1.
Barack Obama
–
Barack Hussein Obama II is an American politician who served as the 44th President of the United States from 2009 to 2017. He is the first African American to have served as president and he previously served in the U. S. Senate representing Illinois from 2005 to 2008, and in the Illinois State Senate from 1997 to 2004. Obama was born in Honolulu, Hawaii, two years after the territory was admitted to the Union as the 50th state and he grew up mostly in Hawaii, but also spent one year of his childhood in Washington State and four years in Indonesia. After graduating from Columbia University in 1983, he worked as a community organizer in Chicago, in 1988 Obama enrolled in Harvard Law School, where he was the first black president of the Harvard Law Review. After graduation, he became a civil rights attorney and professor, Obama represented the 13th District for three terms in the Illinois Senate from 1997 to 2004, when he ran for the U. S. Senate. In 2008, Obama was nominated for president, a year after his campaign began and he was elected over Republican John McCain, and was inaugurated on January 20,2009. Nine months later, Obama was named the 2009 Nobel Peace Prize laureate, during his first two years in office, Obama signed more landmark legislation than any Democratic president since LBJs Great Society. Main reforms were the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, the Dodd–Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act, after a lengthy debate over the national debt limit, Obama signed the Budget Control and the American Taxpayer Relief Acts. In foreign policy, Obama increased U. S. troop levels in Afghanistan, reduced nuclear weapons with the U. S. -Russian New START treaty, and ended military involvement in the Iraq War. He ordered military involvement in Libya in opposition to Muammar Gaddafi, after winning re-election over Mitt Romney, Obama was sworn in for a second term in 2013. Obama also advocated gun control in response to the Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting, and issued wide-ranging executive actions concerning climate change and immigration. In foreign policy, Obama ordered military intervention in Iraq in response to gains made by ISIL after the 2011 withdrawal from Iraq, Obama left office in January 2017 with a 60% approval rating. He currently resides in Washington, D. C and his presidential library will be built in Chicago. Obama was born on August 4,1961, at Kapiʻolani Maternity & Gynecological Hospital in Honolulu and he is the only President to have been born in Hawaii. He was born to a mother and a black father. His mother, Ann Dunham, was born in Wichita, Kansas, of mostly English descent, with some German, Irish, Scottish, Swiss and his father, Barack Obama Sr. was a married Luo Kenyan man from Nyangoma Kogelo. Obamas parents met in 1960 in a Russian language class at the University of Hawaii at Manoa, the couple married in Wailuku, Hawaii on February 2,1961, six months before Obama was born. In late August 1961, Obamas mother moved him to the University of Washington in Seattle for a year
2.
Kristen Silverberg
–
Kristen Silverberg was the United States Ambassador to the European Union from July 2008 until January 2009. She was nominated by President George W. Bush on April 24,2008, on July 22,2008, she presented her credentials. She was succeeded by William Kennard who was nominated by President Barack Obama on August 6,2009, Silverberg was previously Assistant Secretary of State for International Organization Affairs for the United States government. In that role, she was in charge of the Bureau of International Organization Affairs, a part of the State Department. ”She has been described as a “rising star” in the White House, sentelle, and later to Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas. She currently sits on the board for Washington, DC nonprofit America Abroad Media. Silverberg was born in 1970 or 1971 in Alpine, Texas to Rhoda, Silverberg is a graduate of Harvard University and The University of Texas School of Law. She wrote an article in 2002 encouraging fellow alumni to seek careers in government. Biography from the U. S. State Department website Appearances on C-SPAN
3.
Anthony L. Gardner
–
Anthony Luzzatto Gardner was the U. S. Ambassador to the European Union. He was sworn in on February 18,2014 and left his post on January 20,2017 and he is fluent in French, Italian, and Spanish, and also speaks German. Before becoming U. S. ambassador to the EU, Gardner was managing director for six years at Palamon Capital Partners, before that he worked for both Bank of America and GE Capital in London. He also worked with the Treuhandanstalt in Berlin, Gardner served as Director for European Affairs on the National Security Council in 1994-95. In 2013, he was appointed by President Obama to head the US Mission to the European Union. ”He was confirmed by the Senate on February 12,2014. He is also a member of the Council on Foreign Relations, and has served as trustee of the Guggenheim UK Charitable Trust, and a board member for the Peggy Guggenheim Collection in Venice
4.
