Commission Members

WILLIAM J. HYBL, CHAIR William J. Hybl is Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of El Pomar Foundation. El Pomar is a general-purpose foundation and a national leader in innovative grantmaking, operating many of its own programs focusing on excellence in individual and organizational leadership. In part, because of these activities, the Association of Fundraising Professionals recognized El Pomar in 1998 as the National Foundation of the Year. Hybl is Chairman of the U.S. Advisory Commission on Public diplomacy being appointed by President George W. Bush on March 17, 2008 following confirmation by the U.S. Senate. He was appointed by President George H.W. Bush to serve on the Commission from 1990-1992, and reappointed by President William J. Clinton from 1993-1997. Four years were served as Vice Chairman. Bill Hybl is President Emeritus of the United States Olympic Committee (USOC). He served twice as President; when he led the United States Olympic Team Delegations at the 1992 Olympic Winter Games in Albertville, France, and the 1992 Olympic Games in Barcelona, Spain. In 1998, he again led the U.S. Team at the Olympic Winter Games in Nagano, Japan, and, in 2000, at the Olympic Games in Sydney, Australia. He serves as President Emeritus of the USOC and is President of the U.S. Olympic Foundation. Hybl was inducted into the Colorado Sports Hall of Fame in 2006. In March 2003 Hybl was elected Chairman of the Board of International Foundation for Electoral Systems. In 2005 he was appointed as a Commissioner to the U.S. National Commission for UNESCO. Hybl is Civilian Aide Emeritus to the Secretary of the Army, having served as Aide for 16 years. In 2001, President George W. Bush appointed him as U.S. Representative to the 56th General Assembly of the United Nations. Mr. Hybl is Vice Chairman of the Board of BROADMOOR Hotel, Inc., and is President of the Air Force Academy Foundation and The Hundred Club of Colorado Springs. He was named 2003 Citizen of the West and in 2005 was re-appointed to The Colorado College Board of Trustees. He was elected to the Colorado House of Representatives in 1972-73, and was Special Counsel to President Ronald Reagan in 1981. Hybl serves on the Boards of Directors for USAA Insurance, San Antonio Texas; Guest Services, Fairfax Virginia; FirstBank Holding Company of Colorado, Denver Colorado; and National Energy Resources Acquisition Company of Denver, Colorado. Hybl is a graduate of The Colorado College, and earned his J.D. at the University of Colorado School of Law in Boulder. He and his wife Kathleen have two sons and six grandchildren.
ELIZABETH F. BAGLEY, VICE CHAIRMAN  Ambassador Elizabeth Frawley Bagley joined the law firm of Manatt, Phelps & Phillips as “of Counsel” to their Washington office and as a Senior Advisor for Manatt Jones Global Strategies in 2005. She also served as Associate Director of the Council on Foreign Relations Task Force on Democracy. Her extra curricular activities include serving as Chair of the National Advisory Board for the Democratic National Committee and Chair of the Clinton Library Board of Trustees. She is a member of the Board of Directors of the National Democratic Institute for International Affairs, Vital Voices International, the American Ireland Fund, Refugees International, and was approved by the Senate as a member of the President’s Advisory Commission on Public Diplomacy in April, 2003. Ambassador Elizabeth Frawley Bagley served as Senior Advisor to the Secretary of State from 1997 – 2001, where she established and headed the Office of Media Programming Acquisition for the newly independent Balkan states. She also served as a Senate liaison for NATO Enlargement. Prior to her position at the State Department, Ambassador Bagley served as the U.S. Ambassador to Portugal from 1994 to 1997. Upon her departure from Portugal, she received meritorious awards from the Portuguese Navy and Air Force, as well as the “Grand Cross of Prince Henry the Navigator,” the President of Portugal’s highest civilian commendation. She has also received an Honorary Doctor of Laws from Regis College in 2003 and the “Global Democracy Award” from the International Women’s Democracy Center in March, 2005, and she was also the recipient of the Ellis Island Medal of Honor in May, 2005. An attorney specializing in trade and international law, she was Adjunct Professor of Law at Georgetown University in Washington until January 1993. She has held several positions in the Department of State: Congressional Liaison Officer for the Panama Canal Treaties during the Carter Administration (1977 – 1979); Special Assistant to Ambassador Sol Linowitz for the Camp David Accords, (1979- 1980); and Congressional Liaison to the Conference on Security and Cooperation in Europe (1980 – 1981). Ambassador Frawley Bagley is a 1974 graduate of Regis College in Weston, Massachusetts, where she graduated cum laude with a B.A. degree in French and Spanish. She is a 1987 graduate of the Georgetown University Law School, where she obtained a J.D. Degree in International law. She also attended university and law school in France, Spain, and Austria, where she studied international trade law and public international law. She is married to Smith Bagley and is the mother of two children, a daughter, Vaughan, age 17 , and son Conor, age 13½. Ambassador Bagley is a member in good standing of the Massachusetts Bar and District of Columbia Bar.
