Veronique Rodman
American Enterprise Institute
1150 Seventeenth Street, N.W.
Washington, DC 20036
Phone: 202-862-4870
E-mail: VRodman@aei.org

Speaker biographies

Claude Barfield is a resident scholar at AEI. He is the author or editor of a number of books on trade and science policy, including Free Trade, Sovereignty, Democracy: The Future of the World Trade Organization (AEI Press, 2001). In 1999, he coauthored Tiger by the Tail: China and the World Trade Organization (AEI Press) with Mark Groombridge. Mr. Barfield is working with Andrei Zlate on the forthcoming AEI Press book The Eagle and the Dragon: The United States, China, and the Rise of Asian Regionalism. Before coming to AEI, he served in the Gerald R. Ford administration on the staff of the Senate Governmental Affairs Committee and as a co–staff director of the President's Commission for a National Agenda for the Eighties.

Robert Blake became assistant secretary of state for South and Central Asian affairs in May 2009. He previously served as ambassador to Sri Lanka and the Maldives from 2006 to 2009 and as deputy chief of mission at the U.S. embassy in New Delhi from 2003 to 2006. Ambassador Blake is a career Foreign Service Officer and entered the Foreign Service in 1985. He has served at the American embassies in Tunisia, Algeria, Nigeria, and Egypt. He has also held a number of positions at the State Department, including senior desk officer for Turkey, deputy executive secretary, and executive assistant to the under secretary for political affairs.

Dan Blumenthal joined AEI in 2004 as a resident fellow in Asian studies. He has served on the U.S.-China Economic and Security Review Commission since 2005, serving as vice chairman in 2007, and as a member of the Academic Advisory Board for the Congressional U.S.-China Working Group. Previously, Mr. Blumenthal was senior director for China, Taiwan, and Mongolia in the Office of the Assistant Secretary of Defense for International Security Affairs during the George W. Bush administration. In addition to writing for AEI's Asian Outlook series, he has written articles and op-eds for the Washington Post, the Wall Street Journal, The Weekly Standard, National Review, and numerous edited volumes. He is currently working on a manuscript that will examine divides within the China policymaking community.

Susan G. Esserman is a partner in the Washington office of Steptoe & Johnson LLP, where she is the chair of the firm's international department. She provides legal and strategic advice to domestic and foreign clients on expanding access to global markets and represents clients in international trade litigation and dispute resolution matters. She has special experience concerning World Trade Organization (WTO) issues and U.S. trade laws. A significant focus of Ambassador Esserman's practice is U.S.-Indian matters. Ms. Esserman was previously deputy U.S. trade representative (USTR), and she held three additional senior posts at USTR and the Department of Commerce. As deputy USTR, Ambassador Esserman was responsible for U.S. trade policy and negotiations in the WTO and with Europe, India, Russia, the former Soviet Union, Africa, and the Middle East. As USTR general counsel, she played a lead role in devising U.S. litigation strategy in the critical early years of WTO dispute resolution. Ambassador Esserman also served as the decision-maker in antidumping and countervailing duty cases as assistant secretary of commerce for import administration. As acting general counsel at the Commerce Department, she counseled the secretary on a wide range of issues, including trade laws, regulatory reform, litigation strategy, ethics, Freedom of Information, congressional reviews and oversight, intellectual property, and procurement issues.

David Good joined the Tata Group in 2005 as corporate representative in North America after a thirty-four-year career at the U.S. Department of State. He is responsible for coordinating group activities in the United States and Canada and leads the Tata branding and communications strategies in those countries while also heading the group's corporate social responsibility and community programs. His last position with the State Department was director of the Office of India, Nepal, Sri Lanka, Bhutan and Maldives Affairs, following a three-year stint as American consul general in Mumbai from 1999 to 2002.

Peter Lichtenbaum is the vice president for regulatory compliance and international policy at BAE Systems. In this role, he focuses on a broad array of regulatory compliance and policy issues affecting defense trade and investment. Mr. Lichtenbaum was previously a partner at Steptoe & Johnson's international practice group. From 2003 to 2006, he was the assistant secretary of commerce for export administration. Mr. Lichtenbaum also served as the acting deputy under secretary of commerce for international trade from September to December 2005 and as the acting under secretary of commerce for industry and security from January to October 2005.

Susan Maraghy is the vice president for corporate business development for Lockheed Martin Corporation. In this position, she has the overall responsibility for strategic business development, management of international alliance partnerships, and assessment of adjacent market development activities for international, civil, and homeland security programs. She has more than twenty-six years of business development, business operations, and government relations expertise in the federal, commercial, international, and state markets for information technology and homeland security services and solutions. Ms. Maraghy has also been the vice president for corporate strategic development and the vice president for homeland security, information technology, and civil programs for Lockheed Martin Washington Operations. She is the principal adviser to Lockheed Martin's Homeland Security/Information Technology Business Council.

