Breakfast with Baroness Catherine Ashton and Gwen Young

Thursday, March 23, 2017

9:00 a.m.- 10:00 a.m.

Location: Cannon 122

 Breakfast will be provided

About this event: Please join the Women's Congressional Staff Association's Professional Development Committee and the Wilson Center as we host Baroness Catherine Ashton. During this event we will discuss, Ashton's role in the Iran Deal, leaning in on a global scale and lifting as we climb.  

Baroness Ashton is a Life Peer in the House of Lords. Before joining the Lords she worked as a Director for Business in the Community, committed to Inner City Regeneration and supporting minority communities to get better employment opportunities. She was also the Vice President of the National Council for One Parent Families. She has served as a minister in the Department for Education and Skills, and subsequently in the Department for Constitutional Affairs and Ministry of Justice.  In 2005 she was voted House Magazine Minister of the Year and Channel 4 Peer of the Year.  She became the first ever Stonewall Politician of the Year for her work on equality. She was appointed Leader of the House of Lords and Lord President of the Queen's Privy Council in Gordon Brown’s first Cabinet in June 2007.  

In 2008, she was appointed as the first woman to be a British European Commissioner and became the first woman Commissioner for Trade in the European Commission. She concluded the South Korea trade deal, opened the Canada negotiations and resolved some long standing disputes with the USA. In 2009, she became the European Union's first High Representative for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy and won praise for her work as a negotiator in difficult international situations, particularly for her role in bringing Serbia and Kosovo to agreement in 2013 and in the P5+1 talks with Iran which she led for 4.5 years.

She has received numerous awards for her diplomatic work including the highest diplomat honors from the King of Jordan and most recently from Germany. Together with the PMs of Serbia and Kosovo she was nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize by both sides of the US Congress. On leaving office she was awarded the Grand Cross of St Michael and St George [GCMG] by HM The Queen. In February 2017, she received the Presidential Medal from Kosovo. She is a Woodrow Wilson Scholar and a member of the Global Leadership Foundation. She has just been appointed the first woman Chancellor Warwick University in the UK.  

For additional information and questions, do not hesitate to email Elizabeth-Burton Jones (ebj@mail.house.gov).