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Ward Brehm is a Minnesota based businessman, who has served as USADF chairman under four presidents [1] He is the recipient of Presidential Citizens Medal [2]
| This article contains content that is written like an advertisement .(June 2022) |
Ward Brehm is a Minnesota based businessman, who has served as USADF chairman under four presidents [1] He is the recipient of Presidential Citizens Medal [2]
Brehm has now served at the pleasure of four U.S. presidents in his role with the United States African Development Foundation ("USADF") [3] since he was first appointed to its board as chairman by President Bush in 2004. [4]
He has also represented the United States as part of three presidential delegations to the African continent, having attended the inaugurations of the presidents of the Democratic Republic of Congo and Benin, [5] [6] as well the Leon Sullivan Summit in Tanzania. [7]
In 2008, Brehm was awarded the Presidential Citizens Medal – the country's second-highest civilian honor – for his work in Africa at an Oval Office ceremony with President and Mrs. Bush. [8]
Brehm brought his message as an advocate for the poor in Africa to the 2008 National Prayer Breakfast, where he gave the keynote address before an audience including the U.S. President, First Lady, foreign heads of state, most members of Congress, and the Washington diplomatic community. Brehm was the first person from the business community to ever be asked by Congress to address this annual gathering in Washington DC. [9]
Brehm continues to be an outspoken advocate for the African poor, bringing his message of hope for a more prosperous Africa to the White House, USAID and prayer breakfasts all over the country. [10]
Brehm also serves as an unofficial diplomat, quietly behind the scenes connecting African and American leaders. He has also brought policymakers together from both sides of the aisle in Washington to unite and support African development initiatives. He has befriended numerous leaders in Africa and has helped facilitate small groups of praying leaders in many African nations. [ citation needed ]
As a member of the board of directors for Alight, which works with refugee communities around the world, Brehm founded Asili, which is an innovative platform to bring clean water and basic medical care to the extreme poor using an enterprise platform. At Alight, he also founded and helped fund The Color Movement, which involved collaborating with the Catholic Sisters of El Salvador, who offer an alternative identity to a life of violence and desperation and one that thrives on goodness, peace, and unity. [11]
In 2018, he was appointed to the Advisory Board of the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) in Washington DC. [12] He has served in that capacity during both the Trump and Biden Administrations.
He is the author of four books: Life Through A Different Lens,White Man Walking, [13] Bigger than Me [14] and a collection of personal poems, "Whispers in the Stillness."
Now retired from business, Ward Brehm is engaged full time in the non-profit world. In his former professional life, he was the founder and chairman of The Brehm Group, Inc., a Twin Cities insurance consulting firm. He and his wife, Kris, live in Minneapolis, Minnesota. They have three grown children: Andy, Mike and Sarah.
The United States Agency for International Development (USAID) is an independent agency of the United States government that is primarily responsible for administering civilian foreign aid and development assistance. With a budget of over $50 billion, USAID is one of the largest official aid agencies in the world and accounts for more than half of all U.S. foreign assistance—the highest in the world in absolute dollar terms.
Mark Andrew Green is an American politician and diplomat who is the president, director and CEO of the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars. Before joining the Wilson Center on March 15, 2021, he served as the executive director of the McCain Institute for International Leadership, and prior to that, as the Administrator of the United States Agency for International Development. He served in the Wisconsin State Assembly from 1993 to 1999, was a Republican member of the United States House of Representatives from 1999 to 2007, representing Wisconsin's 8th congressional district, ran unsuccessfully for governor of Wisconsin in 2006, and held the post of United States Ambassador to Tanzania from August 2007 until January 2009. Green served as president of the International Republican Institute from 2014 to 2017 and sits on the board of directors of the Millennium Challenge Corporation.
Ronald Harmon Brown was an American politician. He served as the United States Secretary of Commerce during the first term of President Bill Clinton. Before this, he was chairman of the Democratic National Committee (DNC). He was the first African American to hold these positions. He was killed, along with 34 others, in a 1996 plane crash in Croatia.
The Fellowship, also known as The Family, is a U.S.-based nonprofit religious and political organization founded in April 1935 by Abraham Vereide. The stated purpose of The Fellowship is to provide a fellowship forum where decision makers can attend Bible studies, attend prayer meetings, worship God, experience spiritual affirmation and receive support.
Andrew S. Natsios is an American public servant and Republican politician originally from Massachusetts, who served in a number of positions in the administrations of Governor Paul Cellucci and President George W. Bush.
