About the Speaker

Colleen Crenwelge is the principal deputy assistant secretary for the Bureau of Conflict and Stabilization Operations. She previously served in Mogadishu, Somalia, arriving in September 2020 to serve as the U.S. Embassy’s deputy chief of mission and serving as chargé d’affaires, ad interim from July 2021 to January 2022. Prior to arriving in Somalia, Colleen directed the Office of Global Social Media in the Bureau of Global Public Affairs.

Other assignments include tours as the principal officer in Lahore, Pakistan, and as the deputy public affairs officer in Kabul, Afghanistan, where she served previously as the deputy chief of staff. Colleen also served as the political chief and acting public affairs officer in Ulaanbaatar, Mongolia, and as the political chief in Baku, Azerbaijan. Earlier, she served as a political officer at the U.S. Mission to the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe and as a watch officer in the State Department’s Operations Center. She was also posted to La Paz, Bolivia, and Lagos, Nigeria.

A Texas native, Colleen joined the Foreign Service in 2003 and has a bachelor’s degree in economics and political science from Texas A&M University.

About the Moderator

Dr. Katrina Lantos Swett serves as President of the Lantos Foundation for Human Rights and Justice, established in 2008 to continue the legacy of her father, the late Congressman Tom Lantos, who served as Chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee and was the only Holocaust survivor ever elected to the US Congress.

Congressman Lantos was the founder of the Congressional Human Rights Caucus and was widely acknowledged as one of our nation’s most eloquent and forceful leaders on behalf of human rights and justice.

Under her leadership, the Lantos Foundation has become a distinguished and respected voice on key human rights concerns ranging form advancing rule of law globally and fighting for Internet freedom in closed societies, to combating the persistent and growing threat of antisemitism and Holocaust denial.

Dr. Lantos Swett is the former Chair and Vice Chair of the United States Commission on International Religious Freedom (USCIRF) and teaches Human Rights and American Foreign Policy at Tufts University. She currently serves as Co-Chair of the Board of the Committee for Human Rights in North Korea (HRNK) and the Budapest based Tom Lantos Institute. Dr. Lantos Swett also serves on the Advisory Board of UN Watch, the annual Anne Frank Award and Lecture, and the Warren B. Rudman Center for Justice, Leadership and Public Policy. She serves as Co-Chair of the International Religious Freedom Summit, which held its inaugural gathering in 2021.