PROFESSIONAL AFFILIATION:
PAULETTE GODDARD PROFESSOR OF PUBLIC SERVICE, WAGNER SCHOOL OF PUBLIC SERVICE, NEW YORK UNIVERSITY

Dr. Paul C. Light is NYU Wagner’s Paulette Goddard Professor of Public Service and founding principal investigator of the Global Center for Public Service, Before joining NYU, Dr. Light served as the Douglas Dillon Senior Fellow at the Brookings Institution, founding director of its Center for Public Service, and vice president and director of the Governmental Studies Program. He has served previously as director of the Public Policy Program at the Pew Charitable Trusts and associate dean and professor of public affairs at the University of Minnesota’s Hubert Humphrey Institute of Public Affairs.

PROFESSIONAL AFFILIATION:
CO-CHAIR, NATIONAL SECURITY PROGRAM, BIPARTISAN POLICY CENTER, FORMER GOVERNOR OF VIRGINIA AND U.S. SENATOR

Chuck Robb co-chairs BPC’s national security program and Iran Task Force. He served as a senator from Virginia from 1989 until 2001. During his tenure in the Senate, he promoted fiscal responsibility and a strong national defense. He became the only senator to simultaneously serve on all three national security committees: Armed Services, Foreign Relations, and Intelligence.

Robb was elected lieutenant governor of Virginia in 1978 and served until 1982. He also served as governor of Virginia from 1982 to 1986.

In 2004, he was appointed to co-chair the Commission on Intelligence Capabilities of the United States Regarding Weapons of Mass Destruction. In 2006, he was appointed to serve on the President’s Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board. He also served on the Iraq Study Group.

PROFESSIONAL AFFILIATION:
DIRECTOR, WASHINGTON PUBLIC DIPLOMACY PROGRAM (RETIRED)

Michael Schneider recently retired as the director of the Washington Public Diplomacy Program, a spring semester requirement for students enrolled in their second year of the dual MA in International Relations and MS in Public Relations Program, which is a joint initiative of Syracuse University’s Maxwell School and the S.I. Newhouse School of Public Communications. He served as the Director of Maxwell-in-Washington until 2009.

In the 1980s, Dr. Schneider was Deputy Associate and Acting Associate Director of the United States Information Agency (USIA) for policy and programs, and served as USIA Liaison with the National Security Council. He was Senior Advisor to the Under Secretary of State in the mid-1990s. He served as executive secretary of a panel of U.S. and international leaders who examined the Fulbright Exchange Program, and authored the report, Fulbright at Fifty, and a subsequent report to the State Department, Others’ Open Doors.

PROFESSIONAL AFFILIATION:
PRESIDENT, SCOWCROFT GROUP

Brent Scowcroft served as the National Security Advisor to both Presidents Gerald Ford and George H.W. Bush, the only individual in U.S. history appointed to the position under two different Presidents. From 1982 to 1989, he was Vice Chairman of Kissinger Associates, Inc., an international consulting firm. In this capacity, he advised and assisted a wide range of U.S. and foreign corporate leaders on global joint venture opportunities, strategic planning, and risk assessment.

His extraordinary twenty-nine-year military career began with graduation from West Point and concluded at the rank of Lieutenant General following service as the Deputy National Security Advisor. His Air Force service included Professor of Russian History at West Point; Assistant Air Attaché in Belgrade, Yugoslavia; Head of the Political Science Department at the Air Force Academy; Air Force Long Range Plans; Office of the Secretary of Defense International Security Assistance; Special Assistant to the Director of the Joint Chiefs of Staff; and Military Assistant to President Nixon.

Out of uniform, General Scowcroft continued in a public policy capacity by serving on the President’s General Advisory Committee on Arms Control, the President’s Commission on Strategic Forces, the President’s Blue Ribbon Commission on Defense Management and the President’s Special Review Board. In recent years, he has served as a co-chair for both the Blue Ribbon Commission on America’s Nuclear Future and the National Academies of Science’s Committee on Science, Security, and Prosperity. He also formerly served as the Chairman of the Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board and was a member of the United Nations Secretary-General’s High-Level Panel on Threats, Challenges and Change.

He was recognized as a Distinguished Graduate of West Point, and earned his masters and doctorate in international relations from Columbia University.

In 1991, General Scowcroft was presented with the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the nation’s highest civilian honor, by President George H.W. Bush, and in 1993 was awarded an honorary knighthood – a Knight Commander of the Order of the British Empire (KBE) – by Queen Elizabeth II. In 2009, he was presented the Grand Cross of the Order of Merit of the Federal Republic of Germany.

He was a member of the Advisory Board of the Robertson Foundation for Government for a nearly a decade until he retired from his position in 2017.

John L. Palmer is University Professor and Maxwell Dean Emeritus at Syracuse University.  He joined the faculty of the Maxwell School of Citizenship and Public Affairs in 1988 and was the School’s dean from then until 2003, with responsibility for academic and administrative leadership of Syracuse University’s six social science disciplinary departments, undergraduate and graduate programs in public and international affairs, and numerous interdisciplinary research centers and institutes.  After leaving the deanship Dr. Palmer was appointed to the position of University Professor, from which he retired in 2019.

He also served two presidentially-appointed terms as a public trustee for the Medicare and Social Security programs from 2000-2007 and as the Maxwell School’s Birkhead-Burkhead Professor of Teaching Excellence from 2010-2014.  Prior to moving to Syracuse, Dr. Palmer occupied several different positions in Washington, DC, including senior fellow of The Brookings Institution and of The Urban Institute and Assistant Secretary for Planning and Evaluation of the federal Department of Health and Human Services.

He has been affiliated with the Robertson Family since 2003. Dr. Palmer served on the Advisory Board of the Robertson Foundation for Government (RFG) from 2009 to 2021. In April 2021 he was elected for a three-year term as a Member-at-Large of the RFG Board of Directors.