Mark Stroh, spokesman and press officer at the U.S. Embassy in Islamabad, Pakistan, will present “Practicing Public Diplomacy Amid Contested Nation Building: Insights from Pakistan and Afghanistan” on Monday, Nov. 28, at 7 p.m. in the Austin Reading Room, Nicholson Library at Linfield College.
The lecture, sponsored by Linfield’s International Relations major and the Dean’s Office, will wrap up a day-long visit to campus.
Stroh arrived in Islamabad in September 2011 after serving two years in the Department of State’s Executive Secretariat, where he worked as a special assistant for Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton. In two years, Stroh travelled to 35 countries in support of the secretary’s overseas engagements, including her participation in the Copenhagen, Denmark, COP-15 Climate Change Conference in December 2009 with President Barack Obama; her travel to Prague, Czech Republic, with President Obama to sign the New START agreement with Russia; her hosting in Sharm el Sheikh, Egypt, of trilateral talks between the United States, Israel and the Palestinian Authority; and her participation with President Obama in the 2010 NATO Summit in Lisbon, Portugal.
Stroh joined the Foreign Service in 2003 and has served in Kuwait City, Kuwait; Basrah and al-Hillah, Iraq; Riyadh, Saudi Arabia; and Kabul, Afghanistan, where he served as embassy spokesman and press officer from August 2007 to July 2009. While in Kabul, Stroh created exchange programs bringing European journalists to Afghanistan and sending Afghan officials to Europe which remain key to Embassy public diplomacy programs.
Before joining the Foreign Service, Stroh worked for several years as a newspaper reporter in Richmond, Va., and at the Philadelphia Inquirer. He graduated from Randolph-Macon College in 1994 with a bachelor’s in history and political science and earned his master’s from the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism in 2000.
During Stroh’s visit to Linfield, he will also speak with students about the current trends of US-Pak relations and his work with Secretary Clinton.
The event is free and open to the public. For more information, contact Patrick Cottrell, assistant professor of political science, at pcottre@linfield.edu.
