Patrick Gaspard
Patrick Hubert Gaspard (born 1967) is an American former diplomat who serves as president of Center for American Progress (CAP), a liberal think tank. A noted Democratic Party leader and strategist, Gaspard served as executive director of the Democratic National Committee from 2011 to 2013. Gaspard served as United States Ambassador to South Africa from 2013 to 2016. Prior to his appointment to lead CAP, Gaspard served as president of the Open Society Foundations from 2017 to 2020. Early life Patrick Hubert Gaspard was born in Kinshasa, Democratic Republic of Congo, to parents from Haiti. His parents had moved to Congo at the behest of revolutionary leader Patrice Lumumba, who urged French-speaking professionals to move to the country. Gaspard moved with his parents to the United States when he was three years old, and he was raised in New York City. Gaspard graduated from Brooklyn Technical High School and attended Columbia University from 1994 to 1997. Career New Yor ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
|
United States Ambassador To South Africa
Before 1902, the southern part of Africa that is now South Africa was under the hegemony of Great Britain. There also were two self-proclaimed independent states: Transvaal (also known as the South African Republic), and the Orange Free State. The British and the Boers fought two wars, known as the First Boer War (1880–1881) and the Second Boer War (1899–1902); after the second war, in which the British prevailed, both republics were incorporated into the British Empire. On May 31, 1910, the two ex-republics and the British colonies of the Cape and Natal formed the Union of South Africa, a self-governing dominion of the British Empire. The United States appointed its first envoy to South Africa, Ralph J. Totten, in 1929. He was appointed as ''Minister Resident/Consul General'' and promoted to ''Envoy Extraordinary and Minister Plenipotentiary'' the following year. South Africa was renamed the Republic of South Africa on May 31, 1961 after links to the British crown were sev ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
|
Barack Obama
Barack Hussein Obama II ( ; born August 4, 1961) is an American politician who served as the 44th president of the United States from 2009 to 2017. A member of the Democratic Party, Obama was the first African-American president of the United States. He previously served as a U.S. senator from Illinois from 2005 to 2008 and as an Illinois state senator from 1997 to 2004, and previously worked as a civil rights lawyer before entering politics. Obama was born in Honolulu, Hawaii. After graduating from Columbia University in 1983, he worked as a community organizer in Chicago. In 1988, he enrolled in Harvard Law School, where he was the first black president of the '' Harvard Law Review''. After graduating, he became a civil rights attorney and an academic, teaching constitutional law at the University of Chicago Law School from 1992 to 2004. Turning to elective politics, he represented the 13th district in the Illinois Senate from 1997 until 2004, when he ran for the U ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
|
Donald Gips
Donald Henry Gips (born February 1, 1960) is the CEO of the Skoll Foundation. He is a former U.S. Ambassador to the Republic of South Africa from 2009 to 2013. Ambassador Gips was appointed by President Barack Obama on June 4 and confirmed by the Senate on July 7, 2009. He presented his credentials to South African President Jacob Zuma on October 1, 2009. He served until January 2, 2013. In February 2019, Gips was announced as the incoming CEO of the Skoll Foundation, taking over for the retired Sally R. Osberg, Sally Osberg. He began as CEO on April 9, 2019, at the annual Skoll Foundation#Skoll World Forum, Skoll World Forum on Social Entrepreneurship. Previously he was a principal at Albright Stonebridge Group, a global strategic advisory firm. He also leads the firm's Africa practice. Previously he was the Divisional Vice President of Corporate Strategy and Development for Level 3 Communications and Director of Mindspeed Technologies. He was also on the advisory board for Pre ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
|
Lana Marks
Lana J. Marks (born November 18, 1953) is a South African-born American business executive who founded the eponymous fashion brand. She is the former United States Ambassador to South Africa, having served from 2019 to 2021. Early life and education Lana Bank was born in East London, South Africa. Her father, Alec Bank, had immigrated from Lithuania as a child; he was an affluent property developer and a leader in the Jewish community. She attended Clarendon High School for Girls in East London, and speaks Xhosa and Afrikaans. Marks is an avid tennis player, having played for Bermuda, having won bronze medals for the United States in the Maccabiah Games in 1985, playing in the South African Open, and also made it to the qualifying rounds of the French Open. Career Marks was the CEO and designer of Lana Marks, a fashion accessories brand which specializes in exotic leathers and is known for creating some of the world's most expensive handbags. When Helen Mirren won an Acade ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
|
White House Political Director
The White House Political Director, formally the White House Director of Political Affairs or White House Director of Political Strategy and Outreach, is a political appointee of the President of the United States and a senior member of the Executive Office of the President of the United States. History The White House Office of Political Affairs was first formally established in 1981 during under Ronald Reagan, while Jimmy Carter was the first to designate a political director in 1978. Subsequent administrations have rebranded the office. During his second term, President Obama renamed the office as the Office of Political Strategy and Outreach, though the roles and responsibilities of the office and its director remained. List Political and Intergovernmental Affairs During the second term of the Reagan administration, there was a director of political and intergovernmental affairs who sat above the political director. In popular culture Paulo Costanzo portrays Lyor Boon ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
|
