture, Faure Essozimna Gnassingbé received his secondary education in Lomé before studying in Paris at the Sorbonne, where he received a degree in financial business management. He subsequently obtained a Master of Business Administration degree from The George Washington University in the United States. Mr Gnassingbé was elected to the National Assembly of Togo in the October 2002 parliamentary election as a deputy for Mr. Blitta, and in the National Assembly he was coordinator of the commission in charge of privatization. On July 29, 2003 he was appointed as Minister of Equipment, Mines, Posts, and Telecommunications, serving in that position until becoming President in February 2005.
ARMANDO EMILIO GUEBUZA (born January 20, 1943) has been the President of Mozambique since 2005. Guebuza is a former member of FRELIMO's (Frente de Libertação de Moçambique - Mozambique Liberation Front) Politburo and served briefly as part of a 10-member collective head of state after the unexpected death of Samora Machel in 1986.
Mr. Guebuza was born in northern Mozambique. He joined FRELIMO at the age of 20, shortly after it began Mozambique's war of independence against Portugal. By the time independence was achieved in 1975, Guebuza had become an important general and leader in FRELIMO. He became interior minister in the Machel government. Following Machel's death in a plane crash in South Africa, he was part of a committee investigating the circumstances of the crash, which came to no certain conclusion. He represented FRELIMO at the peace negotiations with the RENAMO guerilla group that led to the Rome General Peace Accords, signed in Rome on October 4, 1992. During the transitional phase towards the first general elections in 1994, he represented the Government of Mozambique in the joint Supervision and Monitoring Commission, the highest implementing body of the General Peace Accords.
Following the abandonment of socialist economic policies by President Joaquim Chissano, which included the privatization of state companies, Guebuza became a successful businessman, particularly in the construction, exports and fishing industries. He was chosen as FRELIMO's presidential candidate in 2002. He became Secretary General of the party in the same year. In May 2004, the government approved a new general elections law that contained innovations based on the experience of the 2003 municipal elections.
Presidential and National Assembly elections took place on December 1-2, 2004. FRELIMO candidate Armando Guebuza won with 64% of the popular vote.
RICHARD HOLBROOKE is President and Chief Executive Officer of the Global Business Coalition on HIV/AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria (GBC). He assumed this role in June 2001, to lead GBC in mobilizing the business sector.
In addition to his leadership at GBC, Richard Holbrooke is the founding Chairman of the American Academy in Berlin, a new center for U.S.- German cultural exchange, the Vice Chairman of Perseus LLC, a leading private equity firm, and Vice Chairman of the Asia Society. He also serves as a Board Member of American International Group (AIG), The Coca-Cola Company, the Museum of Natural History, the National Endowment for Democracy, Human Genome Sciences and Refugees International.
Richard Holbrooke has played a central role in the development of U.S. policy towards the United Nations, the Balkans, Africa, the Middle East and humanitarian crisis issues with refugee populations and HIV/AIDS. He most recently served as the United States Ambassador to the United Nations, where he was also a member of President Clinton's cabinet. From 1994-96 he served as Assistant Secretary of State for European and Canadian Affairs, where he most notably lead negotiations for the historic Dayton Peace Accords (1995) that ended the war in Bosnia. In 1977, President Carter appointed him Assistant Secretary of State for East Asian and Pacific Affairs, a post during which he established full diplomatic relations with China.
He began his career as a Foreign Service Officer immediately after graduating from Brown University in 1962, where he held assignments in Viet Nam and the White House. He was assigned as a Peace Corps director in Morocco in 1970, and in 1972 he left the Foreign Service to become Managing Editor of the quarterly magazine, Foreign Policy. Ambassador Holbrooke has been very active in the non-profit arena, especially in the area of refugee assistance. He was chairman of Refugees International from 1996 to1999 and was twice a member of the board of the International Rescue Committee.
MRS. JENNNETTE KAGAME has been the First Lady of Rwanda since April 2000. Upon her return to war-ravaged Rwanda in 1994, she immediately immersed herself in various associations that support vulnerable groups; in particular widows, orphans of the genocide and children in difficult situations.
