Other Speakers

General Peter J. Schoomaker

General Peter J. Schoomaker became the 35th Chief of Staff, United States Army, on August 1, 2003.

Prior to his current assignment, Schoomaker spent 31 years in a variety of command and staff assignments with both conventional and special operations forces. He participated in numerous deployment operations, including Desert One in Iran, Urgent Fury in Grenada, Just Cause in Panama, Desert Shield/Desert Storm in Southwest Asia, and Uphold Democracy in Haiti. He has supported various worldwide joint contingency operations, including those in the Balkans.

Early in his career, Schoomaker was a reconnaissance platoon leader and rifle company commander with the 2nd Battalion, 4th Infantry Division; a cavalry troop commander with the 2nd Armored Cavalry Regiment in Germany; and the S-3 operations officer of the 1st Battalion, 73rd Armor, 2nd Infantry Division, in Korea. From 1978 to 1981, he commanded a squadron in the 1st Special Forces Operational Detachment-D. Schoomaker then served as the squadron executive officer of the 2nd Squadron, 2nd Armored Cavalry Regiment, in Germany. In 1983, he returned to Fort Bragg, North Carolina, to serve as special operations officer, J-3, Joint Special Operations Command. From 1985 to 1988, Schoomaker commanded another squadron in the 1st Special Forces Operational Detachment-D. He returned as the commander, 1st Special Forces Operational Detachment-D, from 1989 to 1992. Subsequently, he served as the assistant division commander of the 1st Cavalry Division, Fort Hood, Texas, followed by a tour in the headquarters staff of the Department of the Army as the deputy director for operations, readiness, and mobilization.

Schoomaker served as the commanding general of the Joint Special Operations Command from 1994 to 1996. The following year, he commanded the United States Army Special Operations Command at Fort Bragg, North Carolina. His most recent assignment prior to assuming duties as the Army chief of staff was as commander of the United States Special Operations Command at MacDill Air Force Base, Florida, from 1997 through 2000.

Schoomaker’s awards and decorations include the Defense Distinguished Service Medal, two Army Distinguished Service Medals, four Defense Superior Service Medals, three Legions of Merit, two Bronze Star Medals, two Defense Meritorious Service Medals, three Meritorious Service Medals, Joint Service Commendation Medal, Joint Service Achievement Medal, Combat Infantryman Badge, Master Parachutist Badge and HALO Wings, the Special Forces Tab, and the Ranger Tab.

Schoomaker received a bachelor’s degree from the University of Wyoming and a master’s degree in management from Central Michigan University. His military education includes the Marine Corps Amphibious Warfare School, the U.S. Army Command and General Staff College, the National War College, and the John F. Kennedy School of Government Program for Senior Executives in National and International Security Management.

General Richard Cody

Vice Chief of Staff, United States Army

General Richard A. Cody became the 31st vice chief of staff of the United States Army on June 24, 2004.

Cody was commissioned a second lieutenant upon graduation from the United States Military Academy. His military education includes completion of the Transportation Corps officer basic and advanced courses, the aviation maintenance officer course, numerous aircraft qualification courses, the Command and General Staff College, and the United States Army War College. General Cody is a master aviator with more than 5,000 hours of flight time.

Prior to his current assignment, he spent 32 years in a variety of command and staff assignments, most recently serving as deputy chief of staff, G-3, United States Army. Other key assignments include commanding general, 101st Airborne Division (Air Assault) and Fort Campbell; director, Operations, Readiness and Mobilization, Office of the Deputy Chief of Staff for Operations and Plans, headquarters, Department of the Army; deputy commanding general, Task Force Hawk, Tirana, Albania; assistant division commander for maneuver, 4th Infantry Division, Fort Hood, Texas; commander, 160th Special Operations Aviation Regiment, Fort Campbell, Kentucky; commander, 4th Brigade, 1st Cavalry Division; aide-de-camp to the commanding general, Combined Field Army, Korea; and director of the Flight Concepts Division.

General Cody has received numerous awards and decorations throughout his military career, including the Distinguished Service Medal, Defense Superior Service Medal, the Legion of Merit (with four Oak Leaf Clusters), the Distinguished Flying Cross, the Bronze Star Medal, the Meritorious Service Medal (with four Oak Leaf Clusters), the Air Medal (with numeral device “3”), the Army Commendation Medal (with two Oak Leaf Clusters), the Army Achievement Medal, the Southwest Asia Service Medal (two battle stars), the Humanitarian Service Medal, the NATO Medal, and the Southwest Asia Kuwait Liberation Medal.

