Conference Opening and Keynote Presentation – Corruption Shapes World Affairs: Why Don’t We Pay More Attention To It?

Speakers for this event

• Diane Seligsohn

  Diane Seligsohn

  Diane Seligsohn is an American journalist and university lecturer who has lived in Paris for over 3 decades and now divides her time between France and St Petersburg, Florida. Diane received her BA from McGill University in Montreal, Canada and her MA from NYU. She began her career in journalism at the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation’s New York office, where she worked for 5 years before moving to France.

• Eduardo Cue

  Eduardo Cue

  Moderator

  Eduardo Cue is an experienced communications expert, media coach and international journalist who has trained professionals at the highest levels, including Heads of State, Cabinet ministers, French and American Ambassadors, high-level European business executives, and leading journalists. He has extensive experience working in Africa, Europe, the United States and Latin America. Totally fluent in English, French and Spanish, Mr. Cue served as a public information officer and spokesperson for the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees in Africa, Latin America and New York as well as for the International Chamber of Commerce in Paris. He recently completed a long-range project to improve the external communications capabilities of the Nigerien military Eduardo is currently working as a European correspondent for the i24News network, for whom he covered the 2017 French presidential election and the secessionist movement in Catalonia in northeastern Spain. He brings to his training seminars experience as both a spokesperson and international journalist. His main topics include the art of the interview, how to get messages across to an audience, crisis communications, journalistic ethics, the relationship between the military and the media and the role of the media in a democracy. He has spoken before distinguished audiences including the AfriCorps summit that brings together African and US military leaders; the Senegalese Council of Ministers; and Parliamentary committees of the Moroccan Parliament. Eduardo carried out six missions as spokesperson for the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, serving in Geneva, New York, Chad, Colombia (where he was responsible for the public information operations of five countries), South Sudan and Mali. As an international journalist Eduardo has worked for the world’s leading media houses, including US News & World Report, United Press International, The Associated Press, The Washington Post, and The Times of London, where he served as Latin American correspondent. The mayor stories he covered include the Nicaraguan Civil War, human rights in Chile, military rebellions in Argentina, the Spanish ETA terrorist group, the creation of the Euro, the crises in Zimbabwe and Venezuela, and several French and US presidential elections as well as the US Congress and the White House. In the field of television Eduardo was a producer and correspondent for the Mexican television network Televisa in Paris and Washington as well as a correspondent for CNN in Spanish in Paris. More recently, Eduardo was an international affairs editor for the French 24 network, where he analyzed geopolitics for both the English and French networks. He appears frequently on numerous international radio and television channels to analyze events ranging from North Korea to the Middle East. Eduardo began his career in Spain covering the transition from the Franco dictatorship to democracy before joining the metropolitan staff of The Washington Post. He attended Georgetown University, where he received an AB Degree in political science and European history and received an MS in Journalism from Columbia University in New York.

  URL https://www.france24.com/en/eduardo-cue-1

  Moderator

• Mayor Kenneth T. Welch

  Mayor Kenneth T. Welch

  Kenneth T. Welch was sworn in as the 54th mayor of St. Petersburg, Florida on January 6, 2022. Growing up in the Gas Plant area, Ken worked summers and after school on his grandfather’s woodyard that sat on property later displaced by the interstate. His father was a city council member who helped lay the foundation for St. Petersburg’s resurgence. Ken saw first-hand the uprooting of hundreds of businesses, homes and churches for what eventually became Tropicana Field. He also saw the unfulfilled promises of jobs and economic development in return for that sacrifice. After receiving his BA from USFSP and MBA from Florida A&M, Ken returned to St. Petersburg as an accountant for Florida Power Corporation. He also served as Technology Manager for his father’s small accounting firm. After years of community service, Ken became the first Commissioner elected to represent County Commission District 7 in St. Petersburg, only the second African American commissioner in the history of Pinellas County. Ken proudly served on the County Commission for 20 years, where he brought a focus to the issues of economic development, transportation, equity, housing, criminal justice reform and fighting poverty. A third generation St. Pete resident, Ken lives in St. Petersburg today with his wife of 30 years, Donna, and their two daughters.

• Sarah Chayes

  Sarah Chayes

  Sarah Chayes’s unusual trajectory has led from reporting from Paris for National Public Radio to a decade on the ground in Afghanistan, including several years as a soap-maker, and service to two commanders of the international forces and to Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Mike Mullen. Internationally renowned for her innovative thinking on corruption and its implications, she has probed its workings on five continents – and most recently in the United States. Here as elsewhere, systemic corruption lies behind apparently diverse crises, including ones we will be discussing at this symposium: climate and environmental calamity, mass migration, and income inequality, as well as extremist uprisings and civic revolt. She is the author of The Punishment of Virtue: Inside Afghanistan After the Taliban, Thieves of State: Why Corruption Threatens Global Security (a 2016 L.A. Times Book Prize winner) and On Corruption in America – And What Is at Stake. She lives in Paris and Paw Paw, WV.

  URL http://www.sarahchayes.org