In May 2001, Mrs. Kagame hosted the first “African First Ladies’ Summit on Children and HIV/AIDS Prevention” in Kigali. This initiative inspired the creation of the PACFA Rwanda Project (Protection and Care of Families against HIV/AIDS). She was one of the founders of the Organisation of African First Ladies against HIV/AIDS (OAFLA) in 2002, and served as its President from 2004 to 2006.
As its founder and Chairperson, Mrs. Kagame recently established the Imbuto Foundation to carry forward and build on the work of PACFA Project, which over the last six years has advocated consistently for, and implemented pioneering initiatives on health, education and economic empowerment.
Mrs. Kagame is a Board Member of Friends of the Global Fund Africa, the Global Coalition of Women against HIV/AIDS, and is the High Representative of the Africa AIDS Vaccine Program. Patron of the Rotary Club Virunga in Kigali, Mrs. Kagame is active in the Club’s efforts to lead the construction and development of the first public library in Rwanda.
Mrs. Kagame has participated in and delivered keynote speeches on numerous international forums on health, children’s welfare, and economic empowerment of women, among other issues. She continues to carry out her numerous obligations as the First Lady of Rwanda and mother of four children while currently pursuing University graduate studies.
MICHEL KAZATCHKINE has spent the past 20 years fighting AIDS as a leading physician, researcher, administrator, advocate, policymaker and diplomat.
Dr Kazatchkine attended medical school at Necker-Enfants-Malades in Paris, studied immunology at the Pasteur Institute and has completed postdoctoral fellowships at St Mary’s hospital in London and Harvard Medical School.
His involvement with HIV began in 1983, when, as a young clinical immunologist, he treated a French couple who had returned from Africa with unexplained fever and severe immune deficiency. By 1985, he had started a clinic in Paris specializing in AIDS, which now treats over 1,600 people. Three years later, he opened the first night clinic for people with HIV in Paris, making it possible for them to obtain confidential health care outside working hours. Over the next ten years, Dr Kazatchkine developed an international career as a clinician, teacher and basic clinical investigator.
In his advocacy role as Ambassador, Dr Kazatchkine has championed global efforts to attain the Millennium Development Goals, and, as a policymaker, has driven French participation in the establishment of the International Drug Purchasing Facility. In his diplomatic role, he has worked to build and consolidate global political and financial commitment to the response to HIV and other transmissible diseases, developing close working relationships with a wide range of national and international institutions and stakeholder groups. He has participated in numerous regional and international summits, including representing the government of France at the High Level Meeting on HIV/AIDS at the UN General Assembly in May/June 2005 and 2006. He has been participating in the process preparing the July 2006 Saint Petersburg Summit of G8 leaders.
DR SRGJAN KERIM is a seasoned diplomat, economist, scholar and businessman. He brings with him a wealth of experience in international political and economic affairs and extensive knowledge of the United Nations system. From 2000 to 2001, Dr. Kerim was Foreign Minister of the former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia, in which capacity he also served as Chairman of the South-East European Cooperation Process. He then became his country's Ambassador and Permanent Representative to the United Nations, from 2001 to 2003, during which time he served as vice-chairman both of the International Conference on Financing for Development (Monterrey, 2002) and of the World Summit on Sustainable Development (Johannesburg, 2002). In addition, he was a member of the group of facilitators of the President of the fifty-sixth UN General Assembly, focusing on UN reform, and was a co-organizer of the Regional Forum on Dialogue of Civilizations (Ohrid, 2003).
Over the course of his distinguished career spanning more than three decades, Dr. Kerim also represented his country as Ambassador to Germany, from 1994 to 2000, and to Switzerland and Liechtenstein, from 1995 to 2000. During this period, from 1999 to 2000, he served as Special Envoy of the Coordinator of the Stability Pact for South-Eastern Europe. Earlier, during his political career in the former Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia (SFRY), Dr. Kerim held the posts of Assistant Minister and Spokesperson in the Federal Ministry of Foreign Affairs, from 1989 to 1991. Before that, he was Minister for Foreign Economic Relations of the Government of the Republic of Macedonia (SFRY), from 1986 to 1989.
In the field of academia, Dr. Kerim was a professor of international economic affairs with the Faculty of Economics of the University of Belgrade. In addition, he was a visit¬ing professor at the University of Hamburg (Germany) and at New York University. He has lectured widely on Balkan issues, is the author of nine books dealing with international politics, economics and youth, and has written more than 100 scholarly papers, many of which have been published in countries across Europe. He holds a doctorate in international economics from the Faculty of Economics of the University of Belgrade and is fluent in English, French and German as well as Serbian, Croatian and Bulgarian.
