Kathleen Kennedy Townsend

Adjunct Professor at Georgetown University's School of Public Policy and Visiting Fellow at the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard. She is a consult for US and international corporations. Kathleen Kennedy Townsend has a long history of service in the public arena. As Maryland's first woman Lieutenant Governor, she was had a multimillion dollar budget and had oversight of major departments including the State Police, Economic Development, Transportation, and the Offi ce of Children Youth and Families. She is known nationally for her innovative and results oriented programs such as Hot Spots, Break the Cycle, the development of Marylands bio-tech business, the launching of the ereadiness initiative and the establishment of one of the first state wide offices of character education. Before being elected Lt. Governor, Mrs. Townsend served as Deputy Assistant Attorney General of the United States. In that role, she led the planning to put 100,000 police offi cers into the community and she ignited the Police Corps, a program to give college scholarships to young people who pledge to work as police offi cers for four years after graduating. Prior to serving at the Department of Justice, Mrs. Townsend founded the Maryland Student Service Alliance. It was in this role that she led the fi ght to make Maryland the fi rst and still only  state to require all high school students to perform community service. Before launching that initiative, she worked as an environmental attorney both in private practice and as an Assistant Attorney General in Maryland. In addition, in 1982 she managed Senator Edward Kennedy's successful re-election campaign. Mrs. Townsend has taught foreign policy at the University of Pennsylvania and the University of Maryland, Baltimore County. She has published articles in the New York Times, Washington Post, and Washington Monthly, among others. In the mid 1980s she founded the Robert F. Kennedy Human Rights Award ”“ whose recipients now include the Comadres of El Salvador, Adam Michnic of Poland, and Beyers Naude of South Africa.

She serves as a Special Advisor at the United States Department of State and is Chair of the Global Virus Network, a network of 35 top virology centers from around the world.  She serves on the Board of , Points of Light Foundations, Strategic Partnerships, the Institute for Women's Policy Research, the Character Education Partnership and she is a member of the Council of Foreign Relations and the Inter-American Dialogue. She previously served on the boards of the Export-Import Bank, Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies, the Wilderness Society, the Baltimore Urban League and was chair of the Robert Kennedy Memorial. An honours graduate of Harvard University, she received her law degree from the University of New Mexico where she was a member of the law review. She has received fourteen honorary degrees.