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Aspen Institute-Rodel Fellowships in Public Leadership
Inaugural Class of 2005
Seminar in the Middle East, March 18 –
25, 2007
Biographical Statements of Attendees
Jason
Atkinson, Oregon State Senator, formerly served as the Majority Whip and Deputy Leader of the
State Senate and the assistant majority leader in the Oregon State House of
Representatives. Atkinson Senate victory
included being elected with 97 percent of the vote as well as receiving
nominations from both Republicans and Democrats.
Scott
Avedisian, Mayor of Warwick, Rhode Island, previously served five terms as a member of the Warwick City
Council. Avedisian was elected Mayor in
a special election in 2000, re-elected overwhelmingly in the general election
in 2000, and in again in 2002 and 2004, carrying every ward and every precinct
in the city. He is the youngest person
ever elected to the Warwick City Council and is Warwick’s youngest mayor.
Jonathan Bruning, Attorney General of
Nebraska, is the youngest
attorney general in the United States, elected with 66 percent of the
vote. Bruning was twice elected to the
Nebraska Legislature and served six years as a state senator. He received both his undergraduate and law
degrees from the University of Nebraska.
Robin
Carnahan, the Secretary of State in Missouri, has degrees in economics and law and is a
former executive at the Export-Import Bank of the United States. Prior to her election, Secretary Carnahan worked in
central and eastern Europe with the National Democratic Institute where she
helped rebuild the region’s democracies and economies by drafting voting laws,
training new political leaders and monitoring elections.
Karen
Carter, Louisiana State Representative, graduated from Howard University
and Tulane School of Law. Representative
Carter was the first recipient of the annual John F. Kennedy New Frontier Award
presented by Harvard University and the John F. Kennedy Library
Foundation. She has twice been named
Legislator of the Year by the Louisiana Alliance for Good Government and is a
current Flemmings Fellow at the Center for Policy Alternatives, helping to
strengthen the global position of the United States.
Trey
Greyson, Kentucky Secretary of State, was elected to office in November 2003
in his first run for political office and at the time was the youngest
Secretary of State in the county.
Greyson has an
undergraduate degree in government from Harvard, and degrees in business and
law from the University of Kentucky. In
2004, The Council of State Governments selected Greyson to participate in the
Toll Fellowship program and the United Leaders recognized him as a “rising”
star in the Republic Party.
Lynn Jenkins, Kansas State Treasurer, was elected State Treasurer in 2003
after serving for two years in the Kansas House of Representatives and has been
a Certified Public Accountant for over 20 years. Her office has over 40 employees and an
annual operating budget of $3.5 million.
Thomas Kean,
Jr., New Jersey State Senate, serves as Minority Whip and sits on the Judiciary
Committee as well as the Senate Health, Human Services, and Senior Citizens
Committee. Kean is a former member of
the leadership in the state House of Representatives. He has a degree in history from Dartmouth and
a Masters’ degree in law and diplomacy from Tufts University.
Erik Paulsen has served as majority leader of the Minnesota House since 2002. He was first elected as a state representative in 1994. His political experience includes serving as Congressman Jim Ramstad’s state director and legislative assistant. Paulsen received his B.A. degree in mathematics from St. Olaf College in 1987.
Tom Perez,
president of the Montgomery County (Maryland) Council, was formerly a U.S. Deputy Assistant Attorney General and
the Director of the Office for Civil Rights in the U.S. Department of Health
and Human Services. Perez graduated
Brown University, Harvard Law School, and Harvard's Kennedy School of
Government.
Michael
Steele, Lieutenant Governor of Maryland, was the first American elected statewide in
Maryland. Steele was also the first
Republican lieutenant governor in Maryland history and is a member of the
National Federal Election Reform Commission.
Jennifer
Veiga, was elected to the Colorado State Senate in November 2004. She previously served in the Colorado
House between 1996 and 2003 and was House Minority Leader in her last
term. Veiga received her B.A. in
political science from the University of
Colorado, Boulder, and her J.D. from The National Law Center, George Washington
University, Washington D.C..
Former
Congressman Mickey Edwards was named director of the Aspen Institute-Rodel Fellowships in
Public Leadership in 2005. He is currently a lecturer at Princeton University's
Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs and previously taught
government and public policy at Harvard University for eleven years. Edwards served as a member of Congress from
Oklahoma for sixteen years (1977-92), during which time he was a member of the
House Republican leadership (chairman of the Republican Policy Committee), a
member of the House Appropriations and Budget Committees, and the ranking
member of the House Foreign Operations Subcommittee.
Gia
Regan was hired as assistant director of
the Aspen Institute-Rodel Fellowships in Public Leadership in August
2005. Before joining the Rodel
Fellowships, she worked with the Aspen Institute’s executive vice president to
help manage the Institute’s policy programs and international partners. Ms. Regan has a degree in american studies
from Washington College, and a Masters’ degree in urban planning from the
University of Maryland.
Dana
Balick is a senior associate with the Aspen-Rodel Fellowships in Public
Leadership. Before joining the program, Dana worked as a consultant with
non-profit organizations. She has a Masters’ degree from the Harvard Graduate
School of Education.
Steven Cook is the Douglas
Dillon Fellow at the Council on
Foreign Relations specializing in matters relating to political reform in
the Arab world, Turkish politics, civil-military relations in the Middle East,
U.S.-Middle East policy, and Arab-Israeli conflict. Before joining the Council, Cook taught at
the University of Pennsylvania, served as a research fellow at the Brookings
Institution, and was a research fellow at the Washington Institute for Near
East Policy. Dr. Cook holds a B.A. in international studies from Vassar
College, an M.A. in international relations from the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced
International Studies, and both an M.A. and PhD in political science from the
University of Pennsylvania. He speaks Arabic and Turkish and reads French.
Bill Budinger, an inventor holding over three dozen patents,
is founder of Rodel Inc., having served for 33 years as chairman and CEO. Rodel,
Inc. is the current global leader in high-precision planarization technology
for semiconductors, silicon wafers, and storage media substrates. Mr. Budinger
also helped found the National Small Business Technology Council and serves as
a trustee for the Democratic Leadership Council and the Aspen Institute, and as
a board member for the Progressive Policy Institute. Currently he spends most of his time helping
the Rodel Foundations in their mission to improve public education.
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