David Simas
David Matos Simas (born January 5, 1970) is an American lawyer, former government official, and a former politician. He is the CEO of the Obama Foundation * Also available atGrenzebach Glier and Associates/ref> and served in Barack Obama's administration as the White House Director of Political Affairs from 2014 to 2016. Early life and education Simas was born and raised in Taunton, Massachusetts, the son of Portuguese American immigrant parents, Antonio and Deolinda Simas. Simas lost two of her fingers in a faulty machine at the silver factory where she worked when Simas was a child. The Portuguese immigrant lawyer who worked on the case inspired Simas to become a lawyer. He attended Coyle and Cassidy High School and earned a Bachelor of Arts degree from Stonehill College. He later earned a Juris Doctor from the Boston College Law School in 1995. Career Simas began his political career working as an intern in Senator Edward M. Kennedy's office in 1989. He was later elected ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
|
Kinshasa
Kinshasa (; ; ln, Kinsásá), formerly Léopoldville ( nl, Leopoldstad), is the capital and largest city of the Democratic Republic of the Congo. Once a site of fishing and trading villages situated along the Congo River, Kinshasa is now one of the world's fastest growing megacities. The city of Kinshasa is also one of the DRC's 26 provinces. Because the administrative boundaries of the city-province cover a vast area, over 90 percent of the city-province's land is rural in nature, and the urban area occupies a small but expanding section on the western side. Kinshasa is Africa's third-largest metropolitan area after Cairo and Lagos. It is also the world's largest nominally Francophone urban area, with French being the language of government, education, media, public services and high-end commerce in the city, while Lingala is used as a ''lingua franca'' in the street. Kinshasa hosted the 14th Francophonie Summit in October 2012. Residents of Kinshasa are known as ''Kinoi ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
|
Democratic Republic Of The Congo
The Democratic Republic of the Congo (french: République démocratique du Congo (RDC), colloquially "La RDC" ), informally Congo-Kinshasa, DR Congo, the DRC, the DROC, or the Congo, and formerly and also colloquially Zaire, is a country in Central Africa. It is bordered to the northwest by the Republic of the Congo, to the north by the Central African Republic, to the northeast by South Sudan, to the east by Uganda, Rwanda, and Burundi, and by Tanzania (across Lake Tanganyika), to the south and southeast by Zambia, to the southwest by Angola, and to the west by the South Atlantic Ocean and the Cabinda exclave of Angola. By area, it is the second-largest country in Africa and the 11th-largest in the world. With a population of around 108 million, the Democratic Republic of the Congo is the most populous officially Francophone country in the world. The national capital and largest city is Kinshasa, which is also the nation's economic center. Centered on the Cong ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
|
Democratic Party (United States)
The Democratic Party is one of the two major contemporary political parties in the United States. Founded in 1828, it was predominantly built by Martin Van Buren, who assembled a wide cadre of politicians in every state behind war hero Andrew Jackson, making it the world's oldest active political party.M. Philip Lucas, "Martin Van Buren as Party Leader and at Andrew Jackson's Right Hand." in ''A Companion to the Antebellum Presidents 1837–1861'' (2014): 107–129."The Democratic Party, founded in 1828, is the world's oldest political party" states Its main political rival has been the Republican Party since the 1850s. The party is a big tent, and though it is often described as liberal, it is less ideologically uniform than the Republican Party (with major individuals within it frequently holding widely different political views) due to the broader list of unique voting blocs that compose it. The historical predecessor of the Democratic Party is considered to be th ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
|
Columbia University
Columbia University (also known as Columbia, and officially as Columbia University in the City of New York) is a private research university in New York City. Established in 1754 as King's College on the grounds of Trinity Church in Manhattan, Columbia is the oldest institution of higher education in New York and the fifth-oldest institution of higher learning in the United States. It is one of nine colonial colleges founded prior to the Declaration of Independence. It is a member of the Ivy League. Columbia is ranked among the top universities in the world. Columbia was established by royal charter under George II of Great Britain. It was renamed Columbia College in 1784 following the American Revolution, and in 1787 was placed under a private board of trustees headed by former students Alexander Hamilton and John Jay. In 1896, the campus was moved to its current location in Morningside Heights and renamed Columbia University. Columbia scientists and scholars have ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
|
Bachelor Of Arts
Bachelor of arts (BA or AB; from the Latin ', ', or ') is a bachelor's degree awarded for an undergraduate program in the arts, or, in some cases, other disciplines. A Bachelor of Arts degree course is generally completed in three or four years, depending on the country and institution. * Degree attainment typically takes four years in Afghanistan, Armenia, Azerbaijan, Bangladesh, Brazil, Brunei, China, Egypt, Ghana, Greece, Georgia, Hong Kong, Indonesia, Iran, Iraq, Ireland, Japan, Kazakhstan, Kenya, Kuwait, Latvia, Lebanon, Lithuania, Mexico, Malaysia, Mongolia, Myanmar, Nepal, Netherlands, Nigeria, Pakistan, the Philippines, Qatar, Russia, Saudi Arabia, Scotland, Serbia, South Korea, Spain, Sri Lanka, Taiwan, Thailand, Turkey, Ukraine, the United States and Zambia. * Degree attainment typically takes three years in Albania, Australia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, the Caribbean, Iceland, India, Israel, Italy, New Zealand, Norway, South Africa, Switzerland, the Canadian province of ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |