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Ambassador Josette Sheeran Shiner has served since August 2005 as Under Secretary for Economic, Business, and Agricultural Affairs for the United States Department of State, responsible for spearheading the Administration’s economic diplomacy efforts through global policies spanning trade, investment, finance, development, energy, telecommunications, and transportation. In November, 2006, she was chosen to be head of the food aid branch of the United Nations, the World Food Program.

World Food Program

Josette Sheeran replaced American James T. Morris on November 6, 2006 for a five-year term as head of the world's largest humanitarian agency the World Food Program.

"WFP has the unique mission of making sure that no child goes to bed hungry any night, and while WFP has made huge contributions to saving lives there's more to be done," Sheeran said.

"According to the U.N., 25,000 people a day die from hunger-related issues," she told the Associated Press in a telephone interview. "So my first focus will be to make sure that we have the resources and capability to meet the emergency needs."

U.S. Ambassador John Bolton, who was told of the decision and jumped the gun on the official announcement, said the United States was very pleased and called Sheeran "extraordinarily well-qualified."

Founded in 1962, WFP provides food aid to an average of 90 million poor people, including 58 million hungry children in at least 80 of the world's poorest countries. The United States said it provides nearly half of the annual contributions to the Rome-based agency, which has an annual budget of just under $3 billion.

Sheeran said WFP must be part of a global strategy to meet the U.N. Millennium Development Goal of cutting extreme poverty by half by 2015. She said she will also ensure WFP addresses "chronic hunger in the villages and nations where it comes up every year."

Professional experience: government sector

Under Secretary

Under Secretary Sheeran Shiner serves as the Foreign Affairs Sous-Sherpa on behalf of the President of the United States at the Group of Eight (G8) Summit. She heads a host of high-level bilateral or multilateral economic dialogues with the European Union China, India, Japan, Iraq, Afghanistan, and many others. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice has designated Under Secretary Sheeran Shiner to lead new State Department's initiatives in supporting Central Asia’s and Afghanistan's economic transformation and reconstruction. She has been named by UN Secretary General Kofi Annan along with Prime Ministers Luisa Dias Diogo, Prime Minister of Mozambique; Jens Stoltenberg, Prime Minister of Norway; and Shaukat Aziz, Prime Minister of Pakistan to the High Level Panel on System-Wide Coherence. The panel is developing strategies and recommendations for greater management coherence and effectiveness in UN efforts in the areas of the environment, development and humanitarian assistance.

She represents the United States at a wide variety of high-level bilateral and multilateral meetings including serving as Alternative Governor for the World Bank; the Inter-American Development Bank; the African Development Bank; the Asian Development Bank; and the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development. Congress also confirms her as a Member of the Board of Directors for the Overseas Private Investment Corporation.

Deputy United States Trade Representative

Prior to her appointment, Under Secretary Sheeran Shiner served as Deputy United States Trade Representative in the Office of the U.S. Trade Representative (USTR). There, she was responsible for trade negotiations and treaties in Asia and Africa, driving U.S. efforts to open new markets and enforce existing trade agreements in China, East Asia, South Asia and Africa and for advancing global negotiations on counterfeiting, pharmaceuticals, labor, environment and trade capacity building. One of her legacy projects was fighting global counterfeiting, creating STOP – Strategy Targeting Organized Piracy’ and the protection of Intellectual Property. She helped bring to a successful conclusion the landmark U.S.-Australia Free Trade Agreement (FTA), which is expected to increase U.S. exports to Australia by $2 billion a year. She also led trade enforcement negotiations with China and furthered U.S. trade and investment interests in direct talks with Japan, Korea, India and many other nations.

Professional experience: private sector

Management

Before joining USTR, Under Secretary Sheeran Shiner was managing director of Starpoint Solutions, a leading Wall Street technology firm that works with Fortune 500 clients. During her tenure at Starpoint she led major strategic projects with corporate leaders such as Bank of America, Citibank and the Associated Press. Under Secretary Sheeran Shiner also served as President and Chief Executive Officer of Empower America, where she developed its agenda of trade policy, technology policy, education reform and tax reform.

