Keynote Speaker and Panel
Keynote Speaker
Ms. Susan Eisenhower
President, Eisenhower Group
Susan Eisenhower is President of the Eisenhower Group, Inc, which provides strategic counsel on political, business and public affairs projects. She has consulted for Fortune 100 and Fortune 500 companies doing business in the emerging markets of the former Soviet Union and for a number of major institutions and companies engaged in the energy field. Eisenhower also serves as Chairman of the Eisenhower Institute’s Leadership and Public Policy Programs, where she was the Institute’s founding director and the first president. She has testified before the Senate Armed Services and Senate Budget Committees on policy toward the region of the former Soviet Union. She was also appointed to the National Academy of Sciences’ standing Committee on International Security and Arms Control, where she served for eight years. She has written extensively on nuclear and space issues and in 2000, a year before September 11, she co-edited a book, Islam and Central Asia, which carried the prescient subtitle, An Enduring Legacy or an Evolving Threat? Eisenhower has authored three trade press books, two of which, Breaking Free and Mrs. Ike, have appeared on regional best seller lists. She has also edited four collected volumes on regional security issues, penned hundreds of op-eds and articles, and provided analysis on a wide range of television programs. Susan Eisenhower has been a Fellow at Harvard’s JFK School of Government’s Institute of Politics and a Distinguished Fellow at the Nixon Center. She currently sits on the Nuclear Threat Initiative board, co-chaired by Senator Sam Nunn and Ted Turner, the Energy Future Coalition and serves as an advisor to the US Chamber of Commerce’s Institute for 21st Century Energy and the Air Force Academy’s Eisenhower Center for Space and Defense Studies. In January 2010, Secretary of Energy Steven Chu appointed Eisenhower to serve on the Blue Ribbon Commission on America’s Nuclear Future, which has been tasked with developing a long-term solution for safely managing the back end of the nuclear fuel cycle. She has received four honorary doctorates, most recently from the Monterey Institute, where she was cited for her work on nuclear non-proliferation. Eisenhower received the 2008 Dolibois History Prize from Miami University, and in 2009 she received the Middelthon-Candler Peace Prize and the Distinguished Diplomat Award from the Virginia Military Institute.
Keynote Panel
Brigadier General Guy "Tom" Cosentino
Deputy Commander for Regional Support, NATO Training Mission, Afghanistan
Brigadier General Guy “Tom” Cosentino is the Deputy Director for Political-Military Affairs for the Middle East, Strategic Plans and Policy Directorate (J5), on the Joint Staff in the Department of Defense. Prior to the Joint Staff, BG Cosentino was Deputy Commander for Regional Support, NATO Training Mission-Afghanistan, served as the Senior Military Assistant to the Undersecretary of Defense for Policy (USDP) and later as Senior Policy Advisor to the USDP. BG Cosentino’ s U.S. Army career has spanned 27 years and includes numerous operational and strategic assignments to include Chief of Strategy, Plans, and Assessments in Multi-National Security Transition Command-Iraq. He has served as a strategist in the Secretary of Defense’s Strategy Office, Chief of Strategy and Plans in 8th USA-Korea, was an intelligence company commander and an armor officer. He was also an Assistant Professor of International Relations at the U.S. Military Academy. BG Cosentino earned a B.S. in political science at University of the State of New York, and he holds master’s degrees in international relations from Georgetown University and in national security and strategic studies from the Naval War College. BG Cosentino is the recipient of the Defense Superior Service Medal with Oak Leaf Cluster, the Legion of Merit, the Bronze Star Medal, and the Meritorious Service Medal with three Oak Leaf Clusters.
