Patrick Mendis

Patrick Mendis is an educator, diplomat, author, and executive in government service. He taught MBA/MPA as well as international trade and American foreign policy courses at the University of Minnesota, University of Maryland University College, and Yale University before joining the U.S. Department of State, where he served under Secretary Madeleine Albright and General Colin Powell. For his leadership, Mendis was honored with the State Department's Meritorious Honor Award and the Benjamin Franklin Award. Secretary Hillary Clinton has appointed Professor Mendis as a commissioner to the U.S. National Commission for UNESCO.

Previously, Mendis worked at the Minnesota House of Representatives, the U.S. Senate Foreign Relations Committee, the World Bank, and the United Nations. Dr. Mendis is currently a distinguished senior fellow in the graduate School of Public Policy (SPP) as well as an affiliate professor of public and international affairs (PIA) and an adjunct professor of geography and geoinformation science (GGS) at George Mason University. He is a fellow of the World Academy of Art and Science.

Mendis has authored more than 100 journal articles, government reports, newspaper columns, and several books, including most recently, Commercial Providence: The Secret Destiny of the American Empire (2010) as well as TRADE for PEACE: How the DNA of America, Freemasonry, and Providence Created a New World Order with Nobody in Charge (2009). Professor Stephen Joel Trachtenberg, president emeritus of the George Washington University and Professor J. Brian Atwood, dean of the University of Minnesota's Hubert H. Humphrey School of Public Affairs respectively wrote the forewords for these two internationally acclaimed books.

After his government service in the U.S. Departments of Agriculture, Defense, Energy and State, Mendis returned to academia. He served as the vice president of the Osgood Center for International Studies and as a foreign policy visiting scholar at the Johns Hopkins University's Paul H. Nitze School of Advanced International Studies (SAIS) in Washington, D.C. An adjunct professor of international diplomacy at Norwich University, Mendis is an alumnus of Harvard University's John F. Kennedy School of Government and the University of Minnesota's Hubert H. Humphrey School of Public Affairs. Since 2010, he has been elected to serve on the board of the Harvard Kennedy School (HKS) Alumni DC Council in Washington. He also serves on the Advisory Board of the Harvard International Review.