Goli Ameri

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Goli Ameri (in Persian:گلی عامری née Goli Yazdi, born September 26, 1956) is an Iranian American politician, diplomat and businesswoman from the U.S. state of Oregon and a member of the Republican Party. She is the current Assistant Secretary of State for Educational and Cultural Affairs. She ran for the U.S. House of Representatives as a Republican in 2004, and is a former delegate to the United Nations. She was born in Tehran, Iran.

Contents 1 Life and business career 2 2004 campaign for Congress 3 United Nations service 4 Service as Assistant Secretary of State 5 See also 6 References 7 External links

[edit] Life and business career

Ameri first came to the United States when she was 17, in 1974, to attend Stanford University. There, she earned a B.A. in Communications and French Literature and, later, her M.A. in Communications. She also studied at the Sorbonne in Paris, France. At Stanford, she met and later married fellow student Jamsheed "Jim" Ameri, a real estate investor. She became a United States citizen in 1989.^[1]She has two sons.^[2]

Ameri was founder and president of eTinium, Inc., a telecommunications consulting firm in Portland, Oregon. She is the author of over fifty market studies and wrote a bi-monthly industry analysis column for Telephony magazine. She has been quoted in such publications as The National Business Journals, The Oregonian, The Seattle Times, The San Jose Mercury News, and Internet Week and has been invited as a speaker and moderator to industry conferences worldwide. Prior to founding eTinium, Ameri was a director at U.S. Leasing, a former division of Ford Credit and Fleet Bank, in San Francisco.^[3]

She currently serves on the steering committee of the Babson in Oregon M.B.A. program and is also a member of the Oregon Steering Committee on the Campaign for Undergraduate Education for Stanford University. She was a trustee and the Vice Chair for Development for the Catlin Gabel School, overseeing fundraising activities for the scholarship fund and teacher education. Ameri has also taught Junior Achievement classes in Oregon. She is fluent in English, French and Persian, as well as conversant in Spanish.^[4]

In October 2007, Ameri was named as one of the "100 Most Powerful Women in the Northwest" by The NW Women's Journal for her UN service and her position on the Advisory Board of the National Education for Women’s Leadership program at the Hatfield School of Government at Portland State University.^[5]

Ameri received the Ellis Island Medal of Honor on May 11, 2008.^[6] The award is given annually to 100 recipients to pay tribute to the experiences and individual achievements of immigrants to the United States.

[edit] 2004 campaign for Congress

In 2004, Ameri handily defeated moderate small businessman Tim Phillips and conservative software executive Jason Meshell by a 2-1 margin each to become the Oregon Republican Party's nominee for Oregon's 1st congressional district, in a challenge to three-term incumbent Democrat David Wu.^[7]

Ameri's campaign gained a great deal of attention from political insiders in Washington, D.C. because of her fast-paced fundraising skills.^[8]She was dubbed one of the National Republican Congressional Committee's "Super Six" candidates.^[9] She was also ranked by the Federal Elections Commission as the number-one Congressional challenger candidate in the country in total dollars raised for the 2004 primary and general elections cycles.^[10]

The contest received national attention when, late in the campaign, Wu admitted that he had been disciplined for attempted sexual assault of a female classmate while he was a student at Stanford in 1976. Ameri did not focus on the issue initially, but heavily pushed it in the closing days of her campaign. Wu won the election with 58% of the vote; Ameri received 38%, and Dean Wolf, the Constitution Party Candidate, received 4%.^[11]

[edit] United Nations service

In 2004, Ameri was appointed by George W. Bush as one of three public members of the United States' delegation to the 61st session of the United Nations Commission on Human Rights, which meets annually in Geneva, Switzerland.^[12]

In the summer of 2005, President Bush appointed Ameri as the head of the United States' delegation to the United Nations General Assembly, which is headquartered in New York City. There, she worked on UN Management Reform, the creation of the UN Human Rights Council and, due to her extensive background in the field of high-technology, on the Internet Governance Portfolio. She was sworn in by then-U.N. Ambassador John R. Bolton in September 2005 and served until the end of the session in December. She was confirmed retroactively by the United States Senate for this position on May 26, 2006.^[13]

Ameri has also spoken at events on Middle East issues, democracy promotion and UN reform nationwide, including a testimony before the United States Helsinki Commission's Commission on Security and Cooperation in Europe hearing, "The Iran Crisis: A Transatlantic Response," as well as at the Commonwealth Club of California in San Francisco, the World Affairs Council of Oregon, and the Conference on World Affairs at the University of Colorado at Boulder.^[14][15]

In cooperation with the World Affairs Council of Oregon, Ameri organized and hosted a visit by eight East Asian United Nations Ambassadors as part of a public diplomacy trip to Portland in the spring of 2007.^[16]

[edit] Service as Assistant Secretary of State

On November 15, 2007, Ameri was nominated by President Bush to serve as Assistant Secretary of State for Educational and Cultural Affairs (with the rank of Ambassador), succeeding Dina Habib Powell and presiding over the Department of State's Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs. The Bureau is largely responsible for the United States government's public diplomacy efforts abroad. After a series of Senate hearings in January and February of 2008, she was confirmed by the Senate for the position on March 13, 2008.^[17] Ameri was sworn in for the position on March 19, 2008.^[18] She is due to serve through the end of President Bush's second term in office.

[edit] See also

• United States Department of State
• Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs
• Iranian American
• Iranian women
• List of Assistant Secretaries of State for Education and Culture

[edit] References

[edit] External links

• United States Department of State Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs, Official website
• Goli Ameri Bio, her official State Department biography
• Official White House Nomination, press release on her 2007 nomination to be Assistant Secretary of State
• eTinium, Inc., her telecommunications consulting company
• An All-American Race in Oregon, 2004 NPR Piece on Ameri-Wu campaign
• "Ameri pummels Wu over incident", Portland Tribune October 22, 2004, retrieved December 10, 2005
• FEC Fundraising Rankings for 2004 Congressional Challengers, slightly out-of-date, as it lists Ameri as #2, FEC filings from the campaign show almost $2.2 million raised overall, making her #1.