Ivo H. Daalder

Speaker - Ivo H. Daalder

Ivo H. Daalder is the Chief Executive Officer of the Chicago Council on Global Affairs and host of World Review with Ivo Daalder. He first joined the Council as president in 2013 after serving as US ambassador to NATO under President Barack Obama. After 10 years as president of the Council, Daalder took on the new role of CEO in 2023.

Under Daalder’s leadership as president, the Council launched the Pritzker Forum on Global Cities, established the Lester Crown Center on US Foreign Policy, opened its own conference center, celebrated its centennial anniversary, and raised more than $30 million for its Second Century Campaign to support an ambitious digital transformation.

Prior to his appointment as Ambassador to NATO by President Obama, Daalder was a senior fellow in foreign policy studies at the Brookings Institution, specializing in American foreign policy, European security and transatlantic relations, and national security affairs. Before joining Brookings in 1998, he was an associate professor at the University of Maryland’s School of Public Policy and director of research at its Center for International and Security Studies. He also served as director for European affairs on President Bill Clinton’s National Security Council staff from 1995 to 1997.

Ambassador Daalder is the author and editor of 10 books, including The Empty Throne: America's Abdication of Global Leadership (with James M. Lindsay). Other books include In the Shadow of the Oval Office: Profiles of the National Security Advisers and the Presidents they Served — From JFK to George W. Bush (with I. M. Destler) and the award-winning America Unbound: The Bush Revolution in Foreign Policy (with James M. Lindsay). Daalder is a frequent contributor to the opinion pages of the world’s leading newspapers, and a regular commentator on international affairs on television and radio.

Ambassador Daalder was educated at the universities of Kent, Oxford, and Georgetown, and received his PhD in political science from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He is married to Elisa D. Harris, and they have two sons.

Moderator - Ertharin Cousin

Ertharin Cousin founded and today guides the Food Systems for the Future team as President and CEO. As a global nutrition and food systems thought leader and advocate, Cousin also serves as a Distinguished Fellow at the Chicago Council on Global Affairs, and a Visiting Scholar at the Stanford University, Center on Food Security and Environment. From 2012 until 2017, Cousin served as United Nations World Food Programme (WFP) Executive Director. During her tenure, WFP operated in about 80 countries, with a budget averaging over $5 billion per year and a staff of 14,000, providing direct food assistance to more than 80 million people each year. With Cousin’s support, the WFP team also identified, championed and implemented longer-term, more sustainable solutions for global food insecurity and malnutrition.

In 2009, Cousin was nominated and confirmed as the US Ambassador to the UN Agencies for Food and Agriculture in Rome. Prior to her global hunger work, Cousin helped lead the US domestic fight to end hunger, including service as the Executive Vice President and Chief Operating Officer of America’s Second Harvest - now Feeding America. Cousin’s previous private sector experience includes working for Albertsons as the Senior Vice-President of Public Affairs.

Cousin is currently the nonexecutive board chair of Camelot North America, an advisory board member of the Angelena Fund, a member of the Bayer AG Supervisory Board, the Royal DSM Sustainability Board, the Heifer International Board and a trustee of Akaydemia2063.

Cousin is a graduate of the University of Illinois at Chicago; the University of Georgia Law School and the University of Chicago Executive Management Program-Finance for Non-Financial Executives. She has been listed numerous times on the Forbes 100 Most Powerful Women List, as the Fortune Most Powerful Woman in Food and Drink, on Time’s 100 Most Influential People list, and as one of the 500 Most Powerful People on the Planet by Foreign Policy magazine.

Additional Resources

• Opinion Survey on Support for Ukraine
  Chicago Council on Global Affairs
• ABA International Law Section
  The bar’s leader in the development of international policy, promotion of the rule of law, and education of international law practitioners.
• ABA Rule of Law Initiative
  Promotes justice, economic opportunity, and human dignity through the rule of law.
• ABA Center for Human Rights
  Mobilizes lawyers to defend threatened advocates, protect vulnerable communities, and hold governments accountable under law.
• ABA United Nations Representatives and Observers
  Fosters communication and coordination between the United Nations, and ABA entities and members.

_{The materials contained herein represent the opinions of the participants and should not be construed to be those of the American Bar Association unless adopted pursuant to the bylaws of the Association. Nothing contained herein is to be considered as the rendering of legal advice for specific cases, and the users of this website are responsible for obtaining such advice from their own legal counsel. These materials and any forms and agreements herein are intended for educational and informational purposes only.}