Bill Clinton
–
William Jefferson Clinton is an American politician who served as the 42nd President of the United States from 1993 to 2001. Prior to the Presidency he was the 40th Governor of Arkansas from 1979 to 1981, before that, he served as Arkansas Attorney General from 1977 to 1979. A member of the Democratic Party, Clinton was ideogically a New Democrat, Clinton is married to Hillary Clinton, who served as United States Secretary of State from 2009 to 2013 and U. S. Senator from New York from 2001 to 2009, and served the Democratic nominee for President in 2016, Bill Clinton and Hillary Rodham both earned degrees from Yale Law School, where they met and began dating. As Governor of Arkansas, Clinton overhauled the states education system, Clinton was elected President of the United States in 1992, defeating incumbent George H. W. Bush. At age 46, he was the third-youngest president and the first from the Baby Boomer generation, Clinton presided over the longest period of peacetime economic expansion in American history and signed into law the North American Free Trade Agreement. After failing to pass health care reform, the Democratic House was ousted when the Republican Party won control of the Congress in 1994. Two years later, in 1996, Clinton became the first Democrat since Franklin D. Roosevelt to be elected to a second term, Clinton passed welfare reform and the State Childrens Health Insurance Program, providing health coverage for millions of children. Clinton was acquitted by the U. S. Senate in 1999, the Congressional Budget Office reported a budget surplus between the years 1998 and 2000, the last three years of Clintons presidency. In foreign policy, Clinton ordered U. S. Clinton left office with the highest end-of-office approval rating of any U. S. President since World War II, since then, Clinton has been involved in public speaking and humanitarian work. He created the William J. Clinton Foundation to address international causes, such as the prevention of AIDS, in 2004, Clinton published his autobiography, My Life. In 2009, Clinton was named the United Nations Special Envoy to Haiti, since leaving office, Clinton has been rated highly in public opinion polls of U. S. Presidents. Clinton was born on August 19,1946, at Julia Chester Hospital in Hope, Arkansas and he was the son of William Jefferson Blythe Jr. a traveling salesman who had died in an automobile accident three months before his birth, and Virginia Dell Cassidy. His parents had married on September 4,1943, but this later proved to be bigamous. Soon after their son was born, his mother traveled to New Orleans to study nursing, leaving her son in Hope with her parents Eldridge and Edith Cassidy, who owned and ran a small grocery store. At a time when the Southern United States was segregated racially, in 1950, Bills mother returned from nursing school and married Roger Clinton Sr. who owned an automobile dealership in Hot Springs, Arkansas, with his brother and Earl T. Ricks. The family moved to Hot Springs in 1950, although he immediately assumed use of his stepfathers surname, it was not until Clinton turned fifteen that he formally adopted the surname Clinton as a gesture toward his stepfather. In Hot Springs, Clinton attended St. Johns Catholic Elementary School, Ramble Elementary School, and Hot Springs High School—where he was a student leader, avid reader
5.
Reed Hundt
–
Reed E. Hundt is probably best known as the chairman of the United States Federal Communications Commission from 1993 to 1997. Appointed by President Bill Clinton, he served for most of Clintons first term and he was succeeded by William Kennard. Hundt is the CEO of the Coalition for Green Capital and an advisor to GTCR. He is on the board of a number of companies, including Intel Corp. He went to Yale College, where he majored in history, and worked on the Yale Daily News and he returned to Yale in the fall of 1971 in order to attend Yale Law School, graduating with a J. D. in 1974. He then clerked for Harrison Winter, a Baltimore judge on the United States Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit, hundts co-clerk Tim Cullen of Washington, D. C. became a lifelong friend. Tim had a career as a litigator at Jones, Day. Hundt then moved to Los Angeles, where he became the 85th lawyer at Latham & Watkins, from the early 1970s to the present Latham has become one of the biggest, most lucrative, and most successful firms in the world. In 1980 Hundt moved to the Washington, D. C. office of the firm, meanwhile, from 1983 and onwards, Hundt played many diverse roles in helping Al Gores political career. In 1992-3 he was part of the Clinton-Gore transition team, and it was not passed through the Senate. The issue remains alive to this day, in 1993 President Clinton, who Hundt had known in law school, nominated Hundt to be chairman of the Federal Communications Commission. The FCC then essentially re-wrote the regulatory landscape for wireless and wireline communication, after the election of 2000 was finally decided, Hundt continued his now more than fifty year friendship with Al Gore. He currently serves on the committee of Gores chief non-profit. Hundt himself is CEO of the Coalition for Green Capital, a non-profit he helped found in the wake of his service on the Obama transition team in 2008-9, between 1998 and 2008, Hundt was a senior advisor to McKinsey, the consulting firm. He also served on many technology company boards from 1998 to the present, co-founded four firms, gave speeches, wrote four books. Recent articles include, Scotus Protects The Privacies of Life, The Boston Review Online, June 27,2014, saving Privacy, The Boston Review, May 19,2014. Making No Secrets About It, Ohio State University Moritz College of Law, I/S, A Journal of Law and Policy for the Information Society, “A Broadband Solution to Fiscal Crises, ”. ComputerWorld, December 10,2012 “Democrats and Republicans Should Come Together to Support a Future of Abundance, ”
6.
