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(Washington, October 16) — Today Ikram U. Khan, Kerry Kennedy, Stephen D. Krasner and Nancy Zirkin were sworn in as members of the Board of Directors of the United States Institute of Peace (USIP).

The four were nominated by President George W. Bush in March 2008 and confirmed by the Senate on June 4, 2008. They replace Maria Otero, Holly J. Burkhalter, Laurie Fulton and Charles Horner, whose four-year terms recently expired. The new members’ terms will expire in 2012.

“Our new board members are exceptional individuals who will bring different perspectives to the Institute’s work,” said USIP board chairman J. Robinson West, who was sworn in for an additional four-year term. “The diverse and bipartisan nature of our board is one of the Institute’s greatest strengths, and we are all pleased to continue that tradition with our new members, especially as we move forward with the construction of the Institute’s new headquarters project at the corner of the National Mall in Washington, D.C. I very much look forward to their important contributions to international peacebuilding and conflict management.”

USIP is governed by a bipartisan board of directors nominated by the President of the United States and confirmed by the Senate. The board is comprised of twelve members from outside federal service and four ex-officio members: the secretaries of state and defense, the president of the National Defense University, and the president of the Institute (nonvoting). The board oversees Institute activities, sets long-term goals and priorities and monitors the Institute's financial, administrative, and personnel policies.

Ambassador Richard H. Solomon, president of the Institute, said, “The U.S. Institute of Peace enjoys the full engagement and involvement of our board members, and we look forward to benefiting from the insights these four new members, with their array of experience and expertise, will bring us.”

Full biographies of Dr. Khan, Ms. Kennedy, Dr. Krasner and Ms. Zirkin’s are viewable online at http://www.usip.org/aboutus/board.html. In short:

• Dr. Ikram U. Khan is a Fellow of the American Institute of Health Care Quality and President of Quality Care Consultants, LLC, a recipient of the U.S. Presidential Recognition for Steadfast Devotion to Health & Well Being of Patients and the Special Congressional Recognition for Invaluable Community Service, a member of the Board of Regents of the Uniformed Services University of Health Sciences and an advisory board to U.S. Secretary of Defense. Khan is also a member of the Board of Trustees at Sunrise Hospital and Nevada Cancer Institute, both located in Las Vegas.
• Ms. Kerry Kennedy has worked as a human rights activist since 1981 and has led more than 40 human rights delegations in more than 30 countries. In 1988, she established the Robert F. Kennedy Memorial Center for Human Rights to ensure protection of rights codified under the UN Declaration of Human Rights, and she served as executive director of the Robert F. Kennedy Memorial until 1995. She is the author of Speak Truth to Power: Human Rights Defenders Who Are Changing Our World, which features interviews with human rights activists such as Helen Prejean, Marian Wright Edelman, His Holiness, the Dalai Lama, Archbishop Desmond Tutu, Elie Wiesel, and Oscar Arias. Kennedy is chair of the Amnesty International USA Leadership Council and serves on the board of the International Center for Ethics, Justice and Public Life at Brandeis University and Human Rights First, among others.
• Dr. Stephen D. Krasner is the Graham H. Stuart Professor of International Relations at Stanford University, a senior fellow at the Freeman Spogli Institute and the Stanford Institute for Economic Policy research, and a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution. Krasner began at Stanford in 1981 where he held a number of administrative positions including deputy director of the Freeman Spogli Institute and director of the Center for Democracy, Development, and the Rule of Law as well as chairing the Department of Political Science. He served as Director of Policy Planning at the State Department from 2005 to 2007 and as a member of the State Department Policy Planning staff from 2001 to 2002. He was also a member of the National Security Council. Dr. Krasner was a member of the USIP Board of Directors once before in 2003 and 2004 and was a member of the International Security Advisory Board at the State Department in 2007.
• Ms. Nancy Zirkin is Executive Vice President for the Leadership Conference on Civil Rights (LCCR), the nation’s oldest, largest, and most diverse civil and human rights coalition. While Ms. Zirkin officially joined the LCCR in 2002, she has been a part of its various lobby efforts, including task forces on education reform, hate crimes, affirmative action, and judicial nominations, since the 1990s. During the mid-1970s, Zirkin worked at several public interest organizations, including Common Cause and the Women's Equity Action League, but she cut her teeth at American Association of University Women (AAUW) where she became director of public policy and government relations. There, she managed the coordination of the Equal Rights Amendment, the Women's Vote Project, and the Civil Rights Act of 1991.