Join the International Student House of Washington, DC (I-House DC), for a special presentation by Tom Selinger, Century of Service Project Director at the Association for Diplomatic Studies and Training (ADST), to commemorate the centennial of the U.S. Foreign Service. Sponsored by the Una Chapman Cox Foundation, the event will highlight the remarkable accomplishments of the U.S. Foreign Service over the past century. The event will also offer attendees the opportunity to view ADST’s mobile exhibit titled “History of U.S. Diplomacy.” The exhibit covers the role diplomacy has played in American history from Independence to the present.

Doors and exhibit will open at 6:00 PM.  The program will start at 6:30 PM.
Reception to follow.

About the Speaker

Tom Selinger, Century of Service Project Director

Tom Selinger is a twenty-five-year veteran of the Foreign Service, most recently serving as director of the Office for European and Eurasian Affairs in the Bureau for Democracy, Human Rights, and Labor. In coordination with like-minded European governments, he and his team addressed such challenges as human rights abuses and democratic backsliding. His most recent tour overseas was as chief of the Political and Economic Section at the U.S. Embassy in Kyrgyzstan, where he led efforts to normalize bilateral relations with Central Asia’s teetering lone democracy.

Tom’s other overseas assignments included tours in Denmark, Croatia, Albania, and Trinidad and Tobago, with portfolios covering issues ranging from Arctic policy and security cooperation to NATO integration and war crimes prosecutions. In previous Washington assignments he has served as senior advisor at the Center for the Study of the Conduct of Diplomacy at the Foreign Service Institute, desk officer for Norway and Sweden, and Rusk Fellow at Georgetown University’s Institute for the Study of Diplomacy.

Prior to joining the Foreign Service, Tom served as an intelligence officer in the U.S. Army and worked as a locally employed political officer at the Canadian Consulate General in Minnesota. He speaks French, German, Croatian, Danish, and Russian with varying degrees of proficiency and holds a B.A. in Journalism from Drake University. He and his wife, fellow Foreign Service officer Kirsten Selinger, have four children.

About the Association for Diplomatic Studies and Training (ADST)

Founded in 1986, ADST is a nonprofit, nonpartisan organization that has conducted and posted over 2,500 transcripts of oral history interviews of former diplomats on its website – the world’s largest diplomatic oral history collection.  ADST’s collection is a unique and priceless historical record of post-World War II U.S. diplomacy, praised by scholars, educators, and diplomatic practitioners alike.