2022 World Affairs Council of the Year
Network of Independent World Affairs Councils of America
Today’s Topics:
1 – Covid News – World Health Assembly
2 – China – Belt and Road Trip
3 – Global Energy – Cheap Oil and the Outlook
4 – Afghanistan – Peace and Covid
5 – International Criminal Court in America’s Crosshairs
Your Hosts:
LCDR Patrick Ryan, USN (Ret), President, Tennessee World Affairs Council
Patrick Ryan is a native of New York City. He enlisted in the Navy at age 17 and volunteered for submarine duty. He served aboard nuclear fast attack and ballistic missile boats during the Cold War, rising to the rank of Chief Petty Officer. In 1982 he was commissioned and served aboard a cruiser in the Western Pacific before becoming a Navy Intelligence Officer. Ryan served aboard the carrier Constellation in the Pacific, the Joint Staff Intelligence Directorate in the Pentagon, the Center for Naval Analysis, and the Intelligence Directorate of U.S. Central Command. Ryan retired from the Navy in 1998 and worked as a consultant on Intelligence Community projects and as the VP/COO of the National Council on U.S.-Arab Relations. Ryan ran a newsletter publishing business on international affairs from 1999-2016. He founded the Tennessee World Affairs Council in 2007.
Colleen Elizabeth Ryan
Colleen Ryan is a JD candidate at Belmont University School of Law. Raised in Middle Tennessee, she attended the University of Tennessee, Knoxville, where she received a BA in Global Studies and Sociology Honors in the Haslam Scholars Program. A participant in the Baker Scholars Program of the Howard H. Baker Jr. Public Policy Center, Colleen wrote an honors thesis on prison reform policy in Uganda’s post-conflict transition, and she was the 2017 Outstanding Graduate in the global studies program. During college, she studied abroad in Uganda, the United Kingdom, and Costa Rica, interned with the US Agency for International Development (USAID), and served in numerous campus-wide roles promoting research and study abroad to fellow students.
In 2018, Colleen earned an MA in Post-war Recovery Studies from the University of York on a Fulbright postgraduate grant, during which time she took coursework in conflict transformation and humanitarian response, conducted fieldwork on peacebuilding and social change in Kosovo, and served as a cultural ambassador for the United States in northern England. At York, she completed her dissertation on Chinese engagement in peacebuilding processes in the Global South in preparation for spending a year as a Schwarzman Scholar at Tsinghua University in Beijing, China. There, she completed an MA in Global Affairs, worked in research and programming at the Carnegie-Tsinghua Center for Global Policy, and wrote her capstone paper on the evolution of Chinese foreign policy regarding humanitarian intervention.
In addition to study, research and work abroad, Colleen has had the opportunity for extensive leisure travel across North America, Europe, East Asia, and sub-Saharan Africa. Committed to the belief that every person should be globally engaged, she has volunteered with the Tennessee World Affairs Council since its inception in 2007 and enjoys contributing to TNWAC’s work making educational programming and resources about global affairs available to all Tennesseans.