Washington Life Magazine - October 2017 by Washington Life Magazine

At home with Danish Ambassador Lars Gert Lose and Ulla RÃ¸nberg

AMBASSADORS ISSUE ANNUAL

YOUR GUIDE TO EMBASSY ROW

BOOKS: BUNNY MELLON, RAISING AMERICAâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;S ZOO AND THE DIPLOMATâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;S DAUGHTER FOOD: NOBU COMES TO D.C. MUSIC: ED SHEERANâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;S LIVING ROOM PERFORMANCE REAL ESTATE: THE WHARF OPENS ON THE SOUTHWEST WATERFRONT

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NEW FACES, ROYAL ENVOYS, THE TRUMP EFFECT & MORE

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EDITOR'S LETTER

FEATURES YOUR GUIDE TO EMBASSY ROW

LIFE OF THE PARTY

Newly credentialed ambassadors .............................

Joan Hisaoka 'Make a Difference' Gala ......................

Royal Envoys: High-born ambassadors invade Washington ........................................................

Opening Night of 'Aida'........................................

WASHINGTON SOCIAL DIARY

Preservation Society of Newport Dinner Dance .............

Interview with Amb. Antonio Pinto of Cape Verde .....

The Wolf Trap Ball................................................

STYLE ICON Bunny Mellon .............................. OVER THE MOON........................................

RSVP:The allure of embassy invitations .................

Inova Honors Dinner.............................................

Miami Nice Brunch ..............................................

The Trump Factor: Currying favor with the new regime .........................

Cafritz 'Welcome Back from Summer' Party ................

The Beach Ball ....................................................

Wahabi terror ......................................................

POLLYWOOD

College Success Foundation .....................................

Interview with Amb. Salem Al-Sabah of Kuwait ............................

HOLLYWOOD ON THE POTOMAC

Make-A-Wish Gala .............................................

In the shadowland of cyber warfare ...........................

'The Vietnam War' Screening .................................

Habitat for Humanity 'Women Build' Reception...........

Hurricanes, climate change and diplomacy ..................

Ed Sheeran Plays Benefit Show .............................

Chefs for Equality.................................................

Female deputy chiefs of mission ...............................

New Ambassadors Reception .................................

T.H.E. Artist Agency Network Launch Party...............

Housing embassies: different countries, similar problems.

Peruvian Independence Reception ...........................

RAMMY Awards ................................................

The next global leaders: Atlas Corps ........................

Marina Orth Foundation Benefit ...........................

Diner en Blanc ....................................................

Europe after Brexit ...............................................

Noche de Gala ...................................................

Parties! Parties! Parties! .........................................

LIFESTYLES

HOME LIFE

FASHION EDITORIAL

INSIDE HOMES Danish Ambassador Lars Gert

FYIDC

Suit Yourself........................................................

Lose and Ulla Rønberg ..........................................

INSIDER'S GUIDE ........................................ SOCIAL CALENDAR ................................... THE DISH

TREND REPORT Tell Me About It, Stud ............ TREND REPORT Celestial Chic........................ BOOK TALK Raising America's Zoo .................... AUTHOR SPOTLIGHT Karin Tanabe...............

Restoring Grandeur to Embassy Row ........................

MY WASHINGTON British Ambassador Sir Kim Darroch ..........................

Nobu ................................................................

CHARITY SPOTLIGHT

REAL ESTATE NEWS .................................... OPEN HOUSE ............................................... The Wharf Has Landed .......................................

ON THE COVER: Danish Ambassador Lars Gert Lose and his wife Ulla Rønberg with Sophus (Photo by Tony Powell) TOP FROM LEFT: ARGENT Technical trench coat ($598); ARGENT reversible sleeveless top ($138) SANCTUARY Urban woodlands grease leggings ($89) Bloomingdales, 5300 Western Ave, Chevy Chase, Md. (240) 744-3700. H&M black suede boot ($39) H&M 3222 M St NW (855) 466-7467. (Photo by Tony Powell); Nobu's New Style Salmon Sashimi (Photo by Henry Hargreaves); Jamaican Ambassador Audrey Patrice Marks (Photo by Tony Powell); Dolce & Gabbana love chain clutch ($895), lyst.com.

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EDITOR IN CHIEF

Nancy Reynolds Bagley EXECUTIVE EDITOR

Virginia Coyne

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SENIOR EDITOR

Kevin Chaffee DEPUTY EDITOR

Erica Moody

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Roland Flamini

COLUMNISTS AND CONTRIBUTING WRITERS

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Janet Donovan, Steve Houk,Vicky Moon, Stacey Grazier Pfarr and Donna Shor ART DIRECTOR

Matt Rippetoe PRINCIPAL PHOTOGRAPHER

Tony Powell CONTRIBUTING PHOTOGRAPHERS

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PUBLISHER & CEO

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Michelle Frazer WEB TECHNOLOGIES DEVELOPMENT

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Mason Hammond Drake, Akerman, LLP

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EDITORIAL INTERNS

Jocelin Diaz and Rachel Kalusin

FOUNDER

Vicki Bagley CREATIVE DIRECTOR EMERITUS (*)

J.C. SuarÃ¨s CHAIRMAN, EXECUTIVE BOARD

Gerry Byrne Washington Life magazine publishes ten times a year. Issues are distributed in February, March, April, May, June, July/August, September, November, and December and are hand-delivered on a rotating basis to over 150,000 homes throughout D.C., Northern Virginia, and Maryland. Additional copies are available at various upscale retailers, hotels, select newstands, and Whole Foods stores in the area. For a complete listing, please consult our website at www.washingtonlife.com. You can also subscribe online at www.washingtonlife.com or send a check for $79.95 (one year) to: Washington Life Magazine, 2301 Tracy Place NW, Washington D.C., 20008. BPA audited. Email us at info@washingtonlife.com with press releases, tips, and editorial comments. Copyright Â©2011 by Washington Life. All rights reserved. Reproduction or use of editorial content or photos in any manner without permission is strictly prohibited. Printed in the United States. We will not be responsible for unsolicited manuscripts or photographs. *deceased

EDITOR’S LETTER

MODERN DIPLOMATS

here are 6,034 foreign diplomats living and working in 192 Washington embassies. The most recently arrived ambassadors from this perpetually moving village – 43 of them – are profiled here, and what’s most striking is their diversity. They range from a brace of royal princes and two princesses to a former prime minister, a couple of academics and a handful of women. For all of them, Washington is the crowning achievement, exciting at any time, but with Donald Trump in the White House, full of surprises. Contributing editor Roland Flamini, whose primary beat is covering the diplomatic corps, wrote the profiles and in-depth pieces you’ll read in our special feature, which I hope will lead readers to a greater understanding of our many international neighbors. Younger diplomats, like Danish Ambassador Lars Gert Lose and his wife Ulla Rønberg, who grace our cover (with their adorable pup Sophus) are breathing new life onto Embassy Row, both on diplomatic and cultural fronts. For this month’s Inside Homes, we visited their residence within the city’s first modern embassy compound, which was completed in 1960. Part of their mission, they say, is to demonstrate that Danish design and imagination did not end in the middle of the last century. Together they are spearheading an arts in embassy program that showcases the works of contemporary Danish artists. Lose also works to promote Danish exports, many of them “green” companies, as evidenced by the “Zymobile,” a Chevy Camaro retrofitted by Danish biofuel company Novozymes that the ambassador was driving the week he met with our executive editor Virginia Coyne. His 17-year-old son, Björn, had driven the muscle car to school when our photographer Tony Powell snapped the father and son together next to the car. Last month, Amnesty International partnered with Sofar Sounds in its inaugural “Give A Home” campaign to spread awareness of the plight of refugees internationally. Over 300 concerts took place on the same day across the world with ticket proceeds benefiting Amnesty’s efforts to support displaced people. We were lucky to sit in on Washington’s intimate show featuring Ed Sheeran, who serenaded a crowd of about 90 people from someone’s living room. Turn to our FYIDC pages to read more about the concert and Amnesty’s work. Sushi lovers and scenesters rejoice! The wait for Nobu has finally ended. The buzzy eatery touched down last month, luring Washington-area residents with signature dishes like miso black cod

and rock shrimp tempura. We’ve got the lowdown on where to sit, what to order and what kind of experience to expect. There is no shortage of hotels in this transient city, but we were sufﬁciently impressed by the new Darcy Hotel in Logan Circle, where we shot our suit-heavy October fashion editorial. Design details at every turn made tailored pieces pop across the board. Flip to our trend reports for some interstellar inspiration and punk vibes. Shiny metallics, celestial prints and studded black leather will give an edge to your fall attire. And FYIDC has all the art exhibitions, theater and fall festivals you won’t want to miss this month! Fall party season is in full swing by now as well, so be sure to look out for the recent Calvin and Jane Cafritz’s annual welcome back from summer soirée, as well as WL-sponsored parties that include Meridian International Center’s reception for new ambassadors, the Inova Honors Dinner, the Wolf Trap Ball and the Joan Hisaoka ‘Make a Difference’ Gala. November coverage will include Fight for Children’s Fight Night, the Boys and Girls Clubs National Youth of the Year, the National Zoo’s Monkey Business Gala and AfterDark@THEARC.

Nancy R. Bagley Editor in Chief Readers wishing to contact Nancy Bagley can email her at nbagley@washingtonlife.com

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FYIDC The Insider’s Guide to Washington

ART AROUND TOWN

“RENOIR & FRIENDS” AT THE PHILLIPS

This highly anticipated exhibition reveals the story behind the Phillips Collections’ most famous artwork, PierreAuguste Renoir’s “Luncheon of the Boating Party.” More than 40 works bring to life the fascinating cast of creative characters (journalists, artists, critics, etc.) depicted in his much heralded painting. Oct. 7-Jan. 7, phillipscollection.org.

FREER SACKLER RE-OPENING Closed for renovations since last year, the Smithsonian’s Freer and Sackler galleries showcase their elegant upgrade with a weekend of celebrations. Expect Asian art, food and culture, including live performances, at the “IlluminAsia” festival. Events are free and open to the public. Oct. 14-15, asia.si-edu/reopening.

EDVARD MUNCH AT THE NATIONAL GALLERY The National Gallery of Art looks at “the meaning of color in light of spiritualist principles” in its latest exhibition, “Edvard Munch: Color in Context” featuring 21 prints informed by the power of color. Through Jan. 28, free, nga.gov.

‘MEAN GIRLS’ ONSTAGE A musical version of the hit Tina Fey comedy comes to the National Theatre in its world premiere prior to Braodway. Sure to be hilarious, it’s produced by SNL’s Lorne Michaels and Stuart Thompson and directed by Tony winner Casey Nicholaw (“Aladdin,” “The Book of Mormon”). Oct. 31-Dec. 3, tickets start at $73, thenationaldc.org.

NIGHT AT THE YARDS Dine and dance under the stars at Living Classrooms’ annual waterfront benefit to support hands-on education and job training. Expect a silent auction, food from top local restaurants and music from Bob Marley’s band, The Wailers. Oct. 14, 7:00 p.m., $110 in advance, $120 at the door, 1492 4th St. SW, livingclassrooms.org.

FALL FESTIVALS

OPUS ART FESTIVAL

Head to Columbia, Md. for the inaugural “OPUS 1” festival blending art, music and technology for an immersive, multi-sensory experience in the woods. The all-ages festival is part of a three-year commitment by the Howard Hughes Corporation to revitalize Downtown Columbia. Oct. 7. 4:00-11:00 p.m., free, Merriweather Post Pavilion and Symphony Woods, opusmerriweather.com.

ALL THINGS GO FALL CLASSIC Foster the People, Young Thug and Galantis will headline the three-day food and music festival at Union Market with more than 20 performers. Local food brands including Sweetgreen, &pizza, Maketto and Takorean offer the eats. Union Market, Oct. 6-8, $74 for one-day pass, $169 for three-day pass. allthingsgomusic.com.

FALL FOR THE BOOK Authors Colson Whitehead, Lev Grossman, Gish Jen, Amy Butcher and David Shields will participate in the annual literary festival at George Mason University. Bring the kids to participate in children’s literature activities at this family-friendly festival. Oct. 11-14, free and open to the public, GMU Fairfax Campus, fallforthebook.org.

