Catalin Macarie is Associate Professor of Management and Director of Freshmen Experience at Carl H. Lindner College of Business, University of Cincinnati (UC). He joined the higher academics ranks coming from 25 years span as a successful leader and operational manager in the corporate world with demonstrated achievements in executive leadership & management, marketing & creative services, business development, customer relations and large projects administration. During his prior tenure working on three continents (Europe, North America and Asia) with several renown national and international companies, Catalin successfully directed business turn-around marketing, creative and business development efforts, complex Web systems implementations and deployment, and profit improvement/cost reduction programs.

Catalin is the immediate past Chairman of the Midwest USA Chinese Chamber of Commerce, former faculty advisor for UC’s Alpha Kappa Psi Student Business Organization and PandaCats International Student Organization and is part of the strategic advisory team for UC’s International Programs and Department.

Steve Driehaus is a Senior Consultant for the National Democratic Institute (NDI) where he has worked on democracy building and legislative strengthening in a number of countries including Liberia, Armenia and Iraq. He served as the Resident Senior Director for NDI in Iraq and as Country Director for the United States Peace Corps in both Swaziland (Eswatini) and Morocco.

Steve represented the people of Cincinnati as an elected official for ten years; first as a State Representative for Cincinnati’s west side neighborhoods and then as a Member of Congress, representing Ohio’s first district. He earned a Master’s degree in Public Affairs (MPA) from Indiana University, where he concentrated in Comparative International Affairs, and a Bachelor’s degree in Political Science and Diplomacy and Foreign Affairs from Miami University. After college, Steve spent two years serving as a Peace Corps Volunteer in Senegal.

The Honorable Tyrone K. Yates is a Judge of the Hamilton County Municipal Court, Cincinnati, Ohio. Yates is a former Member of the Ohio House of Representatives and a former Member of Cincinnati City Council where he served as Vice-Mayor of Cincinnati. He is a Board member of the Immigrant and Refugee Law Center and an Advisory Board  Member of Soteni International whose work is done in rural Western Kenya. 

He has a long term interest in international relations and American Foreign Policy. Locally, he chaired the Executive Committee on Divestment during the Apartheid years of South Africa from 1985 to 1990 and is currently a Member of the WCET Community Advisory Board and Senior Warden of St. Andrew's Episcopal  Church.

Yates earned a B.A. in History from the University of Cincinnati and a J.D. from the University of Toledo College of Law with additional studies at Harvard Law School, the Harvard Kennedy School of Government, Berkeley Law School and the University of Pennsylvania Law School.

He is a Member of the American Historical Association and is working on a book on the Kennedy Administration.

Joe Dehner is an attorney at Frost Brown Todd, where he led the firm’s international practice for more than 30 years. He’s involved in many international civic and international organizations and was founding chairman of the Foreign Policy Leadership Council. An honors graduate of Princeton University and the Harvard Law School, he has lectured, consulted and done business in 80 countries.

Peter Williams has been a principle of Osborn, Williams & Donohoe, LLC since 1977. He has participated in numerous financial industry trade organizations as a member and officer and participated in founding the President's Council of the Association of Investment Management and Research, and has served as a director and officer of public and private corporations. Following a Bachelor of Science in Industrial Management from Purdue University he has earned additional professional credentials from the University of Chicago, Princeton, Northwestern University, and Harvard.

James P. Buchanan is University Professor and Executive Director of the Edward B. Brueggeman Center for Dialogue at Xavier University. Prior to founding the Brueggeman Center in 2003, he held the Besl Family Chair in Ethics/Religion and Society at Xavier, the Carolyn Werner Gannett Chair in Humanities at the Rochester Institute of Technology, The Endowment for the Humanities Chair in Ethics at Hamilton College and was professor and part of the founding committee for the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology. He studied at Yale and has a PhD from the University of Chicago. He lived in China for 8 years. The Brueggeman Center Research Fellows have done work in 64 different countries.

Deborah E. Schultz is a change agent and President of Trans-Borders Solutions, a global consulting firm specializing in the development of never-done-before/new-to-market global projects in both private and non-profit sectors., most recently in South Africa, Indonesia and Turkey. Early in her career, she founded Middfest International while working in the City Manager’s Office in Middletown, Ohio, and she continues to serve as a consultant to the forty-year old non-profit. Through innovative programs working directly with foreign country leaders in a different country each year as well as regional immigrants, Middfest International has brought the world to millions of U.S. citizens through the in-depth lenses of trade, diplomacy, the humanities, foreign guest home-stays, sports, arts and more.

Ms. Schultz is a Phi Beta Kappa graduate of Miami University with an M.A. in Public and International Relations from The Elliot School at George Washington University and an M.P.A. from the University of Kansas, Stene Graduate School of Public Administration.

Currently she is on the Advisory Committee of the World Affairs Council of Cincinnati & Northern Kentucky , the Ohio Committee for the U.S. Global Leadership Council in D.C. and the World Affairs Committee of the Cincinnati Rotary Club . In Rotary she is a key partner in developing an on-going six-year-old program which has installed solar lighting in twenty-seven schools, two medical clinics, and solar powered pumps in three new wells. Ms. Schultz has been honored by the Ohio Humanities Council (Bjornson Award), the International Trade Division of the State of Ohio, and the South African American Organization as a “Woman Who Changes Lives” among other awards. Her work with FPLC includes bringing distinguished international speakers to SW Ohio audiences.