MARIA SOPHIA AGUIRRE  Dr. Aguirre was sworn in by Secretary of State Colin L. Powell as a member of the Commission on May 8, 2003. Dr. Aguirre is an associate professor of economics at The Catholic University of America. She has also held appointments at the University of Chicago and Northwestern University's Economics Department. Dr. Aguirre's specialization is in international finance and economic development. She has researched and published in the areas of exchange rates and economic integration, as well as on theories of population, resources, and family as it relates to economic development. Her work has been published in, among others, International Advances in Economic Research, Journal of Economic Studies, International Review of Economic and Finance, Journal of Economic and Finance, Atlantic Economic Journal, Journal of Economic Integration, International Journal of Social Economics, Review of International Economics, Review of International Economics, Journal of Public Law, Notre Dame Journal of Law, Ethics & Public Policy, and the Review of Development Economics. Recognizing her contributions to the field, she has received a Citation of Excellence for her paper published in Journal of Economic Studies, 25:6, 1998, awarded the Magister en Gestión Educative by the Consejo Iberoamericano in 2004, and has been selected for inclusion in Who's Who Among America's Teachers, March 1996 and 2006.  Dr. Aguirre also is a member of the Editorial Board of the Journal of Economics Dynamics & Control. Dr. Aguirre’s work has been captured by media around the world. This includes, among others, NewsWeekly, La Nación, El Observador, National Review, CNM News, El Universal, The Voice Today, BBC News, PBS, La República, La Prensa Gráfica, Prensa Libre, Siglo 21, El Periódico, Wall Street Journal, The Washington Post, Radio Samora, Guatevision, and the Meridian Magazine. Dr. Aguirre has participated and lectured in several conferences at both the national and international level. She has testified in front of Congresses on issues related to population, family and health both nationally and internationally. Among these are included the Congress of the United States, Uganda, Honduras as well as the United Nations, and the Central American and Canadian Parliaments. Dr. Aguirre also has a participated in many UN Conferences and has advised several US Congressmen and other countries' Permanent Missions to the UN and UN Delegates on economic aspects of UN Documents. She has also advised several governments on women's education, family policy, and health.  Dr. Aguirre also participates as a member of several prestigious organizations, in which she serves and has served as an officer in different capacities. Among them is the Commission on the Status of Women in the Professions, a working group of the American Economic Association. Dr. Aguirre also is actively involved with leadership programs for young women.
JOHN E. OSBORN Mr. Osborn was nominated to the Advisory Commission by President George W. Bush on May 10, 2007, and was confirmed by the United States Senate on March 13, 2008. He currently is based in the United Kingdom, where he is a visiting research fellow at the Centre for Socio-Legal Studies of the University of Oxford, and a senior member of Wadham College Oxford. For more than ten years, he held various senior executive positions with Cephalon, Inc., a leading biopharmaceutical company, where he was responsible for managing all legal, intellectual property, quality assurance, government and public affairs matters at the company. Prior to joining Cephalon, he held various positions with The DuPont Merck Pharmaceutical Company. He served in the U.S. Department of State as special assistant to the legal adviser, practiced corporate law in Boston with the firm of Hale and Dorr, clerked for Judge Albert V. Bryan of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit, and worked on Capitol Hill in the offices of former U.S. Representative Jim Leach of Iowa and the late U.S. Senator John Heinz of Pennsylvania. Mr. Osborn also has held a visiting research appointment in politics at Princeton University, has lectured at the Universities of Pennsylvania and Michigan, and was an Eisenhower Fellow to Northern Ireland, a visiting scholar in East European Studies at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars in Washington, D.C., and a member of the Board of Governors of the East-West Center in Honolulu. He is a member of the American Law Institute, the Fellows of the American Bar Foundation and the Council on Foreign Relations.