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PIERRE-AUGUST RENOIR, LUNCHEON OF THE BOATING PARTY ( 1880-81) (IMAGE COURTE SY OF THE PHILIPS COLLECTION); MEAN GIRLS (PHOTO COURTE SY OF TH E N AT I O N A L T H E AT R E ) ; P H OTO CO U RT E SY O F N I G H T AT T H E YA R D S ; P H OTO CO U RT E SY O F O P U S 1 ; T H O U S A N D S O F FA N S AT T H E 2 01 6 A L L T H I N G S G O FA L L C L A S S I C ( P H OTO C O U RT E SY O F D O U G VA N S A N T ) ; C O L S O N W H I T E H E A D (C O U RT E SY P H OTO)

BY ERICA MOODY

FYIDC | SOCIAL CALENDAR

OCTOBER

A RE NA STAGE WINE AUCTION Guests will be treated to a ﬁve-course dinner with wine pairings to beneﬁt the theater’s productions and engagement programs. Arena Stage; 6:30 p.m.; $300; sponsorships start at $1,000; contact Maria Corso, 202-600-4025, mcorso@arenastage.org.

AMB ASSADOR’S BALL This year’s ball, hosted by the Ambassador of United Arab Emirates, will raise funds for the National Multiple Sclerosis Society. Marriott Marquis; 6 p.m.; $600; sponsorships start at $5,000; contact Andrew Edwards, 202-375-5602, Andrew. Edwards@nmss.org.

A WIDER CIRCLE COMMUNITY BALL Supporters of A Wider Circle’s mission to end poverty will enjoy cocktails and dinner prior to Rep. Chris Van Hollen receiving the group’s Commitment to Change Award. National Building Museum; 7 p.m.; business or cocktail; $250; sponsorships start at $1,000; contact Emily Meyer, 301-608-3504, emily@awidercircle.org.

B ET HESDA GREEN GALA The group will honor benefactors who have made major contributions to sustaining the environment. Bethesda Blues & Jazz Supper; 6:30 p.m.; $80; sponsorships start at $1,000; contact 240396-2440, info@bethesdagreen.org.

NIG HT OF HOPE Joshua Johnson, host of “1A” on WAMU and NPR will be master of ceremonies at the Community of Hope’s event to support the homeless. 101 Constitution Roof Terrace; 6:30 p.m.; $85; sponsorships start at $1,000; contact Lisa Rajaram, Irajaram@cohdc.org.

PEN /FAULKNER CELEBRATION In addition to cocktails and dinner, this well known literary event will have a presentation of work written on the theme of “Belonging.” The Showroom; 6 p.m.; $500; contact 202-898-9063, RSVP@penfaulkner.org.

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COLLEGE SUCCESS FOUNDATION-DC BREAKFAST The Breakfast will support College

Success Foundation-DC in providing Ward 7 and 8 students with academic, social, emotional and ﬁnancial supports needed to graduate college. Geoffrey Canada, will keynote. Renaissance

Washington, D.C.; 8 a.m.; $2,500; contact 202-207-1817.

MER IDIAN BALL Guests attend pre-ball dinners at ambassadorial residences or Meridian’s WhiteMeyer House before congregating for dessert and dancing at Meridian. The evening supports the development of international leadership. Meridian International Center; 9:30 p.m.; blacktie; $650; sponsorships start at $5,000; contact Olivia Dorieux, 202-939-5892, odorieux@ meridian.org.

D.C . CHAMBER OF COMMERCE CHOICE AWARDS & GALA Join honorees in celebrating the achievements, innovations and success of Washington, D.C. metropolitan area businesses. Marriott Marquis; 5 p.m.; black-tie; $450; sponsorships start at $3,000; contact Janelle Morris jmorris@dcchamber.org.

RECORDS OF ACHIEVEMENT AWARD CEREMONY AND GALA Tom Hanks will receive the National Archive Association’s 2017 Records of Achievement Award for his work on films with historical significance. National Archives Museum; 6 p.m.; black-tie; $1,000; contact Jordan Zappala, 202357-5229, jordan.zappala@archivesfoundation. org.

CIT IZENS OF GEORGETOWN GALA CAG’s mission is to preserve the historic character, quality of life and aesthetic values of Georgetown. Four Seasons Hotel; 7 p.m.; $325; sponsorships start at $1,500; contact cagmail@ cagtown.org.

WHI TE HAT GALA The cyber security community will gather to support the annual gala’s efforts to help high-risk children. Andrew W. Mellon Auditorium; 6:30 p.m.; black-tie optional; $500; sponsorships start at $2,500; contact Kelsey Presswood, kpresswood@childrensnational.org.

Tom Hanks and Kennedy Center President Deborah Rutter at the 2014 Kennedy Center Honors

SOUTHEAST TENNIS AND LEARNING CENTER GALA Guests will arrive to the event in cocktail attire and tennis shoes to support the center’s commitment to young athletes. Southeast Tennis and Learning Center; 6:30 p.m.; cocktail and tennis shoes; contact 202-678-7530.

WASHINGTON INTERNATIONAL HORSE SHOW PRESIDENT’S CUP PARTY Join chairwoman Bonnie Jenkins in watching a world-class equestrian competition. PwC Club at Capital One Arena; 7 p.m.; cocktail/equestrian chic; $150; contact hospitality@wihs.org.

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NOV FIGHT NIGHT NOV JUNIOR DIABETES RESEARCH FOUNDATION HOPE GALA NOV LBJ LIBERTY & JUSTICE FOR ALL AWARD NOV PASSION FOR CARING GALA NOV NATIONAL PORTRAIT GALLERY’S AMERICAN PORTRAIT GALA

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FYIDC | THE DISH

FOOD MEETS SCENE Nobu opens in the West End to ample fanfare. BY C AT H E R I N E T R I F I L E T T I

obu’s reputation precedes it as a place to see and be seen, frequented by the likes of the Obamas and Kardashians. Its opening in Washington’s West End neighborhood last month marks Chef Nobu Matsuhisa’s 38th location worldwide. It signals that local residents’ collective hunger for good food and a great scene is seemingly insatiable and, if its first few weeks are any indication, the luxury sushi chain will draw a high-profile crowd here. On night one Mayor Muriel Bowser was seen dining with celebrity chef Spike Mendelsohn and former Baltimore Mayor Stephanie Rawlings-Blake. Impossible to ignore in the equation are the freshly renovated condos sitting atop the restaurant that are priced upwards of $3 million.You’ll have to move there if you want Nobu takeout, as it will exclusively available to residents of the building. PRP Real Estate Investment Management is behind 2501 Residences on M Street and the group’s president, Paul Dougherty, is said to have served as the catalyst to persuade the luxury chain to locate here — as did other VIPs, including United Arab Emirates Ambassador Youssef Al-Otaiba, who along with Dougherty and Henry Fonvielle of the Rappaport Companies, courted Hollywood producer and Nobu president Meir Teper.The build out of the space was a $10 million feat with special attention paid to the dual sushi and hot kitchens each Nobu outpost requires. Dim lights, ambient house music and warm interior design details give the restaurant a minimal but sexy feel. General Manager George Lipson, who has bounced around Nobu locations across the globe, speaks

passionately about the “Nobu experience,” the allure that famously attracts A-listers. The philosophy is simple, he says: “great food, great service” at any cost. Each of the restaurant’s 250 seats offer a different variation of the experience.Twelve bar seats provide front row tickets to see a team of sushi chefs performing food theater, while booths next to the entrance provide a panoramic view of the open floor plan and the comings and goings of dolled-up guests. Both the sushi bar and the lounge area are first come, first served. In addition to private event spaces, there are two outdoor patios in the works. The technique-driven cuisine strikes a harmonious balance between Japanese and Peruvian influences.Think Tiradito punched up with cilantro and Peruvian chili paste. In addition to sushi, the menu is divided into cold and hot sections meant to be shared. Lipson calls it “the only way” to dine at the establishment. Classic Nobu dishes such as Black Cod with Miso are international menu mainstays, but as soon as Chef Eudy Camilo Cruz gets his footing he will incorporate more local produce, meats and oysters. When ordering don’t skip the lobster tempura or the New Style Salmon Sashimi gently seared with piping hot yuzu soy sauce and sesame oil. Cocktails employ fresh ingredients like passion fruit, lychee and shiso. Star gazing and sushi noshing aside, there is a signature hospitality that underpins the operation and makes splurging on an expensive meal at Nobu worth it. “It takes an army to serve our clients in the proper Nobu way,” Lipson says. You feel it when you walk through the door and a chorus of staff sings out the Japanese welcome “Irasshaimase!”

Nobu | 2525 M Street NW | 202-871-6565 | www.noburestaurants.com 16

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P H OTO S C O U RT E SY O F N O B U ( H E N R Y H A R G R E AV E S A N D G R E G P OW E R S

(clockwise from left) Chef Nobu Matsuhisa; Toro tartare; the view from Nobu’s sushi counter; Yellowtail sashimi with jalapeno and cilantro

LIFE OF THE PARTY WL-sponsored and Exclusive Events | Hisaoka Gala, Inova Honors Dinner and more!

Wolf Trap Ball co-chairmen Nancy Laben, Jon Feiger, Fred and Karen Schaufeld (Photo by Tony Powell)

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LIFE

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John and Anna Mason, Sarah and Mark Kimsey, Victoria Michael and Pamela Sorensen

Bob Hisaoka and Katherine Bradley

WL SPONSORED

JOAN HISAOKA “MAKE A DIFFERENCE” GALA Omni Shoreham Hotel | PHOTOS BY TONY POWELL TEN YEARS OF HEALING The 10th anniversary Joan Hisaoka “Make a Difference” Gala raised a record $1,750,000 for programs that provide support to those living with cancer, adding up to more than $12 million since the event was founded. A remarkable 85% of event proceeds went to two standout beneficiaries: Life with Cancer, the educational and emotional support program of the Inova Schar Cancer Institute, and the Smith Center for Healing and the Arts, an independent cancer support center based in Washington. Bob Hisaoka founded the gala after his sister Joan lost her battle with cancer in 2008. Guests viewed a moving video about Joan’s desire to bring hope and healing to those living with cancer. Other supporters included Ted and Lynn Leonsis, Richard Kay, Jim and Mai Abdo, Mona and John Oswald, Gina Adams and Steve and Marie Schram.

Jack Evans and Jack Davies

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Former Sen. Mike Johnston Mark and Brenda Moore

Lydia Thomas and Lauren Peterson

Earl and Amanda Stafford 20

Tom and Alice Blair

Marianne Chaconas and Sachiko Kuno

Tony Williams

Mark Lowham and Joe Ruzzo

Chef Eric Ziebold WA S H I N G T O N L I F E

Bonnie and Dick Patterson

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LIFE

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Eric Motley, Marie Mattson and Mary Mochary Tamara Wilson (Aida) and David Logan WL EXCLUSIVE

Jacqueline Badger Mars

OPENING NIGHT OF ‘AIDA’ Kennedy Center | PHOTOS BY TONY POWELL

Soloman Howard (The King) and Yonghoon Lee (Radames)

Kennedy Center President Deborah Rutter and Washington Ballet Artistic Director Julie Kent

The opening of the Washington National Opera’s fall season demands a triumph so there was no question that the selection of Giuseppe Verdi’s “Aida,” arguably the most famous opera of all, would prove popular with trustees and benefactors who make it all possible. “We are presenting the classics in a fresh, relatable and bold manner,” incoming board chairman Ellen S. Berelson told guests at a post-production supper in the Kennedy Center’s Restaurant, making sure that the elaborate sets, costumed supernumeraries and choreography got mentioned along with the singing, especially the famous arias and spectacular “Triumphal March.” VIEW ALL THE PHOTOS AT WWW WASHINGTONLIFE COM

Timm Burrow and Anne Klein Pohanka

Victoria Leiter Mele and Edith McBean Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse WL EXCLUSIVE

Guillaume and Molly de Ramel

David Thalmann and Mary Ann Lamont

PRESERVATION SOCIETY OF NEWPORT DINNER DANCE Château-sur-Mer, Newport, R.I, | PHOTOS BY ANDREA HANSEN

Sarah and Bernard Gewirz

Anna von Auersperg, Place Wilson and Antonia Chapman

FAMILY AND FRIENDS The highlight of the social season in America’s most storied summer resort took place, as always, at one of the Preservation Society of Newport County’s gilded mansions, Château-sur-Mer, with elegant ball gowns, major jewels and a multi-generational guest list an integral part of the scene. Glammed-up grannies fox trotted, jitterbugged and cha-cha’d with their handsome grandsons to the sounds of the Bob Hardwick Sound Sensation after cocktails and dinner under a vast marquee decorated with portraits of Vanderbilts, Goelets, Wetmores, Whitneys, Princes and other prominent Newport families. The event raised $250,000 for the group’s efforts to protect, preserve and present its historic buildings and landscapes. VIEW ALL THE PHOTOS AT WWW WASHINGTONLIFE COM

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Gideon Malone, Tom and Hillary Baltimore and Wolf Trap Foundation President and CEO Arvind Manocha

Ambassadors Henne Schuwer (Netherlands), Maguy Maccario Doyle (Monaco), Yerzhan Kazykhanov (Kazakhstan) and DanielMulhall (Ireland)

Katie Rost

WL SPONSORED

WOLF TRAP BALL Filene Center Stage, Wolf Trap PHOTOS BY TONY POWELL AND CRYSTAL WHITMAN

IN THE SHADOW OF THE PRINCELY PALACE The Filene Center Stage at Wolf Trap National Park for the Performing Arts was transformed into the glittering landscape of Monaco, complete with massive backdrops featuring images of the palace, casino and opera house at this annual fundraising event, held this year in partnership with the Embassy of Monaco. The principalityâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s ambassador, Maguy Maccario Doyle, who served as honorary host of the evening, introduced a video message from Prince Albert II, son of Princess Grace, whose iconic wedding dress (actually a replica) was also on view. Guests dined on roasted scallops and Angus beef tenderloin before hitting casino tables and taking a turn on the dance floor. Patrons helped raise $1.5 million for the Wolf Trap Foundationâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s efforts to make the arts accessible to diverse audiences.

