WASHINGTON – Kirk W. Johnson, a leading public advocate for Iraqis who assisted the U.S. government and founder and director of The List: Project to Resettle Iraqi Allies, will give the keynote address at the AAUW/NASPA National Conference for College Women Student Leaders on Friday, June 5, at the University of Maryland, College Park. Nontombi Naomi Tutu, daughter of South African Archbishop Desmond Tutu, will give Saturday's keynote address.
Kirk W. Johnson is an Arabist and writer, focusing on U.S. foreign policy and political Islamism in the Middle East. He has worked and researched throughout the region, most recently on the reconstruction of Iraq for the U.S. Agency for International Development in Baghdad and in Fallujah.
Johnson has brought together more than 100 attorneys from two leading law firms to offer thousands of hours of pro bono representation for Iraqi refugees on his list, and he is cultivating a nationwide grassroots support effort. He has written op-eds on the subject for the New York Times and the Los Angeles Times, and his efforts to help U.S.-affiliated Iraqis were the subject of a New Yorker article.
Johnson began working for USAID in December 2004 on a contract through the International Resources Group as the mission's chief information officer. In the fall of 2005, he was appointed to USAID's senior staff as the agency's first emissary to the city of Fallujah in Anbar Province. As the regional coordinator for reconstruction in Fallujah, he was USAID's chief liaison on reconstruction issues with local Iraqi government officials, the Second Marine Expeditionary Force, and other international actors in the region.
Before his work in Iraq, Johnson analyzed political Islamic pulp writings as a Fulbright Scholar in Egypt. He holds a bachelor's degree with general and departmental honors in Near Eastern languages and civilizations from the University of Chicago, where he wrote his honors thesis on the state of political Islamist currents in Egypt and the broader Middle East.
Prudential and the Princeton Review are the Platinum Sponsors of the 2009 National Conference for College Women Student Leaders, including the Women of Distinction Awards. Other conference sponsors include the National Panhellenic Conference and the Johnson Graduate School of Management at Cornell University. Since 1985, the National Conference for College Women Student Leaders has provided a platform to help thousands of college and university women to develop leadership skills, network with other student leaders, and interact with women who hold leadership positions. The conference is presented by AAUW and NASPA.