Major General Keith W. Dayton

Director of Strategy, Plans and Policy
Office of the Deputy Chief of Staff, G-3, United States Army

Major General Keith W. Dayton began his assignment as director of strategy, plans, and policy in July 2004.

Dayton was commissioned as an artillery officer through the Reserve Officer Training Corps in 1970. Prior to his current assignment, he spent 35 years in a variety of command and staff assignments, most recently serving as the director of the Iraqi Survey Group during Operation Iraqi Freedom. Other key assignments include deputy director for Politico-Military Affairs, Joint Staff; United States Defense Attaché, Moscow, Russia; senior Army fellow on the Council on Foreign Relations, New York; commander, Division Artillery, 3rd Infantry Division (Mechanized), Germany; and commander, 4th Battalion, 29th Field Artillery; 8th Infantry Division (Mechanized), Germany.

Dayton received a BS in history from the College of William and Mary; an MA in history from Cambridge University, and an MA international relations from the University of Southern California. He studied Russian at the Defense Language Institute and was a student of the Soviet Union Foreign Area Officer Overseas Training Program, the United States Army Command and General Staff College, and the Senior service College Fellowship at Harvard University.

Major General Dayton has received numerous awards and decorations throughout his military career, including the Defense Distinguished Service Medal (with two Oak Leaf Clusters), the Defense Superior Service Medal, the Legion of Merit (with Oak Leaf Cluster), the Meritorious Service Medal, and the Army Commendation Medal.

Susan Eisenhower

Senior Fellow and Chairman Emeritus, The Eisenhower Institute

Susan Eisenhower is president of the Eisenhower Group, Inc., which provides strategic counsel on political, business, and public affairs projects. She is a senior director of Stonebridge International, a Washington-based international consulting firm chaired by former national security advisor Samuel “Sandy” Berger. She is a distinguished fellow of The Eisenhower Institute, where she has served as both president and chairman.

After more than 20 years in the foreign affairs field, Eisenhower is best known for her work in Russia and the former Soviet Union. She has testified before the Senate Armed Services and Senate Budget Committees on policy toward that region. She is serving her fourth term on the National Academy of Sciences’ Committee on International Security and Arms Control. In 2000, a year before September 11, she coedited a book, Islam and Central Asia, which carried the prescient subtitle, An Enduring Legacy or an Evolving Threat?

In 2000, the secretary of energy appointed Eisenhower to a blue ribbon task force, the Baker-Cutler Commission, to evaluate U.S.-funded nuclear nonproliferation programs in Russia, and since that time she has served as an advisor on another Department of Energy study. In 2001, after serving two terms on the National Aeronautics and Space Administration Advisory Council, she was appointed to the International Space Station (ISS) Management and Cost Evaluation Task Force, which analyzed ISS management and cost overruns. Eisenhower is currently a member of the secretary of energy’s Task Force on Nuclear Energy. She has served as an academic fellow of the International Peace and Security program of Carnegie Corporation of New York, and she is a director of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace and the Nuclear Threat Initiative, co-chaired by Senators Sam Nunn and Ted Turner.

Within the last 10 years, Eisenhower has written three books; two of which, Breaking Free and Mrs. Ike, have appeared on regional best seller lists. She has also edited four collected volumes on regional security issues—most recently Partners in Space (2004). Her hundreds of op-eds and articles on foreign policy have been published in The Washington Post, the Los Angeles Times, USA Today, the Naval Institute’s Proceedings, the London Spectator, and Gannett newspapers. She has provided analysis for CNN International, MSNBC, Nightline, World News Tonight with Peter Jennings, This Week with David Brinkley, CBS Sunday Morning, Good Morning America, the News Hour with Jim Lehrer, Fox News, and Hardball, as well as National Public Radio and other nationwide television and radio programs.

Judith A. Guenther

Director, Army Budget Office

Judith A. Guenther has served on the Army Secretariat as the director of investment for the deputy assistant secretary of the U.S. Army (ASA) for budget since July 1999. She is the principal advisor to the deputy ASA for budgetary policies and issues involving Army investment resources (including procurement, research and development, military construction, and family housing).