Daisy Yuan and Michael Saylor

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Monique and Tim Breaux

Brooklyn Mack and Nicole Graniero Hunt Howell and Julia Marsden Hunt Howell and Julia Marsden

Dorothy McAuliffe, Virginia Lt. Gov. Ralph Northam and Gov. Terry McAuliffe

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Haley Schaufeld and Paige Bellissimo

Caren Backus and Christina Mather

LIFE

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Lauren Peterson, David Kersey, Phoebe Peterson and Rick Peterson

David Broussard and Brian Charles WL SPONSORED

INOVA HONORS DINNER The McLean Hilton | PHOTOS BY NAKU MAYO AND SEAN KELLEY

Nirali and Ashish Chawla Amy Cook, Maris Angelia, Joe Capone and Shereen Abuzobaa

CELEBRATING DOCS Northern Virginia’s best doctors, nurses and caregivers were honored for their can-do spirit and awe-inspiring achievements by not-for-profit Inova at its annual, sold-out Honors Dinner. CEO Knox Singleton and Foundation President Tony Burchard recognized the very best of Inova’s 5,000 physicians and 4,000 nurses, including Drs. Ashish Chawla, Craig Cheifetz and James Thompson with video tributes and plaques at the dinner, which was followed by dancing to the legendary funk/soul band The Commodores. A gift of $1 million by the Simpson Family of Alexandria was also announced. “The essential thread which holds every community together are the doctors, nurses and caregivers of our community hospital, and we have the best in Inova,” said principal sponsor Shaza L. Andersen, CEO of Washington First Bank. VIEW ALL THE PHOTOS AT WWW WASHINGTONLIFE COM

Don Simpson, Jr.

Carol and Greg Benston, Suraiya and Maruf Haider 24

Chip Comstock, Rep. Barbara Comstock, Shaza Andersen and Marc Anderson

J.D. Nicholas of The Commodores

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Alex McKissick, Michael Adams, Madison Leonard and Arnold Geis

Ann and Bill Nitze

Calvin and Jane Cafritz

WL EXCLUSIVE

WELCOME BACK FROM SUMMER PARTY Calvin and Jane Cafritz Residence, Georgetown PHOTOS BY TONY POWELL

Madzy and Al Beveridge

Mike Pillsbury and Sharon Percy Rockefeller

FIRST FALL FÊTE: The Supreme Court, Cabinet, Congress and the diplomatic corps were well represented at Calvin and Jane Cafritz’s annual bash welcoming social scenesters back to the nation’s capital after summer sojourns near (Rehoboth, Bethany Beach), middling (Martha’s Vineyard, Nantucket, Newport) and far (Aspen, Saint-Tropez, Capri, et al). Unlike last year, cool breezes eliminated the need to air condition the swanky backyard party tent where Glen Pearson’s orchestra provided lively dance music both before and after singers from the DomingoCafritz Young Artists program delighted the crowd with opera favorites and show tunes. SLIP OF THE TONGUE: Calvin Cafritz introducing Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross as the late Wilbur Mills, who may be better remembered for his liaison with a stripper named Fanne Fox than being the longtime chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee. Mr. Ross and his wife Hilary — to their great credit — thought it was the funniest thing ever.

Paul and Elizabeth Friedman with Olvia Demetriou

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Jan Lodal, British Amb. Sir Kim Darroch and Finlay Lewis

Mary Haft and Mayor Muriel Bowser

John Jeppson, Wendy Benchley and Sen. Tom Udall Catherine Reynolds and Rep. Debbie Dingell

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POLLYWOOD The Nexus of Politics﹐ Hollywood﹐ Media and Diplomacy | Noche de Gala and Meridian’s New Ambassador Welcome Reception

Ed Sheeran and Holly Branson at Amnesty International + Sofar Sounds Concert (Photo by Mauricio Castro/ Sofar Sounds)

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POLLYWOOD | HOLLYWOOD ON THE POTOMAC

A NEW PERSPECTIVE A new documentary film series by Ken Burns offers a different look at the Vietnam war. B Y J A N E T D O N O VA N | P H O T O S B Y T O N Y P O W E L L

here are 58,200 names inscribed on the Vietnam Veterans Memorial in Washington, D.C., representing the men and women killed in the war that shook a nation to its core. “Behind each name is a life cut short, futures lost and a family changed forever,” says filmmaker Ken Burns, whose 18hour documentary film series, “The Vietnam War,” aired on PBS starting September 17. For over 10 years, Burns devoted his life to chronicling some of the most turbulent times in modern American history, including Agent Orange, the Mei Lai Massacre, the Gulf of Tonkin and Kent State – events that still roll off our tongues as if they happened yesterday. WETA President Sharon Percy Rockefeller and Bank of America co-hosted the premiere of Burns’ and Lynn Novick’s film at the Kennedy Center before it aired to the public. Bank of America helped underwrite the series, a 10-year commitment. “With 18 hours he can tell a great story,” said the bank’s CEO Brian Moynihan, “he’s the best storyteller of all time.” As there have been so many epic film treatments of the Vietnam War from “Apocalypse Now” to “Platoon” with “Good Morning Vietnam” and “The Deer Hunter” in between, we wondered what new perspective

Burns could bring to the table with his newly released series. “We’re trying to be comprehensive in this. When Americans talk about the Vietnam war, they tend to talk only about themselves,” Burns says. “We try to take the entire story from the French arrival in Indochina in the mid-19th century up to today.” Burns achieves a 360 degree view by using a diverse group of American voices, including soldiers, Vietnamese civilians, policy wonks and journalists. The mix of perspectives, Burns says,” forces you to let go of whatever preconceptions you have.” The Vietnam War has been dissected by scholars over many years without coming to terms of agreement. However, Daniel Ellsberg who not only served in Vietnam, but worked closely with some of its chief policymakers before turning against the war and releasing the Pentagon Papers, becoming the most important whistle blower in U.S. history, was not interviewed for the series. When Senator John McCain, who was a prisoner of war in Vietnam, and other fellow Vietnam veterans, including former Secretary of State John Kerry and former senator Chuck Hagel showed up on the red carpet simultaneously, it was like watching

old fraternity brothers reunite, complete with hugs, kisses and back slaps. The three have all visited Vietnam many times. “People have come to understand the war was a mistake,” Kerry said of U.S. government’s missteps. “I think we’ve made a lot of progress from where we were back in 1990 when John McCain and I began the efforts on POW/MIA.” He called Burns’ and Novick’s work “an extraordinary examination” of the war’s different sides. “John Kerry, Chuck Hagel and I felt very strongly that we needed to normalize relations between the two countries.” McCain told us. “We spent years working to account for those who were missing in action and now the fact that we recognize each other and have good relations has done a lot for the healing process.” “Ken Bur ns and Lynn Novick’s documentary series provides us with content and storytelling that matters connecting us to our history and one another. CPB is proud to be a funder,” said Pat Harrison, its president and CEO. The event was highlighted by a panel discussion about the film moderated by ABC News Chief Global Affairs Correspondent Martha Raddatz with Burns and Novick along with McCain, Hagel and Kerry.

Kristen Shaw and Michael Grady “Killing Reagan” Director Rod Lurie and Novelist Kyra Davis Jack Norton and Jean Case

Bank of America CEO Brian Moynihan, Co-directors of “The Vietnam War” Lynn Novick and Ken Burns Diane Lane and Deborah Rutter

Sen. John McCain and Cindy McCain Cynthia Nixon and Tim Matheson

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ARTIST SPOTLIGHT

GIVE A HOME

Ed Sheeran plays an intimate living room concert for refugee awareness. BY C AT H E R I N E T R I F I L E T T I

P H OTO S C O U RT E SY O F S O FA R S O U N D S / M AU R I C I O C A ST R O A N D P E T E R B R AV E R M A N

op music star Ed Sheeran made a casual pit stop at a private residence in Northwest Washington between two soldout shows at Capital One Arena to perform four of his chart topping tunes, including “Shape of You” and “Thinking Out Loud.” The unconventional acoustic concert was one of about 300 shows in over 60 countries performed on September 20 that raised critical funds for 22 million refugees displaced around the world. For its inaugural “Give A Home” initiative, human rights organization Amnesty International partnered with Sofar Sounds to enlist a variety of musical acts to participate in a day of solidarity for refugees. London-based Sofar Sounds (Songs from a Room) specializes in live intimate concerts meant to redefine the listening experience between musicians and fans.Typically, artists and venue information aren’t disclosed to ticket buyers up front, but the Sheeran show was an exception and 24,000 fans applied. In true Sofar form, the location wasn’t announced until the day before and other standard rules were upheld, like limited phone usage during the performance. Fitz Holladay of Sofar Sounds DC encouraged the group to “be present and enjoy the experience.” “This is exciting for us because it’s a chance to bring a whole new audience to the idea that art and music are such a great platform for talking about human rights issues,” said Amnesty International USA’s

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executive director Margaret Huang. “[Music] touches you in ways that a Powerpoint on refugee statistics can never do.” Sheeran shared in the excitement, looking out over a crowd of 90 guests, mostly seated cross-legged on the floor – a far cry from the colossal sea of screaming fans he is used to.“It’s really fun to look out and just see everyone smiling,” he said. Activist Holly Branson was onsite to introduce Sheeran, who played at her wedding even after he made it big. The Amnesty campaign struck a chord with Branson who is in the midst of relief efforts after Hurricane Irma destroyed her family’s property on Necker Island. “There’s never been a more important time to stand in solidarity with refugees, especially with climate change,” she said. Huang echoed Branson’s urgency describing the organization’s efforts working with policy makers in Washington as the Trump administration aims to slash the number of refugees allowed in the U.S. by half. Amnesty International Secretary General Salil Shetty was also there, rattling off statistics that listed the growing number of displaced persons in the world (the most since WWII), including ethnic cleansing of the Rohingya people in Myanmar and refugees who have recently fallen victim to climate events in the Caribbean. “We could all be depressed, but we are here to celebrate the humanity that exists between ordinary people,” he said,“and that’s really, really powerful.”