JOY PHUMAPHI, a Botswana national, is Vice President of the World Bank’s Human Development Network. Before joining the Bank in February, 2007, Ms. Phumaphi was Assistant Director General for Family and Community Health at the World Health Organization (WHO) in Geneva, representing in addition the World Health Organization on the Board of the Global Alliance for Vaccines and Immunizations (GAVI). From 1999-2003, Ms. Phumaphi also served as Minister of Health for Botswana.
DR PETER PIOT, Executive Director of UNAIDS since its creation in 1995 and Under Secretary-General of the United Nations, Dr Peter Piot comes from a distinguished academic and scientific career focusing on AIDS and women’s health in the developing world.
Under his leadership, UNAIDS has become the chief advocate for worldwide action against AIDS. It has brought together ten organizations of the United Nations system around a common agenda on AIDS, spearheading UN reform.
Dr Piot earned a medical degree from the University of Ghent, a Ph.D. in Microbiology from the University of Antwerp, Belgium, and was a Senior Fellow at the University of Washington in Seattle. After graduating from medical school, Dr Piot co-discovered the Ebola virus in Zaire in 1976.
In the 1980s Dr Piot launched and expanded a series of collaborative projects in Africa - in Burundi, Côte d’Ivoire, Kenya, Tanzania and Zaire. Project SIDA in Kinshasa, Zaire, was the first international project on AIDS in Africa and is widely acknowledged as having provided the foundations of our understanding of HIV infection in Africa. He was a professor of microbiology, and of public health at the Institute of Tropical Medicine, in Antwerp, and the Universities of Nairobi, Brussels and Lausanne.
Born in 1949 in Belgium, Dr Piot is fluent in three languages and is the author of 16 books and more than 500 scientific articles. He has received numerous awards for scientific and societal achievement, and was knighted as a Baron by King Albert II of Belgium in 1995. He is a member of the Institute of Medicine of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States and the Royal Academy of Medicine of Belgium, and is a Fellow of the Royal College of Physicians of London, UK.
JORGE SAMPAIO was born in Lisbon on September 18th 1939. As a child, due to his father's career as a doctor who specialised in public health, he spent long periods in the United States and in England.
In 1961 he graduated in Law at Lisbon University. He was elected Secretary-General of the Federation of Students Associations in 1961-62. In this capacity he became involved in the student crisis in the early 60s, which led to a widespread revolts against the country's dictatorship regime, and lasted until April 24th, 1974. During this time he took up a legal career and became a Law Association board member, playing an important role in the defence of political prisoners.
During the revolutionary years, he played an important role in promoting dialogue with the moderate wing of the Armed Forces Movement and actively supported the positions of the "Group of Nine", who played a key role in the transition to democracy. In March 1975 he was appointed Deputy Minister for External Co-operation in the IV Provisional Government. The same year, he founded the "Socialist Intervention", an association of politicians and intellectuals who were to play prominent roles in public life. In 1979 he was elected to Parliament and became a member of the National Secretariat of the Socialist Party.
From 1979 to 1984 he was a member of the European Human Rights Commission of the Council of Europe where he played an important role in defending fundamental rights and in contributing to a more dynamic implementation of the principles contained in the European Convention on Human Rights.
From 1990 to 1995 he was President of the Union of Portuguese-speaking Cities (UCCLA) and in 1990 was elected Vice-President of the Union of Iberian-American Cities. He was also elected President of the Eurocities Movement (1990) and President of the World Federation of United Cities (1992).
In 1995, Jorge Sampaio stood for President or Portugal and was elected on the first ballot and sworn in as President in March 1996. He was re-elected five years later in 2001.
WINSTONE ZULU is a leading advocate for those affected by the TB and HIV/AIDS epidemics. A survivor of child polio and TB, he made his HIV status public in the early 1990s. He went on to co-found an HIV/AIDS counseling service at a time when such services were rare. In 1994, he attended the Paris World AIDS conference and has been active internationally ever since. He is now the South African Representative of TB Alert.
In This Section
FIND US ON...