Michael Powell (lobbyist)
–
He was appointed to the Federal Communications Commission by President Bill Clinton on November 3,1997. President George W. Bush designated him chairman of the commission on January 22,2001, Powell is the son of former Secretary of State Colin Powell and his wife Alma Powell. Michael Powell was born in Birmingham, Alabama in 1963 and he graduated from the College of William and Mary, where he was initiated into Theta Delta Chi, on an ROTC Scholarship. Powell served as an officer in the United States Army. He spent the majority of his service with the 3rd Squadron, 2nd Armored Cavalry Regiment in Amberg, Germany, serving as a cavalry platoon leader. In 1987, Powell was seriously injured during a training mission and he and his unit were traveling in a convoy on the autobahn. Powell was riding in a jeep at the time, due to heavy rain, the jeep crashed and Powell was ejected from the vehicle. After he hit the pavement, the jeep bounced and crashed down on Powells midsection, half of Powells pelvis had snapped off its rear anchor on the lower spine. In the front, it had ripped free of the cartilage connecting it to its other half and his bladder and urethra were torn and several vertebrae were cracked. After initial attention from German emergency room doctors, Powell was flown to a U. S. Army hospital in Nuremberg. After being stabilized, he was flown to Washington, D. C. to this day, his spine is still fused at its base, forcing him to walk with a slight forward pitch. After his rehabilitation he served as an advisor to the Secretary of Defense. Powell later received a Juris Doctor degree from the Georgetown University Law Center, as the chairman of the FCC, Powell led the charge to open up markets in VoIP, Wi-Fi, and Broadband over Powerline. His approach believed that these new technologies would allow small companies to take on established corporations. His deregulatory policy coincided with a period of significant consolidation in the communications market and he advocated an updating of media ownership rules to reflect new communications technologies such as the Internet, a move that critics derided as increasing rampant media consolidation. He opposed applying telephone-era regulations to new Internet technologies, a move critics charged would deny access to communications facilities. He articulated a policy of neutrality, and in March 2005 fined Madison River Communications for blocking voice over IP applications. Powell worked so consumers could keep phone numbers when switching wireless carriers, a defining moment of his tenure as FCC Chairman was the Super Bowl XXXVIII halftime show controversy, in which Janet Jacksons breast was exposed on live-broadcast television
7.