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Amnesty International Secretary General Salil Shetty and Ed Sheeran

Sofar co-founder Rocky Start, Amnesty USA Executive Director Margaret Huang and Sofar Sounds DC’s Fitz Holladay

POLLYWOOD

Alphonso Jackson, Ann Stock and Tom Korologos

Pilar O’Leary and Tracy Bernstein WL SPONSORED

MERIDIAN RECEPTION FOR NEW AMBASSADORS Meridian International Center | PHOTOS BY TONY POWELL

Ami Aronson and Stuart Holliday

Danara Kazykhanov and Kazakhstan Amb. Erzhan Kazykhanov

MERIDIAN’S MEET AND GREET Mindful of its mission to service the diplomatic community, Meridian International Center hosted a reception welcoming newly arrived ambassadors and their spouses to the nation’s capital. The evening brought together seven new envoys from Bahrain, Colombia, Ghana, Kazakhstan, Mexico, Swaziland and Togo, many of whom were spotted chatting amiably and exchanging business cards with other guests while enjoying cocktails and a light buffet. “[We] stand ready to help you in your efforts ... and to engage with the people of your countries,” Meridian President and CEO Stuart Holliday said in welcoming remarks pinpointing international dialogue, collaboration and cultural exchange as the keys to solving the world’s most pressing problems. “We are honored to have you here.” VIEW ALL THE PHOTOS AT WWW WASHINGTONLIFE COM

Carlos Gutierrez and Amb. of Ghana Barfuor Adjei-Barwuah

Capricia Marshall

Peruvian Amb. Carlos Pareja and National Museum of the American Indian Director Kevin Gover

Former Baltimore Orioles Steven Bumbry and Al Bumbry

Avocado aficionados Mark Vlasic, Ian Fay, Alex Rothlisberger and Mathew Ramsey

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KAYPÍ PERU RECEPTION National Museum of the American Indian | PHOTOS BY TONY POWELL

Giuseppe Lanzone and Fran Holuba John Decker and Peruvian Avocado Commission Chairman Xavier Equihua

AVO ADDICTS Traditional arts, music and popular culture were celebrated at a reception to celebrate Peru’s national day, an event that began with a ceremonial offering to Pachamama (Mother Earth) in the National Museum of the American Indian’s Rasmuson Theater and continued in the soaring Potomac Atrium with singing and dancing by performers in folkloric costumes and an indoor market featuring handicrafts from the Land of the Incas. Guests delighted in their opportunity to sample Peruvian cuisine, especially various in-season avocado specialties on display that included guacamole, avocado oatmeal cookies and a three-flavor Avo-gelateria. VIEW ALL THE PHOTOS AT WWW WASHINGTONLIFE COM

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Then Colombian Amb. Juan Carlos Pinzรณn, Juan Pablo Pinzรณn and Pilar Lozano Andrea Mitchell and Maureen Orth

Bishop Mario Dorsonville and Caroline Croft

MARINA ORTH FOUNDATION BENEFIT Maureen Orth Residence | PHOTOS BY TONY POWELL

Luke Russert and Elizabeth Vasily

POOLSIDE FIESTA Journalist Maureen Orth hosted the fifth annual Colombianos/Gringos/Cocktails/Rumba party to benefit her Marina [Maureen in Spanish] Orth Foundation, which works to improve the quality of education in underserved communities in Colombia. Among those supporting the cause and enjoying poolside music, mojitos and empanadas were her son, Luke Russert, Inter-American Development Bank President Luis Alberto Moreno and then Colombian Ambassador Juan Carlos Pinzรณn. In the five years since starting the annual fundraising celebration, Orth says her foundation has expanded its services from three to 21 schools. The organization, which promotes STEM education, English language literacy and leadership skills also provides laptops to students and teaches them to code beginning in the third grade.

Brooke and Fritz Brogan

Joe and Michelle Jaconi VIEW ALL THE PHOTOS AT WWW WASHINGTONLIFE COM

Danny Trejo Felix Sanchez, Ryan Guzman, Benito Martinez, Merel Julia and Jimmy Smits

Elvimar Silva

NOCHE DE GALA The Mayflower Hotel, Autograph Collection | PHOTOS BY TONY POWELL LATINO ADVANCEMENT Members of Congress and celebrities including Jimmy Smi s and Danny Trejo were among those in attendance at the 21st annual National Hispanic Foundation for the Arts (NHFA) gala. NHFA was founded in 1997 to advance the presence of Latinos in the media, telecommunications and entertainment industries. More than $1.6 million has been awarded to Hispanic graduate students across the country over the years to support careers in the arts

Gabriela Lujambio and Isabella Martinez WA S H I N G T O N L I F E

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Jessica Rosenworcel, Maria Cardona and Lyndon Boozer

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NEW FACES OF

)1&%77= 63; BY ROLAND FLAMINI

ever in living memory have foreign embassies in Washington faced such challenges in their dealings with a U.S. administration. The tweets (it’s as if Moses were tweeting the Ten Commandments one commandment at a time), the constant hirings and firings – mostly firings (if it’s Thursday, this must be Steve Bannon), the absence of interlocutors due to the snail pace in filling key jobs, the contradictory policy statements. “We are part of a political thriller,” laments Polish Ambassador Piotr Wilczek. “This year, it’s been challenging to communicate with the administration.” As foreign ambassadors view U.S. relations with the world, what do they see? An increasingly dangerous landscape glimpsed intermittently through a drifting fog of uncertainty. Embassies from countries with a large immigrant presence, from Cape Verde to Mexico, have to cope with Trump’s Draconian anti-immigrant measures. Asians puzzle over the administration’s engagement with the Asia-Pacific; European embassies see ambivalence in Washington over traditional U.S. commitments to its oldest allies, although Trump did finally endorse NATO’s Article 5, which says an attack on one member state is an attack on the whole alliance. It isn’t recalled often enough that the only NATO

member ever to invoke Article 5 was the United States after 9/11. Arab nations think Trump’s U.S. favors the country with the longest shopping list of American weapons. Latin and Central American countries can’t decide whether it’s good news or bad that the U.S. continues to ignore them almost altogether (Venezuela excepted). But diplomacy is still governed by rules, in particular the principle of reciprocity. For example, envoys who arrived in Washington late in 2016 had to present their credentials to an official at the State Department because the departing Obama White House couldn’t spare the time for the usual credentialing ceremony. Some ambassadors complained about what they regarded as a slight. Apart from being correct diplomatic ritual, the White House ceremony is the sole opportunity many of them get to meet and be photographed with the president. So, faced with the risk that American ambassadors arriving in certain countries would present their credentials to the foreign ministry doorman instead of the head of state, Trump was persuaded to meet them individually in a non-credentialing ceremony so they could get their photo op and presidential handshake. So, who are the new arrivals? >>

THE NEWEST AMBASSADORS s ROYAL ENVOYS s THE TRUMP FACTOR INTERVIEWS WITH AMBASSADORS OF CAPE VERDE & KUWAIT sŤŤFEMALE DEPUTY CHIEFS OF MISSION THE RISE OF THE WAHABIS s EUROPE AFTER BREXIT CYBER WARFARE s HOUSING EMBASSIES sŤHURRICANES AND GLOBAL WARMING

PORTRAITS BY TONY POWELL

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SWEDEN KARIN ØLOFSDØTTER is Sweden’s

first female ambassador to Washington. Jan Eliasson, who once held the post before going on to be deputy secretary general of the United Nations, tweeted his congratulations. Ølofsdøtter’s previous Washington posting was as deputy chief of mission from 2008 – 2011. After that, she was Sweden’s ambassador to Budapest, and most recently director general for trade policy at the ministry of foreign affairs in Stockholm. WA S H I N G T O N L I F E

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AFRICAN UNION: ARIKANA CHIHCOMBORI QUAO, the African Union’s

ambassador to Washington is a native of Zimbabwe. She trained as a doctor in the United States and practiced medicine in Tennessee for the past 25 years. She had previously served as chair of the African Union’s health services, mainly aimed at the African diaspora. Originally called The Organization of African Unity, the AU has ambitions to replicate the European Union among the nations of Africa, but Dr. Chihcombori acknowledges that the organization is still far from that ultimate goal. She takes over in the nation’s capital at a time of uncertainty in U.S. policy towards the African continent, with President Trump threatening big budget cuts in African aid and development programs, a rise in the deportations of African immigrants and the impact of the so-called Muslim ban.

BARBADOS: Before his appointment as ambassador to Washington, senior Barbados diplomat SELWIN HART was a specialist in global warming and climate change at the United Nations: he was a top adviser to the U.N. Secretary General on environmental issues and an active participant in the Paris Climate Conference. One of his first public appearances in Washington was at a Georgetown University symposium on climate change where Hart and other members of a panel of ambassadors urged action to curb emissions. He’s not likely to strike a responsive chord with Donald Trump, a longtime skeptic on global warming who has announced his intention of pulling out of the Paris climate accord. BELIZE: When he presented his credentials to President Trump earlier this year, Ambassador DANIEL GUTIEREZ said his country was committed to fighting transnational organized crime.

That’s because involvement in the Mexican and South American drug trades is one of the Central American country’s major problems, according to the CIA’s World Fact Book. Belize also has one of the highest rates of HIV/AIDS in the region. A third problem is a longstanding territorial dispute with Guatemala over the latter’s claim to nearly half of Belize’s territory. Gutierez was appointed ambassador to Washington after barely a year as Belize’s representative to CARICOM, the 15-nation regional economic group. For more than a decade before that he was a senior executive of Belize’s oil company – oil and tourism being the country’s main money earners.

BENIN: It’s déjà vu all over again for HECTOR POSSET, a professional diplomat who heads the West African country’s Washington embassy. Posset was deputy chief of mission at the embassy from 2011-2014, when he went home to retire. But two years later, he was back in the nation’s capital as ambassador representing the same sliver of West African territory wedged between Togo and Nigeria. The former French colony originally called Dahomey is the historic site of an 18th and 19th century kingdom and was notorious as a point of departure for slave ships. BURKINA FASO: Economist SEYDOU KABORE must be watching with interest as the Trump administration attempts to launch an infrastructure program. His last post in Ouagadougou, capital of Burkina Faso, was minister in charge of infrastructure, a formidable challenge focused mainly on road building. The World Bank recently described Burkina Faso as “a low-income, landlocked Sub-Saharan country with limited natural resources” where normal life has been frequently disturbed by military coups. A more recent problem is the spreading threat of al-Qaida-related activity in Africa, which has resulted in a U.S. military presence as

advisers to support the local troops. In January 2016, al-Qaida attacks on a Ouagadougou hotel and a coffee bar left 30 people dead, most of them foreigners, and numerous injured.

COLOMBIA: Ambassador Juan Carlos Pinzón was barely two years into his Washington assignment when he announced his return home to Colombia because he was thinking of running for president in 2019. His successor, CAMILO REYES, is a veteran diplomat who was his country’s minister of foreign affairs in 1998, and later deputy minister for an additional five years. In making the announcement, President Juan Manuel Santos tweeted that Reyes’ main objectives will be to maintain the strategic alliance between the United States and Colombia in the fight against narco-traffic, further the newly minted peace between the government and Colombia’s left wing militants and promote bi-lateral trade. Reyes is well qualified for the trade effort: in recent years, he was executive director of the Colombian-American Chamber of Commerce. The drug war is a tougher challenge. The U.S. has poured billions into Plan Colombia, the 17-year offensive against cocaine production, but the U.N. says Colombia is still the world’s main producer. CROATIA: PJER ŠIMUNOVIC is a former BBC journalist and producer who saw the light and shifted careers to diplomacy. He is a specialist in security issues, having been Croatia’s national coordinator for NATO following his country’s admission into the Atlantic Alliance in 2009, and then director of defense policy in Croatia’s defense department. With Croatia’s membership, NATO established a presence in the volatile Balkan region, and spread its protective mantle over the Croats in a very quarrelsome neighborhood. Prior to coming to

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CZECH REPUBLIC “We’re proud that President Trump is the only American president who made it to Zlin, which is a nice city nobody’s ever heard of,” says HYNEK KMONICEK, the Czech Republic’s ambassador to Washington. Zlin is the birthplace in Moravia, eastern Czech Republic of Trump’s first wife Ivana, and when they were married, Trump was a regular visitor. Czech President Milos Zeman had been an early supporter of Trump’s presidential bid, and during his congratulatory phone call to the White House, both presidents issued invitations to visit their respective capitals, according to Kmonícek. Making sure that President Zeman’s Washington trip comes off fairly soon has to be high on his list of priorities. Another is maintaining contact with the thousands of Czech Americans spread across the country. “Americans (of Czech extraction) can be more Czech than the Czechs,” he says. “The proudest Czechs I ever met were the Czechs in the diaspora.” A professional diplomat who has been his country’s deputy foreign minister on two separate occasions, he met his American wife, Indira, while serving as head of the Czech mission to the U.N. “She is not Czech, but she learned Czech in three years – actually from our bodyguards, which gave her an absolutely astonishing Czech vocabulary. Ask her about the names of guns.” He reacts with annoyance to the idea that the Czech government should be grouped with the Polish and Hungarian governments as contrarian members of the European Union. The Czechs, he says, don’t want to leave the E.U. They just want it to work better. If there were a Brexit type referendum in the Czech Republic, “there would be no Czechxit.”

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Washington, Simunovic was chief-of-staff of Croatia’s national security council. He also served as ambassador to Israel.