HAROLD C. PACHIOS Harold C. Pachios was first appointed to the Commission by President Bill Clinton. He was later designated Chairman of the Commission by President Clinton, and reappointed to the Commission again in 2003 by President Bush. He has served as a member of the Commission longer than any other appointee in the Commission’s 60 year history. Earlier he served on the staff of the Peace Corps in the Kennedy Administration, and was Assistant White House Press Secretary in the administration of President Lyndon B. Johnson. He is a lawyer in Portland, Maine, and is Chairman of the Board of the University of Maine School of Law, and formerly Northeast Regional Vice Chair of the Lawyers Committee for Civil Rights Under Law. He was a board member of the Salzburg Seminar. He is a member of the National Governing Board of Common Cause, and is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations.
PENNE KORTH PEACOCK OF WASHINGTON, D.C. Ambassador Penne Korth Peacock is currently a Commissioner on the United States Advisory Commission on Public Diplomacy. She was appointed to the bipartisan commission in 1997 by President Clinton as a Republican representative. Since 1989, Ambassador Peacock has served her government under three Presidents. She was Co-Chairman of the 1989 American Bicentennial Presidential Inaugural Committee. Following successful completion of that assignment, President George H.W. Bush appointed her to the position of US Ambassador to the Republic of Mauritius. 1989-92. Ambassador Peacock currently serves on the Board of Directors of Chevy Chase Bank, Bethesda Maryland, the Council of American Ambassadors, and the US-Mauritius Business Council. Additionally, she is on the Advisory Board of the America Australia Association, the Advisory Board of the Washington Ballet, and an Emeritus board member of the Hillwood Museum, Washington, D.C. While living in Washington, board memberships included the White House Preservation Fund, Vice-Chairman of the Washington Round Table of The Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS), The Association for Diplomatic Studies and Training, the Meridian International Center, and for 11 years as a board member of the National Symphony Orchestra at the Kennedy Center. In Sydney, Australia, Ambassador Peacock served as Chairman of Republicans Abroad in 2004, and is currently a member of the Sydney Cancer Center Advisory Committee and an International Representative of Sotheby’s. In Austin, Texas, she is a member of the Advisory Board of The Harry Ransom Center at the University of Texas. Ambassador Peacock is married to the Honorable Andrew Peacock, former Australian Ambassador to the United States, and Australian Foreign Minister. She has three children all living in Texas. Attended the University of Texas from 1960-64.
JAY T. SNYDER Mr. Snyder is currently a commissioner sworn in by Secretary of State Colin L. Powell as a member of the Commission on May 8, 2003. He was reappointed to the Commission again in 2005. His prior government service includes serving as a U.S. Representative to the 55th United Nations General Assembly. As a public delegate appointed by President Clinton, Mr. Snyder was actively involved in a variety of issues, particularly those related to the international HIV/AIDS pandemic, sustainable development, and U.S. efforts at UN reform. Mr. Snyder is a principal of HBJ Investments, LLC, specializing in private equity investments.  In 2007, he became the Non-Executive Chairman of Pelion Financial Group; a company that provides retirement wealth and plan management solutions for small and mid-sized businesses. He was a principal of Ashfield Consulting Group from 2003 to 2005. Prior to his employment with HBJ, Mr. Snyder enjoyed a 17-year career at Biocraft Laboratories, a publicly held generic drug manufacturer. At the end of his tenure, Mr. Snyder was the Vice President of Research and Development and a member of both the Management Steering Committee and Board of Directors.  Mr. Snyder also previously acted as managing director for the Mayberry Core Asset Management Group from 1991 to 1996, where he collaborated with various members to negotiate the acquisition of investment management firms. In addition to his professional work, he continues to serve on the Board of Trustees of the Beatrice Snyder Foundation, Phoenix House Foundation and Milano Graduate School of Management and Urban Policy, all non-profit organizations, and is an active participant in many charitable organizations. In 2008, he joined the Advisory Board of the Brookings’ Saban Center/Council on Foreign Relations Middle East Project. Mr. Snyder studied chemistry while attending Boston University and New York University.