Arvind Panagariya is a professor of economics and the Jagdish Bhagwati Professor of Indian Political Economy at Columbia University, as well as a nonresident senior fellow at the Brookings Institution. Previously, he was a professor of economics and the codirector of the Center for International Economics at the University of Maryland, College Park, and was the chief economist at the Asian Development Bank. Mr. Panagariya has also worked for the World Bank, the International Monetary Fund, the World Trade Organization, and the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development in various capacities. Mr. Panagariya has written or edited ten books, including India: The Emerging Giant (Oxford University Press, 2008) and Lectures on International Trade, with Jagdish Bhagwati and T. N. Srinivasan (MIT Press, 1998). He is also an editor of the India Policy Forum. Mr. Panagariya's papers have been published in numerous journals, and he writes a monthly column in the Economic Times, India's top financial daily. He has also written guest columns in the Financial Times, the Wall Street Journal, Hindu, India Today, and Outlook and has appeared on numerous national and foreign television channels.

George Perkovich is the vice president for studies and director of the Nonproliferation Program at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace (CEIP). His research focuses on nuclear strategy and nonproliferation, with a focus on South Asia and Iran, and on the problem of justice in the international political economy. His books and reports include India's Nuclear Bomb (California, 2002), Universal Compliance: A Strategy for Nuclear Security (CEIP, 2005), and Abolishing Nuclear Weapons: A Debate (CEIP, 2009). Mr. Perkovich was formerly a speechwriter and foreign policy adviser to then-senator Joe Biden from 1989 to 1990. He is an adviser to the International Commission on Nuclear Non-proliferation and Disarmament and a member of the Council on Foreign Relations' Task Force on U.S. Nuclear Policy.

Danielle Pletka is the vice president for foreign and defense policy studies at AEI. Her research areas include the Middle East, South Asia, terrorism, and weapons proliferation. Before coming to AEI, Ms. Pletka served for ten years as a senior professional staff member for the Near East and South Asia on the U.S. Senate Committee on Foreign Relations. Since joining AEI, she has developed a conference series on rebuilding post-Saddam Iraq, directed a project on democracy in the Arab world, and designed a project to track global business in Iran. She was a member of the congressionally mandated U.S. Institute of Peace Task Force on the United Nations, which released its final report in 2005. She recently coedited Dissent and Reform in the Arab World: Empowering Democrats (AEI Press, 2008) and coauthored the 2008 AEI report Iranian Influence in the Levant, Iraq, and Afghanistan.

Gary J. Schmitt is a resident scholar at AEI, where he is the director of the Program on Advanced Strategic Studies. Prior to coming to AEI, he helped found and served as the executive director of the Project for the New American Century, a Washington-based foreign and defense policy think tank. Previously, Mr. Schmitt was a member of the professional staff of the U.S. Senate Select Committee on Intelligence and served as the committee's minority staff director. In 1984, he was appointed by President Ronald Reagan to be the executive director of the President's Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board. Mr. Schmitt is the editor of The Rise of China: Essays on the Future Competition (Encounter, 2009) and coeditor, with Thomas Donnelly, of Of Men and Materiel: The Crisis in Military Resources (AEI Press, 2007). Mr. Schmitt has written books and articles on a number of topics, including the founding of America, the U.S. presidency, intelligence, and national security affairs.

Meera Shankar is the Indian ambassador to the United States. Ambassador Shankar has held several important assignments during her career. She was a director in the Prime Minister's Office from 1985 to 1991 and was posted to Washington and served as minister (commerce) from 1991 to 1995. Thereafter, she headed the Indian Council of Cultural Relations, which oversees cultural diplomacy. Subsequently, in the Ministry of External Affairs, Ambassador Shankar headed two important divisions dealing with the South Asian Association of Regional Cooperation and relations with Nepal and Bhutan. After promotion to the rank of additional secretary in 2002, she had responsibility for the United Nations and international security. Ambassador Shankar's most recent assignment before coming to Washington was as ambassador to Germany from 2005 to 2009.

Neena Shenai joined AEI as an adjunct scholar in April 2009. She focuses on the intersection of U.S. international trade and national security policy. Previously, Ms. Shenai was a senior adviser in the Bureau of Industry and Security at the U.S. Department of Commerce. Before serving in the Bush administration, she was an attorney in the international trade group at Skadden, Arps, Slate, Meagher & Flom LLP. Ms. Shenai has also worked in the Rules Division at the World Trade Organization and was a law clerk for the Judge Evan J. Wallach at the U.S. Court of International Trade.

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