Join Ambassador David Satterfield for an evening of conversation covering his four decades in diplomacy and current events. With more than four decades of diplomatic and leadership experience, Satterfield’s conversation will assess the players in the Middle East, Europe and Asia.
Biography:
The Honorable David M. Satterfield is the director of Rice University’s Baker Institute for Public Policy and leads the institute’s Edward P. Djerejian Center for the Middle East. He is also the Janice and Robert McNair Chair in Public Policy. He has more than four decades of diplomatic and leadership experience, including service as special envoy for the Horn of Africa, assistant secretary of state, National Security Council staff director, and ambassador to Lebanon and Turkey and chargé d’affaires in Iraq and Egypt. From October 2023 to May 2024, President Biden appointed him U.S. Special Envoy for Middle East Humanitarian Issues to lead U.S. diplomacy in addressing the humanitarian crisis in Gaza.
Satterfield’s extensive bilateral and multinational negotiating background most notably includes the 1995 Roadmap for Israel-Palestinian Peace (with the United Nations), the 2000 withdrawal of the Israel Defense Forces from Lebanon and Blue Line boundary agreement (with the United Nations), and the 2008 Status of Forces Agreement between the U.S. and Iraq. As the State Department’s coordinator for Iraq, he managed the largest domestic staff in the department’s history and directed fundamental reforms to the Foreign Service.