Los Angeles
–
Los Angeles, officially the City of Los Angeles and often known by its initials L. A. is the cultural, financial, and commercial center of Southern California. With a census-estimated 2015 population of 3,971,883, it is the second-most populous city in the United States, Los Angeles is also the seat of Los Angeles County, the most populated county in the United States. The citys inhabitants are referred to as Angelenos, historically home to the Chumash and Tongva, Los Angeles was claimed by Juan Rodríguez Cabrillo for Spain in 1542 along with the rest of what would become Alta California. The city was founded on September 4,1781, by Spanish governor Felipe de Neve. It became a part of Mexico in 1821 following the Mexican War of Independence, in 1848, at the end of the Mexican–American War, Los Angeles and the rest of California were purchased as part of the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo, thereby becoming part of the United States. Los Angeles was incorporated as a municipality on April 4,1850, the discovery of oil in the 1890s brought rapid growth to the city. The completion of the Los Angeles Aqueduct in 1913, delivering water from Eastern California, nicknamed the City of Angels, Los Angeles is known for its Mediterranean climate, ethnic diversity, and sprawling metropolis. Los Angeles also has an economy in culture, media, fashion, science, sports, technology, education, medicine. A global city, it has been ranked 6th in the Global Cities Index, the city is home to renowned institutions covering a broad range of professional and cultural fields, and is one of the most substantial economic engines within the United States. The Los Angeles combined statistical area has a gross metropolitan product of $831 billion, making it the third-largest in the world, after the Greater Tokyo and New York metropolitan areas. The city has hosted the Summer Olympic Games in 1932 and 1984 and is bidding to host the 2024 Summer Olympics and thus become the second city after London to have hosted the Games three times. The Los Angeles area also hosted the 1994 FIFA mens World Cup final match as well as the 1999 FIFA womens World Cup final match, the mens event was watched on television by over 700 million people worldwide. The Los Angeles coastal area was first settled by the Tongva, a Gabrielino settlement in the area was called iyáangẚ, meaning poison oak place. Gaspar de Portolà and Franciscan missionary Juan Crespí, reached the present site of Los Angeles on August 2,1769, in 1771, Franciscan friar Junípero Serra directed the building of the Mission San Gabriel Arcángel, the first mission in the area. The Queen of the Angels is an honorific of the Virgin Mary, two-thirds of the settlers were mestizo or mulatto with a mixture of African, indigenous and European ancestry. The settlement remained a small town for decades, but by 1820. Today, the pueblo is commemorated in the district of Los Angeles Pueblo Plaza and Olvera Street. New Spain achieved its independence from the Spanish Empire in 1821, during Mexican rule, Governor Pío Pico made Los Angeles Alta Californias regional capital
8.
Brussels
–
Brussels, officially the Brussels-Capital Region, is a region of Belgium comprising 19 municipalities, including the City of Brussels which is the capital of Belgium. The Brussels-Capital Region is a part of both the French Community of Belgium and the Flemish Community, but is separate from the region of Flanders or Wallonia. The region has a population of 1.2 million and an area with a population of over 1.8 million. Brussels is the de facto capital of the European Union as it hosts a number of principal EU institutions, the secretariat of the Benelux and the headquarters of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization are also located in Brussels. Today, it is considered an Alpha global city, historically a Dutch-speaking city, Brussels has seen a language shift to French from the late 19th century onwards. Today, the majority language is French, and the Brussels-Capital Region is a bilingual enclave within the Flemish Region. All road signs, street names, and many advertisements and services are shown in both languages, Brussels is increasingly becoming multilingual with increasing numbers of migrants, expatriates and minority groups speaking their own languages. The most common theory of the origin of Brussels name is that it derives from the Old Dutch Broekzele or Broeksel, meaning marsh, Saint Vindicianus, the bishop of Cambrai made the first recorded reference to the place Brosella in 695 when it was still a hamlet. The origin of the settlement that was to become Brussels lies in Saint Gaugericus construction of a chapel on an island in the river Senne around 580. The official founding of Brussels is usually situated around 979, when Duke Charles of Lower Lotharingia transferred the relics of Saint Gudula from Moorsel to the Saint Gaugericus chapel, Charles would construct the first permanent fortification in the city, doing so on that same island. Lambert I of Leuven, Count of Leuven gained the County of Brussels around 1000 by marrying Charles daughter, as it grew to a population of around 30,000, the surrounding marshes were drained to allow for further expansion. The Counts of Leuven became Dukes of Brabant at about this time, in the 13th century, the city got its first walls. After the construction of the city walls in the early 13th century, to let the city expand, a second set of walls was erected between 1356 and 1383. Today, traces of it can still be seen, mostly because the small ring, Brabant had lost its independence, but Brussels became the Princely Capital of the prosperous Low Countries, and flourished. In 1516 Charles V, who had been heir of the Low Countries since 1506, was declared King of Spain in St. Michael and St. Gudula Cathedral in Brussels. Upon the death of his grandfather, Maximilian I, Holy Roman Emperor in 1519 and it was in the Palace complex at Coudenberg that Charles V abdicated in 1555. This impressive palace, famous all over Europe, had expanded since it had first become the seat of the Dukes of Brabant. In 1695, during the Nine Years War, King Louis XIV of France sent troops to bombard Brussels with artillery, together with the resulting fire, it was the most destructive event in the entire history of Brussels
