Dr. Suzan Denise Johnson Cook (born 1957) is the United States Ambassador-at-Large for International Religious Freedom, pastor, author and presidential advisor.
Johnson Cook was the first woman to be elected president of the Hampton University Ministers' Conference (in 2002) a conference which represents all of the historically African American denominations. She was also the first female senior pastor in the 200-year history of the American Baptist Churches USA, and the first woman to serve as a chaplain for the NYPD (beginning in 1990). [1] She founded the Bronx Christian Fellowship Baptist Church in 1996. [2] She served as a domestic policy advisor under President Bill Clinton (see One America Initiative). Dr. Johnson Cook is a senior pastor at the Believers Christian Fellowship in New York City. She is also the editor of Sister to Sister and the author of Too Blessed to Be Stressed. She lives in New York with her husband, Ronald, and their two sons.[3]
On June 15, 2010 she was nominated by president Barack Obama for the post of United States Ambassador-at-Large for International Religious Freedom in the State Department.[4] However, her nomination was put on hold in the Senate and therefore expired without a vote at the end of the 111th session of Congress on January 3, 2011.[5]
She was renominated and confirmed on April 14, 2011.[6] She was sworn in and began work on May 16, 2011.[7] She is the first woman and first African-American to hold the post. [8]