Guenther began her federal career in 1981, working in the Army family housing program in Stuttgart, Germany. She came to the Washington, D.C., area in 1984 and has held a variety of program and budget analyst positions, both acquisition and nonacquisition related, in the Army Materiel Command, the Program Executive Office for Standard Army Management Information Systems, and the Office of the Director of Information Systems for Command, Control, Communications and Computers. She joined the Office of the Assistant Secretary of the Army (Financial Management) in 1993 as chief of the Military Personnel Division, where she was responsible for the military pay appropriation. Prior to her current assignment, she was chief of budget integration and evaluation, responsible for a variety of multiappropriation programs and processes. Before beginning her federal career, she worked in private industry as a program manager.

Guenther earned a bachelor’s degree from Washburn University; a master’s degree in public administration from George Mason University; and a master of science degree in national resource strategy from the Industrial College of the Armed Forces (ICAF). In addition to Senior Service College, she has completed the program management course at the Defense Systems Management College and the senior acquisition course at the Defense Acquisition University, ICAF. Guenther is a member of the Army Acquisition Corps, the American Society of Military Comptrollers, and the Association of the United States Army.

Chaplain (COL-P) Douglas E. Lee

Office, Chief of Chaplains
Director, Reserve Components Integration

Chaplain Douglas E. Lee currently serves as the director of the Army Chief of Chaplains Reserve Components Integration in Arlington, Virginia. He will assume the responsibilities of the Army Assistant Chief of Chaplains for Readiness and Mobilization in October 2005.

Lee received his bachelor’s degree in radio and TV production from the University of Minnesota. After graduating from the Covenant Theological Seminary in St. Louis with a master of divinity degree. After graduating from the seminary, he served as a Presbyterian pastor in three churches. He was commissioned in the Washington State Army National Guard in 1977. In 1982, he transferred to the U.S. Army Reserve. From 1977 to 1989, Lee served in various capacities as a Reserve Components chaplain.

In 1989, Lee joined the Army Active/Guard Reserve (AGR) program. In June 1998, he graduated from the Army War College at Carlisle, Pennsylvania, after which he received orders to the U.S. Army Reserve Command (USARC) as the command chaplain.

Lee’s awards include the Legion of Merit, Meritorious Service Medal (oak leaf cluster), the National Defense Service Medal, the Army Commendation Medal, the Army Achievement Medal, the Armed Forces Reserve Medal (with 20-year device), the Army Reserve Components Medal, the Army Service Ribbon, and the Air Assault Badge.

Thomas Lynch

Minister-Counselor, U.S. Foreign Service
Political Advisor to the Chief of Staff of the Army

Thomas Lynch, minister-counselor in the U.S. Foreign Service, has been serving as the political advisor to the U.S. Army chief of staff, General Peter J. Schoomaker, since July 2004. He previously was the political advisor to the Combined Forces Command-Afghanistan; to Combined Joint Task Force 76 in Bagram; to the U.S. Joint Forces Command and the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) command in Norfolk, Virginia; and to the NATO Stabilization Force in Bosnia.

After studying European history at Vassar College and Sussex University, Lynch entered the Foreign Service in December 1975. Following a year in the Department of State’s International Organizations Bureau, he learned Romanian and served two years in the U.S. Embassy in Bucharest. He covered meetings of the European Union (EU) heads of government and foreign ministers and U.S.-EU political relations for the U.S. Mission to the EU in Brussels from 1980 to 1983.

Lynch spent the rest of the 1980s and most of the 1990s working on East European and Russian affairs. He was the Department of State’s Romanian desk officer (1984–1986), chief of the Political Section in Budapest (1987–1990), and chief of the External Political Affairs Section in the U.S. Embassy in Moscow (1991–1993). He served as the Department of State’s director for Russian affairs (1994–1997) and U.S. consul general in St. Petersburg (1997–1999). Lynch also worked as a legislative assistant to the late Paul Simon, U.S. Senator from Illinois, and in the Department of State’s Legislative Affairs Bureau.

Lynch was promoted to the Senior Foreign Service in 1995 and attained the rank of minister-counselor in 2001. His awards include the Department of State’s Superior Honor Award (1989, 1997, 2001, and 2004), the U.S. Army’s Outstanding Civilian Service Award, the NATO Medal for Service in the former Yugoslavia, and the William R. Rivkin Award from the American Foreign Service Association. He speaks French, Russian, Romanian, and some Hungarian.