DOMINICA: VINCE HENDERSON, the Caribbean country’s new ambassador has held a number of government posts, the most recent being minister of foreign affairs from 2008-2010. Prior to his Washington assignment, Henderson was Dominica’s chiefof-mission at the United Nations for six years from 2010. A true believer when it comes to climate change, he has called on the United States to join the Caribbean nations in a combined effort to protect the environment in the region. ESTONIA: Ambassador LAURI LEPIK has spent most of his diplomatic career in the area of security and at NATO. A former librarian at the National Library of Estonia, he was in Brussels at his country’s permanent mission to the North Atlantic Alliance for a total of 11 years, the last five (2012-2017) as ambassador. In between, however, he was concurrently ambassador to Ukraine and Moldova. He has previously served in the Washington embassy as deputy chief of mission (1996-1999) and then defense counselor. Lepik’s wife, Aino Lepik de Wiren is currently Estonian ambassador to Portugal. Starting in 2000, he took four years off to accompany her to Berlin, where she was ambassador to Germany. GEORGIA: Two months after presenting his credentials, DAVID BAKRADZE together with four other ambassadors from former Soviet republics and a foreign minister from a sixth were up on the Hill talking about Russian hacking, propaganda and other blatant attempts by Moscow to undermine

their respective governments. They urged a Senate committee to support them in resisting Russian pressure. At the time, the true extent of Russia’s interference in the U.S. elections was just becoming known, and with it the realization that America hadn’t been able to do too much about it either. It was with this realization that Bakradze began his Washington tenure topping up more than 20 years in the Georgian foreign service. Before coming to the U.S., Bakradze had in the past two years “led the country’s European crusade” – according to one report – as the official responsible for strengthening Georgia’s ties (an aspiring E.U. member) with the European Union. In the hearing Bakradze had reminded the senators that Georgia had been the target of a Russian invasion before Ukraine (2008), and the Russians were still deployed in a breakaway Georgian province.

GUATEMALA: Representing one of Latin America’s most violent, unequal and impoverished countries is MANUEL ESPINA: not a career diplomat, but a celebrity in his country as the founder and president of Guatemala Prospera, a hugely popular motivational movement calling itself “an entity that generates change.” Espina’s annual prayer breakfast in Guatemala City, which he launched in 2014, has become a national event attended by the head of state, leading politicians, religious leaders and top businessmen. HONDURAS: When MARLON RAMSES TABORA MUÑOZ was

appointed ambassador of Honduras to Washington he didn’t have far to travel. He was already in the nation’s capital serving as director for Central America and Belize at the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB). His CV is all over the map, with – prior to the IDB post – stints as head of the Honduras Telecommunications

Company, chief-of-staff of the country’s president and governor of the Honduras National Bank. With more than one million Honduran immigrants living in the United States, Tabora faces the challenge of dealing with the Trump administration’s tough immigration policies. He is also likely to have an uphill job attracting much needed U.S. investment to his country, the second poorest in Central America. Why? Honduras also has one of the world’s highest homicide rates as street gangs and the organized crime networks of its narco-driven activities compete for the distinction of causing most mayhem in the community.

HUNGARY: New ambassadors tend to talk about the importance of going beyond the Beltway to visit the American heartland. Hungary’s new ambassador, LÁSZLÓ SZABÓ, already knows the American heartland. He has spent time in Indianapolis, Ind. as a human resources director for Eli Lilly, the U.S. pharmaceutical giant. A doctor by profession, he comes to diplomacy after a long career at Eli Lilly. As a diplomat, he started at the top as a deputy minister of foreign affairs and trade. Washington is his first ambassadorial post. INDIA: Some time soon we can expect a book by Ambassador NAVTEJ SARNA with a Washington setting. That’s because besides composing what are still quaintly referred to as diplomatic telegrams, Sarna has written and published a book set in every country where he has served. So, from Israel, where Sarna was ambassador, we get “Indians at Herod’s Gate: A Jerusalem Tale,” and from his first Washington posting as minister counsellor in 2002, the novel “We Weren’t Lovers Like That.” He returns to Washington from London, where he was India’s high commissioner. But Sarna has also had a number of senior posts at the ministry of

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JAMAICA AUDREY PATRICE MARKS’s current

appointment as Jamaica’s ambassador to the United States is déjà vu for this former business entrepreneur. She served as the Caribbean island’s ambassador in Washington once before from 2010-2012. Following graduation from the Nova Southeastern University H.Wayne Huizenga School of Business and Entrepreneurship, she launched

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and managed six businesses including a real estate firm and a 100-acre banana exporting firm. She continued to be prominent in business in Jamaica until 2010 when she was appointed her country’s first woman ambassador to the United States. On both U.S. assignments, Marks was also accredited as Jamaica’s representative to the Organization of American States — as are several other envoys in Washington.

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external affairs in New Delhi, including six years as its spokesman. “Writing started off as a hobby, and is still a hobby,” says Sarna, who writes in both English and his native tongue. It’s a balancing act, of course, but “I’m fortunate that both these aspects of my life have never contradicted each other.”

IRAQ: FAREED YASSEEN took up his appointment in January – just in time to be part of the lobbying effort that caused President Trump to drop Iraq from the list of Muslim majority countries targeted in his first travel ban. M.I.T. graduate Yasseen trained as a physicist before shifting careers to diplomacy. He served as head of policy planning at the ministry of foreign affairs and Iraq’s ambassador to France from 2010 to 2016 before being assigned to Washington. He has said Iraq’s fight against ISIS has drawn his divided country together, and that Iran’s growing influence in Iraq is the result of Baghdad’s quest for “regional equilibrium and the avoidance of confrontation,” but at the same time Iraq and the United States are “not only partners by necessity, we’re partners by choice.” IRELAND: Expect a stream of quotations from the great Irish writers – Yeats, Samuel Beckett – on Ambassador DAN MULHALL’s Twitter. A keen promoter of Irish literary culture and a relentless user of social media, he tweets daily and often cites his favorite poets and playwrights. Mulhall was most recently Ireland’s ambassador to London, and before that headed the Irish missions in Berlin (2009), and Malaysia (2001). But he was also the spokesman for the Irish negotiating side in the historic Good Friday Agreement of 1998 that brought to an end the 30 years of sectarian conflict in Northern Ireland, known as “The Troubles.” The political deal gave Northern Ireland its own parliament, but problems continued until 2006, when a modified accord was out in place. When

Mulhall presented his credentials to President Trump Irish immigrants topped the discussion, a surprising dip into history reflecting the broad sweep of the Trump administration’s new immigration policies.

KAZAKHSTAN: Ambassador ERZHAN KAZYKHANOV was among the first batch of new ambassadors to present his credentials to President Trump in April 2017. His previous post was London, but before that he had been Kazakhstan’s minister of foreign affairs from 2011 – 2012. On two separate occasions he was foreign policy aide to Kazakhstan’s autocratic President Nursultan Nazarbayev, who has been in power since 1989, and is given credit for being the first leader of a former Soviet republic to divest his country of its nuclear arsenal, and for starting to exploit Kazakhstan’s sizeable oil reserves. On the debit side is Nazarbayev’s abysmal human rights record, the target of worldwide condemnation. For many, Kazakhstan is a reminder of Sacha Baron Cohen’s hit movie “Borat: Cultural Learnings of America for Make Benefit Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan.” Not surprisingly, the film was banned in Kazakhstan, but has a link to the ambassador who at the time said it boosted tourism to the largest former Soviet satellite. “I am grateful to Borat, the movie’s main character, for tourists’ keen interest in coming to Kazakhstan,” Kazykhanov declared. MALAYSIA: Ambassador ZULHASNAN BIN RAFIQUE is a politician and

former member of the Malaysian parliament. This is his first diplomatic assignment. He entered politics in 1985 in the United Malays National Organization after a career as a fighter pilot in the Royal Malaysian Air Force. From 2006-2009 he was minister for the Federal Territories, the three areas of Malaysia under direct federal government

control, the rest of the country being divided into states. At the same time, he held a parliamentary seat continuously until 2013. From 2014 – 2016 the polo playing former minister was chancellor of Geomatika University, a mainly hi-tech institution in Kuala Lumpur.

MICRONESIA: AKILLINO HARRIS SUSAIA, ambassador of the Federated States of Micronesia, has had a long career as a public official in the government of the large cluster of 600 or so islands (most of them uninhabited) situated halfway between Hawaii and Indonesia. Before coming to Washington, Susaia was Micronesia’s ambassador to China, and visiting ambassador to Vietnam. Micronesia is not a colony of the U.S., but has strong ties enshrined in a Compact of Free Associations. The United States is responsible for Micronesia’s security and Micronesian citizens have free entry into the U.S. and can serve in the American armed forces. MOLDOVA: AURELIU CIOCOI represents the small, former Soviet satellite squeezed between Romania and Ukraine. A former journalist and political commentator, he shifted to the Moldovan foreign service in 1998. He has held various posts connected with European affairs, and this is his first assignment in the United States. He served two separate terms in Germany, the most recent as ambassador, before Washington. MONTENEGRO: In 2006, in one of the closing phases of the often violent disintegration of Yugoslavia, Serbia and Montenegro went their separate ways (as a result of a referendum in Montenegro). NEBOJŠA KALUDJEROVIC, who happened to be the only Montenegrin in the combined Serbian-Montenegrin

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MEXICO When Mexican ambassador GERONIMO GUTIERREZ took up his post earlier this year his main concern was the impact of Trumpâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s tightening of U.S. immigration policy on the 11.7 million Mexicans living in America. At the Mexican embassy he introduced support mechanisms for immigrants subjected to new Homeland Security pressures, including closer scrutiny, and even deportations. Since September 19, however, he faces the additional challenge of dealing with the aftermath of Mexicoâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s devastating earthquake. On the

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embassy website information for immigrants has been nudged aside to make room for solicitations of contributions to the Mexican Red Cross for earthquake relief and contact numbers for immigrants seeking news of relations at home. Gutierrez comes to Washington after holding senior government posts in Mexico City. But most recently he headed the North American Development Bank in San Antonio, Texas, set up to finance infrastructure projects and affordable housing on both sides of the U.S.-Mexican border Donald Trump wants to wall off.

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ROYAL ENVOYS Highly-born ambassadors on Embassy Row

t’s not often that a member of a country’s ruling dynasty is sent as ambassador to the United States – or to any other capital, for that matter. But Washington’s foreign diplomatic community currently has six chiefs of mission who are blood relatives to their respective heads of state – five from the Arab world, and one from Africa. The presumed advantage of these ambassadors is that they have a direct line to the country’s rulers. For example, the Saudi Arabian envoy and former Saudi Air Force pilot Prince Khaled bin Salman – “KBS” to his friends – is the son of King Salman. He is also a full brother of the powerful Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman. Princess Lalla Joumala Alaoui, the Moroccan ambassador, is cousin to King Mohammed VI, the reigning Moroccan monarch, on both her mother’s side and her

father’s. Her mother, Princess Lalla Fatima, was the half-sister of Hassan II, the present king’s father. Incidentally, Princess Lalla Joumala’s husband is Muhammad Reza Nouri Esfandiari, a relative of Soraya Esfandiari, the second wife of Iran’s last shah. Qatar’s Ambassador Meshal bin Hamad AlThani, a career diplomat and son of the former emir, Sheikh Hamad bin Khalifa Al-Thani, was briefly crown prince until he was replaced by one of his half-brothers and then another, Tamim bin Hamad bin Khalifa Al-Thani. The change was said to reflect the influence of Tamim’s mother, the emir’s second wife, the glamorous and powerful Sheikha Moza. In 2013, the emir abdicated in favor of Tamim, who was then 33. Sheikh Abdullah bin Rashid bin Abdullah Al-Khalifa, Bahrain’s chief of mission in Washington, is a member of Bahrain’s ruling

famiy. He’s a nephew of the current King Hamad II Al-Khalifa, and ambassador in Washington is his first diplomatic post. Before that he was governor of one of the small Gulf state’s provinces. He replaced another member of the family whose own name was so close that he is using his predecessor’s calling cards. But not all ambassadors from ruling houses are new arrivals. Kuwait’s Ambassador Salem Abdullah Al-Juber Al-Sabah, a member of the Kuwaiti Al-Sabah ruling family, took up his post in Washington a week before 9/11. Nor are Arab nations the only ones to appoint royals to the job. Among the African ambassadors who recently presented credentials to President Trump was Njabuliso Gwebu, from Swaziland, one of the world’s few remaining absolute monarchies. Gwebu is the sister of exQueen Inkdrosikati LaGangaza, fourth of the so-far 15 wives of King Mswati III.

BAHRAIN: Ambassador SHAIKH ABDULLAH BIN RASHID BIN ABDULLAH AL-KHALIFA, the new Bahraini ambassador, has the same name as his predecessor, so he is using his predecessor’s leftover business cards. Why go to the expense of new ones? Ambassador Rashid Al-Khalifa has no previous diplomatic experience: He was governor of the island kingdom’s southern province before his current appointment. But he does have a key advantage. He is a member of the ruling Al-Khalifa family, with direct access to the upper reaches of the Bahraini government.

