Derek Chollet
Posted by The Editors
Derek Chollet is a fellow in the CSIS International Security Program where he works on a variety of issues related to U.S. foreign policy and national security strategy. Prior to joining CSIS, he was foreign policy adviser to Senator John Edwards (D-N.C.), both on his legislative staff and during the 2004 Kerry/Edwards presidential campaign. Earlier, during the Clinton administration, he served in the U.S. State Department in several capacities, including chief speechwriter for Richard Holbrooke, then-U.S. ambassador to the United Nations; special adviser to Strobe Talbott, then-deputy secretary of state; and adviser in the Bureau of Public Affairs. He has also assisted former secretaries of state James A. Baker III and Warren Christopher with the research and writing of their memoirs, Holbrooke with his book on the Dayton peace process in Bosnia, and Talbott with his book on U.S.-Russian relations during the 1990s. He has been a fellow at the American Academy in Berlin and a visiting scholar at the George Washington University. Educated at Cornell and Columbia Universities, he is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations. His own commentaries and reviews on U.S. foreign policy and politics have appeared in numerous books and publications throughout the United States and Europe.
Suzanne Nossel is a Senior Fellow at the Security and Peace Institute. She served as Deputy to the Ambassador for UN Management and Reform at the US Mission to the United Nations from 1999 – 2001 under Ambassador Richard C. Holbrooke. There she represented the U.S. in the UN’s General Assembly negotiating a deal to settle the U.S.’s arrears to the world body. Prior to that Suzanne served as a Consultant at McKinsey & Company and as a staff attorney at Children’s Rights Inc. During the early 1990s Suzanne worked in Johannesburg, South Africa on the implementation of South Africa’s National Peace Accord, a multi-party agreement aimed at curbing political violence during that country’s transition to democracy. Ms. Nossel has done election monitoring and human rights documentation in Bosnia and Kosovo. She is also the author of Presumed Equal: What America’s Top Women Lawyers Really Think About Their Firms (Career Press, 1998). She writes frequently on foreign policy topics, and a list of her articles appears below. Ms. Nossel is currently an executive in New York City, where she lives with her husband David Greenberg and her son Leo. 
Michael Signer is an attorney who lives and works in Virginia. He is a Principal of the Truman National Security Project and was formerly with the Washington office of Wilmer Cutler Pickering Hale & Dorr. He was the Democratic National Committee's voter assistance coordinator for Virginia during the Kerry campaign, and worked on the Wesley Clark for President campaign in Little Rock, Arkansas before becoming that campaign's Virginia State Director. He has worked as an Associate Producer for MSNBC and is the author of the "Law" section of The New York Times Guide to Essential Knowledge. He holds a Ph.D. in Political Science from the University of California at Berkeley, where he was a National Science Foundation Research Fellow, and a J.D. from the University of Virginia. He graduated magna cum laude from Princeton University.
Lorelei is a Senior Associate at the Henry L. Stimson Center, a non-partisan think tank in Washington that specializes in peace and security issues. She also has several years of experience on Capitol Hill, where she has worked in the offices of Representative Elizabeth Furse (OR, ret.) and Representative Lynn Woolsey (CA).