Dr. Stephen Daffron
Global Head of Operations, Morgan Stanley
Stephen C. Daffron is a Managing Director of Morgan Stanley and the Global Head of Operations, Technology and Data. He is a member of the Firm’s Management and Risk Committees. Before joining Morgan Stanley, Stephen served as Chief Operating Officer at Renaissance Technologies. Previously, he was Head of Operations for Wealth Management at Citigroup and Head of Operations for the Asset Management, Private Wealth Management and Custody Operations for Goldman Sachs & Company. Prior to his career on Wall Street, Stephen served as an Associate Professor at the United States Military Academy at West Point, and in various command and staff positions in the U.S. Army, both domestically and internationally. Stephen graduated with a B.S. from the United States Military Academy in West Point, New York. He earned his M.B.A, M.A., M.Ph. and Ph.D from Yale University in New Haven, Connecticut.
Dr. Azza Karam
Senior Culture Advisor, United Nations Population Fund
Dr. Azza Karam serves as the Senior Advisor on Culture at the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA), where she coordinates Fund-wide outreach with faith-based partners and chairs the UN Inter-Agency Task Force on FBO partners on the MDGs and development. Before she joined UNFPA, she was the Senior Policy Research Advisor at the United Nations Development Program in the Regional Bureau for Arab States. Karam also worked as Special Advisor on Middle East and Islamic Affairs and Director of the Women’s Programmes at the World Conference of Religions for Peace and as a Senior Program Officer at the International Institute for Democracy and Electoral Assistance. She has served as Lecturer at the University of Amsterdam and as the Programme Manager at the Centre for the Study of Ethnic Conflict at the Queens University of Belfast. Karam also served as consultant to international organizations in the Arab region, Central Asia, and Europe. Her publications include Transnational Political Islam (2004) and Islamisms, Women and the State (1998).
Mr. Richard G. Kidd IV
Deputy Assistant Secretary of the Army (Energy & Sustainability)
Mr. Richard Kidd became the Deputy Assistant Secretary of the Army (Energy & Sustainability) on October 25, 2010. This is his third assignment as a Senior Executive within the Federal Government. In this position he is responsible for overall program direction, establishment of policies, development and refinement of strategies, and oversight for implementation of all programs and initiatives related to Energy Security and Sustainability within the Army. As the Army's Senior Energy Executive, Mr. Kidd coordinates and integrates both installation (traditional as well as expeditionary) and operational energy programs and strategies. Mr. Kidd graduated from the United States Military Academy in 1986 and served as an Infantry Officer until 1991. After receiving a Masters Degree in Public and Private Management from Yale University, he joined the United Nations in 1993 and served in a variety of international assignments, principally in war affected regions of the world. He joined the Department of State's Bureau of Political Military-Affairs in 2001 where he served as Special Assistant, Office Director and Acting Deputy Assistant Secretary. In July of 2008 he joined the Department of Energy's Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy where he was responsible for leading the Federal Energy Management Program (FEMP). In this position he helped to craft Federal level energy policy and assisted all Federal agencies in meeting statutory energy and sustainability requirements in order to promote energy security and environmental stewardship.
COL (Ret.) Jack Jacobs
Panel Moderator
A native of Brooklyn, New York, Jack Jacobs holds Bachelor’s and Master’s degrees from Rutgers University. He was in Vietnam twice, both times as an advisor to Vietnamese infantry battalions, and he is among the most highly decorated soldiers from that era, having earned three Bronze Stars, two Silver Stars and the Congressional Medal of Honor, the nation’s highest combat decoration. Jacobs retired as a Colonel in 1987. He was a founder and Chief Operating Officer of AutoFinance Group Inc, one of the firms to pioneer the securitization of debt instruments. He was a Managing Director of Bankers Trust, where he ran foreign exchange options worldwide and was a partner in the institutional hedge fund business, and he founded a similar business for Lehman Brothers. He is now a principal of The Fitzroy Group and serves on a number of charitable boards of directors and is the Vice Chairman of the Congressional Medal of Honor Foundation. Jacobs holds the McDermott Chair of Humanities and Public Affairs at the US Military Academy, and he is an on-air analyst for NBC News, where he was an Emmy nominee in 2010 and 2011 and a recipient of the 2011 Murrow Award for his work on the Nightly News segment “Iraq: The Long Way Out.” Colonel Jacobs is also the author of the Colby Award-winning memoir, “If Not Now, When?,” released by Penguin in October 2008.