Reflections from former US Ambassador Jonathan Cohen and former US Deputy Assistant Secretary of State Bennett Freeman

Ambassador Jonathan R. Cohen is a strategic advisor and international consultant who served for over 35 years as a U.S. diplomat, including as Ambassador to Egypt and the United Nations, and in senior roles such as Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for Europe and Eurasia, Deputy Chief of Mission in Baghdad and Nicosia, and Acting Deputy Chief of Mission in Paris. His extensive career also included key political and advisory positions across Europe and the Middle East, with assignments in Paris, Rome, Ankara, Irbil, Baghdad, Stockholm, Vienna, Jerusalem, and Bangkok, as well as work with the OSCE, NATO, and U.S. State Department leadership. He received numerous honors, including a Presidential Rank Award and multiple State Department awards for excellence. Born in Palo Alto, California in 1964 and raised there and in Laguna Beach, he earned an AB in Politics with a Certificate in Near Eastern Studies from Princeton University in 1985 and attended Georgetown University’s Master of Science in Foreign Service program in 1986.

Bennett Freeman is a Senior Fellow at the Institute of International Studies at the University of California at Berkeley and an Associate Fellow in the Global Economy and Finance Program at Chatham House. Over the last 25 years of a four-decade career, Freeman has worked at the intersection of governments, international institutions, responsible investors, and civil society organizations to establish global standards and multi-stakeholder initiatives for corporate responsibility and accountability. Earlier in his career, he was Senior Vice President and served as a Clinton presidential appointee at the US Department of State, including as Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for Democracy, Human Rights and Labor. He earned an MA in Modern History from Oxford as a Churchill Scholar at Balliol College and an AB in History from the University of California at Berkeley.