Patrick Mendis - Government and Military Service

Government and Military Service

After becoming a naturalized United States citizen, Mendis served as a military professor through the University of Maryland University College. He taught MBA/MPA and International Relations courses to American military forces in the NATO and Pacific Commands of the U.S. Department of Defense (in Germany, Italy, Japan, South Korea, Spain, Turkey, and the United Kingdom). For his service to Pentagon, Mendis received UMUC’s Stanley J. Drazek Teaching Excellence Award.

Mendis joined the U.S. Department of State in 2000 as a foreign affairs officer to serve under Secretary Madeleine Albright. Under her direction, he served as the chairman of the U.S. Government Inter-agency Policy Working Group on Sustainable Development and the science & technology coordinator for the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP) under President Bill Clinton. When Secretary Colin Powell came to the State Department, Mendis was appointed as the secretariat director of the Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs (former U.S. Information Agency) and a special assistant to the Assistant Secretary of State for ECA under President George W. Bush. Mendis was also elected by both State and USAID civilian and foreign service employees to serve as the vice chairman of Secretary Colin Powell’s Open Forum.

Later, Mendis was invited to participate as a consultant and economist in a multi-year science and national security project, headed by Ambassador Ronald Lehman, the Director of the Center for Global Security Research at the U.S. Department of Energy's Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory. Ambassador Lehman and Professor Mendis worked on a number of national security projects, including one involving the late Sir Arthur C. Clarke, the science-fiction writer, who lived in Sri Lanka. Sri Clarke, a fellow of the World Academy of Art and Science, wrote the foreword for Mendis' book on Glocalization.

To transform the U.S. Government national security decision-making process in the 21st century, Patrick Mendis authored (with Leah Green) the U.S.-India Civil Nuclear Agreement case study for the Project on National Security Reform, a nonpartisan non-profit organization mandated by the United States Congress to recommend improvements to the U.S. national security system.

Mendis also served as an Uhuru ‘Freedom’ Fellow at the International Republican Institute (IRI) and the governing board of the USDA Graduate School, an appointment by the U.S. Secretary of Agriculture and the White House. He serves on the editorial board of The Public Manager.