Washington Times

During her tenure until 1997 as managing editor of the Washington Times, she was a regular commentator on programs such as Nightline, Fox news, the McLaughlin Group, The Diane Rehm Show, CNN and others. Under Secretary Sheeran Shiner also wrote a nationally syndicated column for Scripps Howard News Service on a wide range of issues including foreign and national policy issues. Her extensive network of contacts and reputation for fairness and accuracy helped her land interviews with more than a dozen heads of state in Europe, Asia, Latin America and the United States. She has twice served as a Pulitzer prize juror, including for foreign reporting.

Associations

Shiner has been a member of the Council on Foreign Relations for more than a decade and has served on its Washington advisory board. In 1997, Washingtonian magazine named Ms. Shiner as one of Washington's 100 Most Powerful Women. She has served on a number of boards, including the Washington Urban League and the United Negro College Fund's Washington advisory board. She has received numerous awards, including the Press Award for Journalistic Achievement by the National Order of Women Legislators and a national award for developing and promoting African-American journalists. President George Bush appointed Ms. Shiner to the President's Task Force on Puerto Rico's Status.

Religious affiliations

Episcopalian Church 1997-Present

Ambassador Shiner is an Episcopalian.

Unification Church until 1997

Shiner's former membership in the Unification Church was raised in an Associated Press interview, where she explained that she had "no association with the Unification Church since I left the Washington Times in 1997."

In a recent article about Shiner's appointment to the World Food Program in The Washington Post, the newspaper reported that it was pressured by the George W. Bush Administration not to write about Shiner's former ties to the Unification Church:

The Bush administration was sensitive to the possibility that Sheeran's former membership in the Rev. Sun Myung Moon's Unification Church would emerge as an issue in the race. A U.S. official pressed The Washington Post not to mention Sheeran's past links to the church, saying it was inappropriate to describe her religious affiliation. Sheeran said of her candidacy, "I don't know why personal faith has any relation or bearing," adding: "It is a matter of record that I have no association with the Unification Church."

The Guardian went into Shiner's past ties to the Unification Church in more detail, though it inexplicably used a pejorative epithet considered bigoted by the church.

Note

This article was originally taken from Shiner's official biography on the Department of State website.

References

1. WFP welcomes appointment of Josette Sheeran as Executive Director
2. Pisik, B. "Sheeran, former Washington Times editor, will lead U.N. Food Program." Washington Times National Weekly Edition. November 13, 2006: 24.
3. U.S. envoy to head World Food Program, Associated Press, November 7, 2006, Edith M. Lederer.

   Formerly known by her married name of Josette Shiner, she spent 15 years at the Washington Times founded by Rev. Sun Myung Moon, including as managing editor. She joined Moon's Unification Church in the 1970s, but has said she later became an Episcopalian. Dujarric was asked whether Sheeran's past membership in the Unification Church came up during her interview for the job. "People's religious affiliation is their own," he said. "People are not judged on their religious affiliation.

4. State Department Official Picked to Run U.N. Food Program, The Washington Post, November 8, 2006; Page A13, Colum Lynch
5. UN to appoint former Moonie as head of World Food Programme, The Guardian, November 6, 2006

   Kofi Annan will this week put a former leading “Moonie” in charge of the UN’s biggest humanitarian aid agency after vigorous lobbying by the Bush administration.

   Josette Sheeran is to be appointed executive director of the UN World Food Programme (WFP), according to diplomatic and UN sources.

   Ms Sheeran, also known by her married name Shiner, was a member of the Rev Sun Myung Moon’s Unification Church for more than 20 years. She became one of its most influential figures as managing editor of the Washington Times newspaper, which was founded by Mr Moon. ...Ms Sheeran joined the Moonies as a young woman. She married another member of the Unification Church, Whitney Shiner, who trained at its Theological Seminary. They are now divorced and Mr Shiner, a Washington professor, has also left the group. In 2001, she entered the US administration as an associate trade representative.

Externals links

• Official State Department biography for Under Secretary Shiner
• Official Remarks and Press Releases
• State Department Official Picked to Run U.N. Food Program, The Washington Post, November 8, 2006; Page A13, Colum Lynch
• Sheeran will lead U.N. food program - Washington Times
• U.S. envoy to head World Food Program - AP
• UN to appoint former Moonie as head of World Food Programme, The Guardian, November 6, 2006
• Apparent pressure from US costs Fust UN job, swissinfo.org, November 8, 2006

• 1954 births
• Ambassadors of the United States
• Former Unificationists