SWAZILAND: NJABULISO GWEBU, Swaziland’s new ambassador to Washington is the sister of Queen

Inkhosikati LaNgangaza and is herself a member of the royal family, the Dlaminis. Tiny Swaziland (population 1.2 million) is one of the world’s few remaining absolute monarchies – and the country with the highest global AIDS rate and poverty level. King Mswati III, its ruler, has 15 wives (Queen Inkhosikati is his fourth wife) and 24 children. The Dlaminis are ubiquitous in Swaziland’s public service: the prime minister, former foreign minister and several ambassadors all bear the same surname. In addition to the ambassador, there are three other Dlaminis in the Washington embassy.

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MOROCCO: PRINCESS LALLA JOUMALA ALOUI, is a first cousin to

King Mohammed VI. She has come to Washington after seven years as Moroccan ambassador to London, even as her country takes significant strides towards a constitutional monarchy. An Anglophile from her youth, she had opted to study in England instead of France, where members of the Moroccan royal family were usually dispatched for their education, and obtained her degree from London University’s School of Oriental and African Studies. Long before she was appointed ambassador to London she created the Moroccan British Society to further bi-lateral relations. Her cousin named her ambassador to the British capital in 2009, and she remained there until December 2016. Her aunt, Princess Lalla Aicha, King Hassan’s sister, had held the same post in the 1960s. British Society to further bi-lateral relations. Her cousin named her ambassador to the British capital in 2009, and she remained there until December 2016. Her aunt, Princess Lalla Aicha, King Hassan’s sister, had held the same post in the 1960s.

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QATAR: Qatari Ambassador MESHAL HAMAD AL- THANI, arrived in Washington in time to be given the cold shoulder by his colleagues from Saudi Arabia, Egypt and the United Arab Emirates as part of the broader confrontation between his country and its Gulf neighbors, one of the more bizarre squabbles in the history of international relations. Their spine unexpectedly stiffened by Donald Trump’s open support, the usually timid Saudis are accusing the Qataris of being soft on terrorism (to re-work an old Cold War phrase). The pot is calling the kettle black. Meanwhile, Secretary of State Rex Tillerson, whose main job seems to be to clean up the latest presidential mess, attempted reconciliation and failed. “It’s unfortunate to see these [Trump] tweets,” Ambassador Al-Thani told the Daily Beast, voicing a lament that is now part of Washington’s daily life. “We have close coordination with the United States. They know our efforts to combat financial terrorism and terrorism.” Ambassador Al- Thani is a member of the Qatari ruling family and a career diplomat. He has been his country’s ambassador to the United Nations, and – more recently – to Paris.

SAUDI ARABIA: The appointment of PRINCE KHALED BIN SALMAN, as Saudi Arabia’s envoy to Washington sends multiple messages. As a son of King Salman, Prince Khaled is in a privileged position to act as intermediary in a blossoming relationship between President Trump and his new best friend in the Arab world, the Saudi monarch. The fact that Prince Khaled was a Saudi Air Force fighter pilot who has flown several missions against ISIS in Syria helps offset charges that Saudi Arabian Wahabis (Muslim fundamentalists) have supported Islamic terrorist groups. Saudi Arabia is also the world’s third largest defense spender and Prince Khaled will be an influential broker in deals with U.S. weapons producers. Prince Khaled has no previous diplomatic experience but Saudi Arabia’s longest serving, and arguably most effective previous ambassador, Bandar bin Sultan, was also a former Air Force combat pilot. Prince Khaled took primary aviation training at Columbus Air Force Base in Mississippi in 2009, qualifying to fly F-15 fighters. He also took part in raids on Yemen, where the kingdom is engaged in an air war that has killed more than 10,000 civilians, uprooted three million and left millions more on the brink of starvation. A back injury forced the prince to stop flying.

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mission to the United Nations, found himself the sole representative of the newly independent nation, using his son’s bedroom as his office. Earlier this year, Kaludjerovic was appointed Montenegro’s ambassador to Washington where there is a brick-andmortar embassy and a diplomatic staff. Kaludjerovic’s career mirrors the changing existence of his Balkan homeland. When he joined the diplomatic service it was Yugoslav. He left it for some years to become Yugoslav trade representative in Russia. When he returned, Serbia and Montenegro had agreed to remain together and Kaludjerovic was assigned to the U.N. mission as a member of the combined service. Then the two countries separated, the U.N. recognized Montenegro as a member state and he stayed on in New York as its representative. In 2012, he was Montenegro’s foreign minister. After that, he again returned to the foreign service and is now in Washington.

PAKISTAN: Foreign ambassadors can usually count on a respectful – or at least polite – audience when they speak at conferences in Washington, but the Islamic Republic’s Ambassador AIZAZ AHMAD CHAUDHRY was ridiculed at the Atlantic Council when he repeatedly insisted that his country offered no safe havens for terrorists. His statements at an Atlantic Council gathering in June that Pakistan no longer harbored Afghan Talibans and other terrorist groups drew more laughs than a Jimmy Fallon monologue. By the time he said that Mullah Omar, the Taliban “spiritual” leader, who reportedly died in a Pakistani hospital, had never left Afghanistan, the audience was in stitches. “What is there funny about that?” snapped a visibly irritated Chaudhry as experts in the audience challenged his statements. A career diplomat, Chaudhry was previously foreign secretary – the top bureaucrat in the Pakistani foreign ministry. His Atlantic Council encounter was part of his narrative to Washington that the new reality in the late Osama bin Laden’s former country of residence is a more robust

approach to terrorism, an upswing in Pakistan’s economy, an increase in foreign investment and continued concern over an unstable Afghanistan.

POLAND: The one-onone meeting with the president that foreign ambassadors to Washington get at the start of their tenure usually consists of a few formal pleasantries and a photo op. Polish Ambassador PIOTR WILCZEK’s 10 minutes with Donald Trump turned out to be something more. As the ambassador recalled recently, “the first thing the president said was, ‘78 percent of all Polish Americans voted for me. Poles are great.’” Wilczek responded by inviting Trump to Poland. The invitation set in motion elaborate preparations by the White House and the government in Warsaw, enabling Trump to deliver a major speech before a huge crowd in the Polish capital. Wilczek is a distinguished historian specializing in Early Modern History with special reference to the Protestant Reformation. Washington is his first diplomatic post, and he has been reading “In the Garden of Beasts,” an account of William F. Dodd’s tumultuous years as U.S. ambassador to Berlin during the 1930s because, like him, Dodd was a history professor with no previous diplomatic experience. The situations are very different, but Wilczek was interested to see how another academic handled the rules and challenges of diplomacy. Bilateral relations with the U.S. are “very good,” as demonstrated by the warm reception for Trump. Current attempts to bring judges of the Polish supreme court under closer government control have drawn criticism from the E.U. and elsewhere. Wilczek calls the proposed reformation of the Polish judiciary a “necessary” part of the unfinished business in his country’s transition from communism to a democracy. But the reality, he says, is that the judges who had been under rigid regime control for 50 years

are now an autonomous body with virtually no supervision or oversight – and even able to self-appoint new members of the judiciary.

RUSSIA: ANATOLY ANTONOV described his meeting with Donald Trump to present his credentials as “friendly” and “constructive.” Almost everyone else thinks Vladimir Putin’s appointment of Antonov as Russia’s ambassador in Washington is more likely to lead to more confrontation.The Russian ambassador’s public style is Central Casting Soviet, complete with references to “capitalists” and aggressive rhetoric. Prior to Washington, Antonov was deputy foreign minister, but for several years before that he was deputy minister of defense; and has the rank of general. As such he was closely linked with the invasion of Crimea and Moscow’s stage managing of Russian militias in Ukraine. He steps into the job even as several groups are investigating alleged Russian interference in the 2016 election.The outcome of these probes will determine how “constructive” bi-lateral relations are likely to be in the future. SAN MARINO: DAMIANO BELEFFI represents the independent microstate of San Marino, a throwback to the Italian city states of the Renaissance, completely surrounded by Italy and overlooking the northeast coast. A career diplomat, he was his country’s deputy permanent representative at the United Nations until 2016 when he took over as ambassador at both the U.N. and Washington. He lives in New York.

SEYCHELLES: This is Round Two for RONALD JUMEAØU, who had already served concurrently as the Seychelles permanent representative to the United Nations and ambassador to Washington from 2007-2012. As before, he will

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reside in New York, while holding down both assignments. A former journalist, he has served in a number of ministerial positions, most recently as his country’s minister of the environment.

SLOVENIA: Unusually for an ambassador to Washington STANISLAV VIDOVIC has not previously served in the Slovenian embassy in the nation’s capital. Prior to his arrival in the United States he was secretary-general of his country’s ministry of foreign affairs, the top diplomatic post (20142017) after a career of senior foreign service posts in LJubljana, Slovenia’s capital. He has also been Slovenia’s envoy to Slovakia. As his nation’s ambassador to Washington,Vidovic is expected to maintain contact with the Slovenian diaspora’s most distinguished member – Melania Trump. The first lady, born Melania Knavs in Slovenia. was accompanied by her parents,Viktor and Amakija Knavs, when she moved with her son Barron into the White House in June. SOLOMAN ISLANDS: ROBERT SISLO is his country’s chief of mission to the United Nations, and ambassador to the United States, a dual diplomatic role often used by smaller countries with few diplomats and sometimes fewer resources. A career diplomat who has taken up residence in New York, Sislo has been at various times permanent secretary of the Solomon Islands foreign ministry, and held the same post in the ministry of police and national security. He has also been, simultaneously the Solomon Islands’ ambassador to the European Union and high commissioner to London.The latter title is used for ambassadors from British Commonwealth countries to other member nations. A former British colony, the Solomon Islands joined the Commonwealth after becoming independent from the United Kingdom in 1975. But the Oceania country also has historic ties with the U.S. going back to World War II, when American forces fought Japanese troops in the battle of Guadalcanal, one of the major battles of the conflict in the Pacific.

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FROM PRIME MINISTER TO AMBASSADOR A politician’s unusual journey WASHINGTON LIFE: How do you see your

he U.S. State Department describes Cabo Verde (or Cape Verde) as “a model of democratic governance” enjoying “relatively high literacy rates, high per capita income and positive health indicators.” One of the key figures responsible for its stability has long been Carlos Alberto Carvalho Veiga, a former prime minister who from January 2017 is the former Portuguese colony’s ambassador in Washington. Veiga played a key political role in transforming the nation of 10 islands 300 miles off the African coast from a Marxist, one-party state to a multi-party democracy, and then headed the government for almost a decade. One of his problems is likely to be the fate of many of the half-a-millionplus Cabo Verdeans in the United States in the face of President Trump’s tighter immigration policy. Veiga, understandably, plays this down. There are, in fact, more Cabo Verdeans living outside the country than at home, where the population also totals around 500,000. The former Portuguese colony and historic center of the slave trade is increasingly at the cross-roads of the transatlantic narco-trade, which the U.S. collaborates closely with the Cabo Verdean authorities in fighting. >

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role in Washington and how do you think Washington sees you? carlos veiga: By appointing a former prime-minister who is widely regarded as the historic face of Cabo Verdean democracy, the government wanted to convey a compelling message to the U.S. Government and to the American people of the special importance we attach to U.S.-Cabo Verde relations. My main objective is to foster, strengthen and widen the scope of action and intervention in matters like security and defense, private American investment, trade, the attraction of American tourism, cooperation in higher education, public health and, certainly, get a third Millenium Challenge Corporation (MCC) compact that I honestly believe Cabo Verde deserves.  In light of the Trump Administration’s more stringent policies, to what extent is immigration an issue between Cabo Verde and the U.S.? As a result of considerable improvements in the living condition of Cabo Verdeans since independence, the flow of emigration has substantially decreased. As a result, immigration is essential in bilateral relations but no longer represents the primary bi-lateral concern. There are about 400 Verdeans facing a final order of deportation, and about half of them have a criminal record. An insignificant number, indeed, if compared with the half million members of the Cabo Verdean community. How is the embassy involved? We have signed with the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) a memorandum of understanding fixing the bilateral procedures for deportation, after appeal.The memorandum allows more preparation time for the deportees reception [in Cabo Verde], and a phased deportation to prevent a massive influx.

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SPAIN: For the first time in some 30 years the Spanish ambassador to Washington is not a senior career diplomat but a political appointee. PEDRO MORENÉS EULATE,

a well-known political figure in Madrid, was minister of defense in Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy’s conservative government from 2011 until his first ever diplomatic assignment this year. His background includes involvement in the Spanish shipbuilding business and various stints as deputy minister (security, science and technology policy) before his ministerial appointment. He has said he is committed to raising the profile of the Spanish language in the United States where there are already 57 million Spanish speakers. But his appointment reflects close bi-lateral defense ties.The U.S. has two military bases in Spain, Rota naval base and Moron Air Force base, which in 2016 became home to 3,000 U.S. Marines for deployment on missions in Africa.