Douglas Carmichael "Mike" McIntyre II is an American attorney and politician who was first elected to represent North Carolina's 7th congressional district in the U.S. House of Representatives in 1996. He served for 18 years from 1997 to 2015. McIntyre is a Democrat and, during his tenure in the House of Representatives, was a member of the Blue Dog Coalition.
Philippe Douste-Blazy is a French United Nations official and former centre-right politician. Over the course of his career, he served as Under-Secretary-General of the United Nations, Special Adviser on Innovative Financing for Development in the UN and chairman of UNITAID.
Lawrence Brooks Hays was an American lawyer and politician who served eight terms as a Democratic member of the United States House of Representatives from the State of Arkansas from 1943 to 1959. He was also a president of the Southern Baptist Convention.
Anne Legendre Armstrong was a United States diplomat and politician. She was the first woman to serve as Counselor to the President and as United States Ambassador to the United Kingdom, serving in those capacities under the Ford, Nixon, and Carter administrations. She was the recipient of the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 1987.
The National Prayer Breakfast is a yearly event held in Washington, D.C., usually on the first Thursday in February. The founder of this event was Abraham Vereide. The event—which is actually a series of meetings, luncheons, and dinners—has taken place since 1953 and has been held at least since the 1980s at the Washington Hilton on Connecticut Avenue NW.
The U.S. African Development Foundation (USADF) is an independent U.S. government agency established by Congress in 1980 to invest directly in African grassroots enterprises and social entrepreneurs. USADF's investments aim to increase incomes, revenues, and jobs by promoting self-reliance and market-based solutions to poverty. USADF targets marginalized populations and underserved communities in the Sahel, Great Lakes, and the Horn of Africa. It partners with African governments, other U.S. government agencies, private corporations, and foundations to achieve transformative results.
Julius Earl Coles is the former President of Africare and is Director of Morehouse College's Andrew Young Center for International Affairs. He has spent over four decades engaged in international development work in Africa or for the benefit of African countries.
Chad–United States relations are the international relations between Chad and the United States.
Joshua DuBois is an executive and former government official who served as the head of the Office of Faith Based and Neighborhood Partnerships in the Executive Office of the President of the United States from 2009 to 2013. In February 2013 he stepped down to write a book of devotionals based on the ones he sends Obama, start a consulting firm, and become the weekly religion and community solutions columnist for Newsweek and The Daily Beast. DuBois has been included among "The Root 100" and Ebony Magazine's "Power 150" lists of the most influential African Americans in the country. He also appeared on the cover of Christianity Today magazine as one of the 33 most influential Christian leaders under 33. In September 2017 it was announced that DuBois would become a CNN Contributor.
Rajiv J. "Raj" Shah is an American physician, economist and executive. He is the president of the Rockefeller Foundation and a former government official and health economist who served as the sixteenth administrator of the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) from 2010 to 2015. Shah is the author of the book Big Bets: How Large-Scale Change Really Occurs, which was released by Simon Element on October 10, 2023.
The National Catholic Prayer Breakfast is an annual lay prayer event and banquet that takes place in Washington, D.C. It was created in response to Pope John Paul II's call for a new evangelization, and involves a keynote speaker each year.
African-Americans in foreign policy in the United States catalogs distinguished African Americans who have and continue to contribute to international development, diplomacy, and defense through their work with the U.S. Department of State, the U.S. Agency for International Development, the U.S. Information Agency, and the U.S. Congress, and other notable agencies and non-governmental organizations. The creators acknowledge the presence of the interagency contributions to the foreign affairs realm, and welcome additional content to showcase the achievements of African-Americans in other relevant USG agencies.
Todd Larson is an American recognized for his contributions towards securing rights and benefits for LGBT employees of the United Nations. He served as Presidential Appointee and the Senior Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transgender (LGBT) Coordinator at the United States Agency for International Development (USAID), with a mandate to give substance and sustainability to an historic Presidential Memorandum, which established LGBTQI+ human rights and development as a new US foreign policy priority.
John W. Leslie, Jr., commonly known as Jack Leslie, is an American public relations executive, political consultant and international development activist. He is former chairman of Weber Shandwick, a global public relations firm, a role from which he retired in March 2022. President George W. Bush appointed him to the board of the U.S. African Development Foundation in 2003. In 2009, President Barack Obama appointed him chairman.
The 2020 presidential campaign of Amy Klobuchar, the senior United States senator from Minnesota and former Hennepin County attorney, was formally announced on February 10, 2019, in Minneapolis. Prior to her announcement, Klobuchar had been discussed as a potential candidate for the office by multiple news publications.
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