At this Friday Forum, the Clapham Group will premier a short film on The Role of the Faith Community and the Fight to End AIDS through PEPFAR and the Global Fund. A panel of experts will respond including:

Mark P. Lagon

Mark a practitioner and thinker on global health, human rights, and human trafficking, and global institutions. He is Chief Policy Officer at Friends of the Global Fight Against AIDS, Tuberculosis, and Malaria—where he coordinates the non-profit’s Administration and congressional outreach, policy advocacy and coalition management, and research content. He is also Senior Fellow at the Trinity Forum, and Adjunct Professor in the Masters of Science in Foreign Service (MSFS) at Georgetown University’s School.

In the NGO world, he served as President of Freedom House. Previously, he was Executive Director and CEO of the leading anti-human trafficking nonprofit, Polaris.

In academia and the think tank world, he was Global Politics and Security Chair for Georgetown’s MSFS Program. He was also the same time Adjunct Senior Fellow for Human Rights at the Council on Foreign Relations.

In the Executive Branch, he served in three successive roles at the Department of State: member of the Secretary of State's Policy Planning Staff; Deputy Assistant Secretary of International Organization Affairs; and finally Ambassador-at-Large directing the Office to Monitor and Combat Trafficking in Persons.

Earlier on Capitol Hill, he was senior staffer at the Senate Foreign Relations Committee responsible for international organizations and human rights; and served as deputy director at the House Republican Policy Committee.

He is co-editor with Anthony Clark Arend of the 2014 book, Human Dignity and the Future of Global Institutions and author of the book, The Reagan Doctrine: Sources of American Conduct in the Cold War's Last Chapter.

He received his Ph.D. in Government from Georgetown University, and A.B. from Harvard University.

Jenny Yang

Jenny Yang provides oversight for all advocacy initiatives and policy positions at World Relief. She has worked in the Resettlement section of World Relief as the senior case manager and East Asia program officer, where she focused on advocacy for refugees in the East Asia region and managed the entire refugee caseload for World Relief. Prior to joining World Relief, she worked at one of the largest political fundraising firms in Maryland, managing fundraising and campaigning for local politicians. She is co-author of Welcoming the Stranger: Justice, Compassion and Truth in the Immigration Debate, serves as Chair of the Refugee Council USA (RCUSA) Africa Work Group, and was named one of the 50 Women to Watch by Christianity Today.

Tom Hart

Tom Hart is the US Executive Director of ONE, and is responsible for ONE’s advocacy, communications and campaign activities in the United States. Previously, Tom was the Senior Director of Government Relations at ONE. In this role, Tom devised and executed ONE’s government relations strategy for the US and Canada. Tom and his team led the way on unprecedented increases in development assistance by the United States, including historic increases in funding for HIV/AIDS, malaria, and TB through PEPFAR and the Global Fund, the Millennium Challenge Corporation, and more. Before joining ONE, Tom was the Director of Government Relations for the Episcopal Church, USA, and an aide to Senators Alan Cranston and Jay Rockefeller.

Michael Gerson

Michael Gerson is a nationally syndicated columnist who appears twice weekly in the Washington Post and in more than 100 other newspapers. He is the author of Heroic Conservatism (HarperOne, 2007) and coauthor of City of Man: Religion and Politics in a New Era (Moody, 2010). He appears regularly on the PBS NewsHour, Face the Nation and other programs. Gerson serves as a Fellow at ONE, a bipartisan advocacy organization dedicated to the fight against extreme poverty and preventable diseases. Until 2006, Gerson was a top aide to President George W. Bush as Assistant to the President for Policy and Strategic Planning, where he was a key administration advocate for the President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief (PEPFAR), the President’s Malaria Initiative (PMI), the fight against global sex trafficking and funding for women’s justice and empowerment issues. Prior to that appointment, he served in the White House as Deputy Assistant to the President, Director of Presidential Speechwriting, Assistant to the President for Speechwriting and Policy Advisor.