ST. LUCIA: ANTON EDMUNDS is founder and CEO of what his embassy website biography describes as “a boutique Caribbean and emerging markets consulting firm” serving governments and companies primarily in the Caribbean Basin area. Previously he was executive director of Caribbean Central American Action, an independent corporation that promotes private sector-led economic development in the Caribbean and Central America. In the 1990s he represented St. Lucia development in New York.

ST. VINCENT & THE GRENADINES: LOU-ANNE GAYLENE GILCHRIST was a senior official in the Ministry of Education of St.Vincent and the Grenadines before her recent appointment as the multi-island nation’s ambassador to Washington. Prior to that, she had taught modern languages at her alma mater, St.Vincent Grammar School. The islands are among the best known Caribbean tourist resorts, including the privately

owned Mustique (badly damaged by recent hurricanes) where the Duke of Cambridge, second in line to the British throne, and his wife, the former Kate Middleton vacation often. Like other Caribbean ambassadors, Gaylene Gilchrist has a large diaspora in her area – likely to increase as more of the islands’ 116,000 population take advantage of new direct flights to New York from the international airport completed in February in St.Vincent (with Cuban and Venezuelan help).

SURINAME: NIERMALA BADRISING’s second Washington assignment. From 2012 to 2015 she represented her Latin American country bordering on Brazil at the Organization of American States. She spent the following two years in Suriname as foreign minister. In July 2017, the career diplomat (Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy at Tufts) presented her credentials to President Trump as Suriname ambassador to the United States, as well as resuming her old position as chief of mission to the OAS. She once called Suriname “the greenest nation on earth” because 90 percent of the territory is forest. Its coast washed by the North Atlantic, the former Dutch colony is still strongly influenced by its former European colonizer. The official language is Dutch, and while its population its slightly more than 585,000, an additional 350,000 of Surinamese descent live in the Netherlands. SWEDEN: KRISTIN ÓLOFSDÓTTIR is Sweden’s first female ambassador to Washington. Jan Eliasson, who once held the post before going on to be deputy secretary general of the United Nations, tweeted his congratulations. Ólofsdóttir’s previous Washington posting was as deputy chief of mission from 2008-2011. After that, she was Sweden’s ambassador to Budapest, and most recently director general for trade policy at the ministry of foreign affairs in Stockholm.

TOGO: FREDERIC EDEM HEGBE was a grade school principal in the tiny former French colony until 1978, when he joined the ministry of foreign affairs. He arrived in Washington in the early 1990s as his embassy’s economic counselor. From 1993-1995, he was interim chief of mission. From 2012 to 2014 Hegbe worked outside the embassy as a French instructor at the State Department’s Foreign Service Institute. When he presented his credentials to President Trump in April of this year, he extended an invitation to the president to attend the AfricaIsrael Summit in October in Lomé,Togo’s capital. TUVALU: SAMUELU LALONIU represents one of the smallest states in existence, nine Pacific islands halfway between Hawaii and Australia, once known as the Ellice Islands. Because he doubles as Tuvalu’s permanent representative to the United Nations, Ambassador Laloniu resides in New York, with occasional visits to Washington. A former British colony – and still a member of the British Commonwealth – Tuvalu has a population of around 12,000, now dwindling because climate change has turned the country into an endangered species, with slowly rising ocean-levels threatening to drown the islands. UGANDA: SEBUJJA MULL KATENDE’S earlier posts included head of mission in Ethiopia and permanent representative to the African Union, where he chaired the organization’s peace and security council. He takes over in Washington at a time of gradually improving bi-lateral relations after years of U.S. disapproval of Uganda’s human rights abuses and political instability. More recently, Uganda is “a reliable partner,” according to the State Department, in combating terrorism and maintaining security in the Horn of Africa, mainly through its African Union military contingent in Somalia.

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RSVP THE ALLURE OF EMBASSY INVITATIONS

French Ambassador Gerard Araud, Izette Folger, Pascal Blondeau and Jennifer Isham at the Michelin Guide release party at the ambassador’s residence in 2016.

n New Year’s Eve 2016, the British Embassy threw a party at its elegant Massachusetts Avenue ambassadorial residence. Prominent among the guests were staff members of the incoming administration. It’s a safe bet that for some (not to say many) of the other guests, sharing the evening with diehard Trump people was not an ideal way to end the year, but for the embassy it was something of a coup. “Having White House people show up: that makes a social secretary’s heart soar,” comments Francesca Craig, holder of that job at the French Embassy – which scored a similar success for its Bastille Day celebration. It’s not hedonism continues to make embassies the source of some of Washington’s most celebrated parties. There’s hardly an ambassador who would not echo the words of Pope Leo X, a Medici pope: “God has given us the papacy, let us enjoy it.” The plain fact is that embassy entertaining is an extension of diplomacy. Why? “Politics and policies are driven by relationships and [social] events develop those relationships,” says Sandra Pandit,

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social secretary at the German Embassy. Like other embassy social secretaries, Craig and Pandit dream up names on guest lists at night, often in order of desirability. Their job is to put feet on the carpets and bottoms on the chairs in response to their ambassador’s social requirements. French Ambassador Gerard Araud “likes to mix up the guests and that’s a lot of fun,” Craig says, adding that they aim for people in the arts, the administration, the Hill, the Supreme Court and the Washington establishment. At the German Embassy, says Pandit, Ambassador Peter Wittig and his wife Huberta von Voss-Wittig started the Berliner Salon, monthly conversations with well known authors and other personalities. The Austrian Embassy is built around an atrium so that it can host large events like concert receptions. The accepted wisdom is that not everybody shows, even when they have accepted, and a 60-65 percent turnout is considered optimum attendance. In this respect, the worst offenders are denizens of Capitol Hill, whose work week seems to be from Tuesday to Wednesday before

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they run back to their home towns. There are fixed events, notably national day celebrations.The German Day of Unity in October is a mammoth affair with bands and samples of German cuisine. At the Japanese Embassy’s annual cherry blossom reception President Trump‘s daughter Ivanka (no less) was among the guests. In other respects, embassy entertaining comes in many forms, and an invitation from a foreign mission is coveted in Washington whether it’s to a black-tie dinner, a musical evening, garden party, tea, reception or an intellectual discussion. How an embassy entertains “often depends on the ambassador,” says Capricia Marshall, White House social secretary in the Clinton administration and later U.S. chief of protocol under Batrack Obama. “An ambassador will have a certain style, and [the embassy] follows along with that plan.” But while the approach may differ from one ambassador to another, she adds, “the primary reason is always to engage, to network and create relationships.” More and more the emphasis is on trade related social events. A while back, the British Embassy held a reception to celebrate Savile Row tailoring with representatives of many of the top London houses on hand. This summer, the embassy hosted events for owners of vintage Bentley and Aston Martin automobiles. Newly arrived ambassadors to the U.S. are surprised when first approached by charities to give fund-raising parties at the embassy residence – something they are rarely asked to do in other diplomatic posts. “Engagement in philanthropy is quite unique to Washington and not part of embassies’ social agenda,” Marshall says. But Washington’s party calendar is largely philanthropy driven, and for years embassies have hosted numerous events with a cause although some have recently begun to cut back on philanthropic events, mainly because of budget considerations.

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THE TRUMP FACTOR Currying favor with the new regime

he diplomatic race to be the first invited Trump to visit Queen Elizabeth II in “Embassies court Ivanka Trump to build a foreign leader to meet the newly the summer, but the visit is permanently on relationship with her father’s administration.” elected Donald Trump began even hold because the president doesn’t want to This came after Ivanka and her five-year-old before his inauguration, and Japanese Prime risk running into strong British opposition. Mandarin-speaking daughter, Arabella, were Minister Shinzo Abe was the winner, by Then French President Emmanuel Macron guests at the Chinese Embassy’s New Year several lengths. British Prime Minister Theresa phoned to invite him to watch the Bastille celebration in February, and Ivanka Trump’s May was the first post-inauguration visitor. Day parade in Paris and he couldn’t wait to Instagram later showed Arabella at home, Arranging a meeting with Trump remains jump on Air Force One. In Paris, the startled singing in Chinese. One paper said Ivanka’s a priority of Washington embassies whose French heard him on video telling Macron’s visit “balanced Trump’s harsh posture” – leaders have yet to meet him: ambassadors 64-year-old wife more than once that she was resumably a reference to Trump’s antagonism get points for successfully arranging a “in such great shape.” towards China in his campaign speeches, and meeting, and sometimes his phone call to the Taiwanese demerits for failing. president. As for Arabella’s For his first foreign visitors Instagram performance, it went Trump was unknown territory. viral on Chinese social media. But by now a kind of Trump Ivanka and her children also primer has taken shape on how to made a surprise appearance at approach an American president a Japanese Embassy reception who is outside the conventional marking the Cherry Blossom perceptions – mercurial, strongFestival. The embassy had willed, with no real experience even prepared a special video on the international stage, and version of the viral hit “PAPP” with a preference for personal (Pen-Pineapple-Apple-Pen) connections. by the Japanese Youtube star Sir Peter Westmacott, a Pikotaro. Ivanka and husband former British ambassador to Jared Kushner have also been Washington, interviewed by guests at social occasions at Arabella and Joseph Kushner, Ivanka Trump, Nobuko Sasae and Pikachu at the Residence the New York Times, summed the embassies of the United of Japan for the National Cherry Blossom Reception 2017 (Photo by Tony Powell) up the guidelines: “[Trump] Kingdom and France. likes to have wins for America and wins for More tales of the unexpected circulate Ivanka’s presence at an embassy function himself from bi-lateral meetings. Secondly, he among foreign diplomats in Washington. may boost its image, but is it a path to is a dealmaker, a pragmatist. Third, he’s a guy Trump’s trip to Warsaw came out of Polish influence? There’s not much evidence, beyond with a limited attention span. He absolutely Ambassador Piotr Wilczek’s 10-minute hearsay, that she can argue, coax, charm or won’t want to listen to visitors droning on White House meeting. Trump opened the cajole Trump to do what he doesn’t want to for a half hour.” conversation with: “76 percent of Polish do, or not to do what he does. This may be good, practical advice, but the Americans voted for me: I love the Poles.” It’s now received wisdom that foreign outcome is harder to predict. It’s not yet firmly Wilczek promptly invited Trump to visit embassies are flocking to patronize Trump’s established what beans Trump might have Poland and the trip quickly took shape. When new Washington hotel to curry favor with spilled to the Russian foreign minister, Sergei Trump received the Czech ambassador, Hynek the president. Lavrov, in their White House meeting. Jordan’s Kmonicek, the president congratulated him According to press reports, lobbyists King Abdullah II sought an unscheduled on having such an attractive wife. for Saudi Arabia spent $270,000 at the meeting with Trump to argue against the Other ways were tested to attract hotel during the first months of the Trump president’s campaign promise to move the Trump’s attention. When embassies began transition campaigning as part of an effort to U.S. embassy to Jerusalem and Trump agreed paying attention to first daughter Ivanka, prevent the desert kingdom from being sued to shelf the transfer. Prime Minister May the Washington Post ran the headline, by the relatives of 9/11 victims.

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TRUMP OPENS CAN OF WORMS For the Wahabis, charity begins at al-Qaida

t the Riyadh summit in Saudi Arabia President Trump praised America’s Persian gulf allies for their united front against Iran. Their what? Within days, three monarchies of the region – Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain – joined by Egypt, had turned on one of their own. With the Saudis in the lead, they want to punish Qatar for supporting the Muslim Brotherhood and other Islamic extremists, for founding, hosting and supporting Al-Jazeera, and for its ties with Iran, with which it shares rich gas fields. This is not the first such spat between Saudi Arabia and Qatar, but potentially the most dangerous in part because the normally cagey, but basically timid Saudis have had their spine stiffened by what they see as Trump’s enthusiastic backing. As Middle East specialist Bruce Riedel at the Brookings Institution put it, “the Riyadh summit’s outcome is exacerbating sectarian and political tensions in the region.” But this crisis is a re-make of a movie almost as old as U.S.-Saudi relations. Anything the Qataris are doing (and hardly anybody says they are not), the Saudis, and the U.A.E. have done better – or worse, and for longer. As a recently rich nation, the Qataris would need to spend much more to catch up with the Saudi’s contribution to creating global mayhem in the name of Allah. Trump thinks deals make the world go ’round, and he’s right in at least one case – the understanding between the House of Saud and the Wahabis, the ultra-conservative wing of Sunni Islam named after its 18th century creator that has been the fundamental religion of Saudi Arabia since its modern founding in 1932. Wahabism and the monarchy offer mutual support to each other at home, and at the same time the Saudis and other gulf states finance the Wahabis’ global jihad.

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Wahabi religious beliefs are rooted in Salafism, a very early, ultra-conservative branch of Islam, intransigent against non-believers (that is, anyone who is not Salafist), and supporters of the Sharia as the rule of law. Under this influence, Saudi Arabia was from the start (at least officially) very legalistic, very austere and very black and white. The Saudis have used their oil wealth to spread the influence of Wahabi Salafism wherever there are concentrations of Muslims, funding

Donald Trump bonds with Saudi Arabia’s King Salman at the Riyadh summit (Official White House Photo Shealah Craighead)

Wahabi-run mosques, madrassas and Islamic centers. There is ample evidence that money channeled to the Wahabi through Saudi and Gulfie NGOs, charitable institutions and foundations is siphoned off to terrorist groups. The State Department has estimated that in the past 40 years the Saudis have invested more than $10 billion in charitable contributions in their campaign to impose the harsh intolerance of Wahabism on Sunni populations worldwide. Of that, E.U. intelligence experts reckon, around 20 percent has found its way to Al-Qaida and other jihadist movements. In 2013, the European Parliament in Strasbourg proclaimed Wahabism the main source of global terrorism. When she was secretary of state, Hillary Clinton decried Saudi Arabia’s “critical financial support base for Al-Qaida, the Taliban and other terrorist groups,” according to Wikileaks. But

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that didn’t stop the Obama administration from selling the kingdom $112 billion in weapons over eight years, a perfect illustration of the long-standing ambivalence of Washington’s relationship with Saudi Arabia. U.S. officials will invariably trot out the argument that much of Saudi support for terrorism involves individuals and groups outside the government. But the regime and the Wahabi hierarchy are so closely interwoven that the explanation is only partially correct, and doesn’t stand much scrutiny. The Saudi government has gone hot and cold between supporting or cracking down on Wahabi contributions. It cracked down on them following Al-Qaida attacks in Saudi Arabia itself in 2003. The current spat against Qatar is also designed to demonstrate its opposition to what one commentator calls “theo-fascism.” But the reality is, according to experts, that the Saudis play both sides against the middle. There is a counter-argument that Wahabism is conservative and austere but not intrinsically violent, but has been hijacked by terrorist groups for political aims. But the question of whether the Wahabis are using the Jihadists or the Jihadists the Wahabis, the end result is the same in the bloodbaths of Paris, London, New York and Jakarta. Saudi condemnations of jihadism are for foreign consumption. At home, the regime still spews out material that is anti-Semitic, sectarian, and praises conflicts in which Sunni jihadists are active. And all the while, the Saudi royals wash their hands of responsibility for the radicalization it is – either through indifference, inefficiency or collusion, or a combination of all three -- helping to fund. “If there are those who change some work of charity into evil activities, then it is not the kingdom’s responsibility, nor its people, which helps its Arab and Muslim brothers around the world,” King Salman has said in his government’s defense – a line of argument he may well have used with Trump.

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AMBASSADORS

A CONVERSATION WITH KUWAIT’S AMBASSADOR Salem Abdullah Al-Jaber Al-Sabah.

oreign chiefs of mission can usually expect their Washington assignment to last for four, maybe five, years. On August 21, Kuwaiti Ambassador Salem Abdullah Al-Jaber Al-Sabah and his wife Rima celebrated their 16th year in Washington. They arrived just three weeks before 9/11. Socially, they are a high-profile couple, well known for soirées blending top level guests from the administration and Congress with Hollywood celebrities. Ambassador AlSabah is a career diplomat and a member of Kuwait’s ruling family and therefore well-connected. He had previously served in his nation’s permanent mission to the United Nations and as ambassador to South Korea. In Washington, he has embodied for successive U.S. administrations the very model of a friendly Arab ally. The bi-lateral relationship is virtually free of human rights issues and quietly cooperative in all the major regional challenges from terrorism to the current squabble between Qatar and its Gulf neighbors. Interviewed recently, Al-Sabah said Kuwait’s Emir Sabah Al-Ahmed Al-Jaber Al-Sabah has stepped into the breach as a mediator in the hope of finding a solution to the confrontation. Resolving the dispute, he says, is one of the Kuwaiti government’s “highest priorities.” >> SALEM AL-SABAH Our leadership wants to see this issue resolved, and so does this administration – President Trump himself also wants to see it resolved. When the Emir

it the Qatar peace conference but we’re trying our best to convene the parties around the table and have them start talking. Would that be in the U.S.? Anywhere.You heard President Trump say he would be happy to host it. Assuming the Emir will be the mediator, would you want it to be hosted by President Trump? In Kuwait we’re not concerned about the formalities. We just want the parties to sit together. We want results. We’re result oriented. There are five parties to this dispute, and the five have to agree to sit down and talk.

Rima Al-Sabah and Kuwaiti Amb. Salem Al-Sabah (Photo by Tony Powell)

was in Washington [in September] he and President Trump saw eye-to-eye about the need to find a speedy solution. We’re going to work together to resolve it. WASHINGTON LIFE What is Kuwait

doing to accomplish that? The first step that has to happen is that the parties have to sit around the table. They haven’t done that, and this is the push we are giving: get them into a room, around a table, and once the parties start talking, things will be resolved. There are solutions to the existing problems. Are you close to pulling together the Qatar peace conference? I wouldn’t call

Turning to other subjects, you arrived in August 2011 and a month later there’s 9/11. How did that impact your stay here? September 11 changed everything. Very, very quickly you had to adapt to the new reality, and to the new priorities of the American administration. The priorities concerning our region changed. We quickly realized that nobody’s immune: this could happen everywhere. You went on to deal with three presidents and three administrations. Give us a sense of what it’s like for an ambassador to work in the United States. Every administration has its own style, but Kuwait has had good relations with all three administrations. We’ve always felt that the doors were open to us on many levels. Our head of state has visited all three presidents. We have this very strong strategic relationship with the U.S. and as ambassador I sense it first hand, and it has not changed.

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I consider Washington my second home. My kids grew up here, they went to college from here. My wife and I are very well rooted in Washington. We feel very at home in D.C. But isn’t every administration different, even when the president remains the same? There are variations, there are personalities that differ. I’m talking about from a policy standpoint, the relationship is strong, it’s getting stronger and we’ve always had a very good working relationship. There have recently been protests in Kuwait, for example, against restrictions on the media. Granted that the Kuwait government system comes closest in the Gulf to a Western conception of a democracy, what is the current situation? As a constitutional monarchy we have a very active parliament, elected by direct suffrage and with full legislative powers. Women have the right to vote and to run for office and we’ve had female members of parliament, and ministers. Every country has to have a democracy that is, I think, organic to itself. You can’t bring a Jeffersonian democracy and say, here’s what we’d like you to be. Our democracy is very effective and it reflects our culture and our country – and it works for us. We have a free press: people are allowed to say anything in the press. But isn’t criticism of the Emir off limits for the media? The Emir is criticized, the government is criticized, but we draw a line when that criticism turns into a personal attack beyond the boundaries of decency. What does Kuwait want from your bilateral relationship with the United States? The thing that I’m trying to do at this time is to have a multi-faceted relationship. Meaning, we’re increasing our economic ties, our cultural ties, we already have very strong military ties; we’re increasing our security and our information sharing ties. How dominant are oil exports in U.S.-

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Kuwaiti trade? Oil was never dominant. Our relationship with the U.S. was never oil based, not like the other Gulf countries. Our oil has always gone to Asia ever since the 1960s. At the height of our oil exports to the U.S. it was never more than 300,000 barrels a day, which is negligible. I know that you travel quite a bit in the U.S. What part of America has fascinated you most? I like the West Coast. Mind you there are still a lot of places in America that are still on my bucket list, and I plan to visit them. But I’ve always enjoyed the West Coast.

“Our relationship with the U.S. was never oil based, not like the other gulf countries.” Does the job get easier the longer you stay? The thing that’s easier is that you know more of the folks in Washington, and you have more friends that you can easily reach to ask for an opinion or something like that. After a time, your network grows, your connections are more widespread, and that makes it easier to get a sense of what’s going on. Do you often get a sense of having seen it all before? Not really. It changes. The dynamics are always a bit different. If you rely on having seen it all before, you’re likely to make a mistake. In the span of your career, how has your job changed? Not very much. What has changed dramatically are the tools used now. We have social media – I remember when I started at the U.N. in New York in 1991 there was no email. And the tools changed the dynamic of the job. What’s very, very different is the speed of the work. The President might say something or tweet

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something, my minister sees it immediately and he’s calling me within five minutes to ask me what I think about it. That was not there in the ’90s. You also have to keep up with so much stuff because there’s so much information now. How do you deal with that? I try to keep my eye on the ball. There’s a lot of noise out there, and I try to isolate that noise and try to stay focused on what’s important to us. If you look down the road another ten years, do you ever perhaps think technology will advance to the point where you, as ambassador, are replaced by a hologram? No, I don’t think so. I don’t think anything will replace the personto-person dealings. You can have holograms, you can have virtual reality, you can put goggles on and be in a meeting, but I think there’s nothing that’s going to replace human interaction. Who worries Kuwait most these days, the Iraqis or the Iranians? I think what Kuwait wants to see is stability in the region. What is Kuwait’s approach to the ISIS threat? ISIS will be defeated. This is a matter of certainty. Does that mean that they will vanish off the face of this earth? No. They might congregate elsewhere, but we have them on the run now, and we’ll keep after them on the run until they’re totally eliminated. Kuwait is part of the coalition against ISIS? Yes. Did you participate in the bombing? No, but we played other roles. Very vital roles. Intelligence? Vital roles. So, when you leave here, what would you like for your next posting? Somewhere with a beach.

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AMBASSADORS

IN THE SHADOWLAND OF CYBER WARFARE How to react when the attack worm strikes.

The cyber control room at the Pentagon (Courtesy Photo)

hen does a cyber attack become an act of war? That question is at the heart of an ongoing discussion among U.S. and European policymakers responsible for national security, but so far without a satisfactory answer. “States are very much beginning to organize for cyber warfare,” Michael N. Schmidt, professor of law at the U.S. Naval War College, said recently, “the most robust being the United States with the creation of the U.S. Cyber Command.” Now all they have to do is establish who, or what, they were fighting against. And when. And how. As of a year ago, Thomas Atkin, then in charge of Homeland Defense and Global Security at the Pentagon, told the house Armed Services Committee that a cyber strike as an act of war “has not been defined.” He added, “We’re still working on that definition.” The U.S. Cyber Command was established in 2009. Michael Schmidt himself was one of the authors of a NATO document published this year which, in great detail, puts cyber attacks in the context of existing international laws of conflict. But it doesn’t solve the issue of when a cyber attack can or should lead to war being

declared. “The rules that apply to combat and the use of force remain applicable and appropriate,” James Lewis, a vice-president at the Center of Strategic and International Studies and a specialist on cyber conflict, told a conference in September. “The point that’s difficult is what constitutes a war now. It’s more what is the conflict, not what you do when you’re in the conflict. It’s not all that clear anymore.” There is no doubt that if North Korean leader Kim Jong-un proved insane enough to carry out his threat and launched a nuclear attack on the United States it would be considered an act of war, and the response would be massive. But consider a situation in which the Washington power grid and those of a handful of other key U.S. cities are simultaneously knocked out by a cyberattack, maybe causing some deaths resulting from hospital system shutdowns, traffic accidents and other failures. Assuming that provenance of the attack can be conclusively established as a foreign government, what should be the American reaction? According to Atkin, Pentagon strategists had

yet to determine when and how to respond to a cyberattack on civilian infrastructure. Many experts feel that just as most laws of conflict setting out what was, or more likely what was not, permissible in war were introduced after the fact (for example, poison gas was outlawed after it had been used in World War I), laws on cyber conflict will have to wait until a cyber war is declared and fought. Such a conflict, according to Harold Koh when he was the State Department’s chief legal counsel in the Obama administration, would be the consequence “of a cyberattack (resulting in) the kind of physical damage that dropping a bomb or firing a missile would. That cyberattack should equally be considered a use of force.” There are inhibiting factors in declaring war as a result of a cyberattack. One is the difficulty in identifying the attacker without a shadow of a doubt. It took years before there were indications that the U.S. and Israel were responsible for the 2010 Stuxnet cyber worm attack that damaged more than 900 centrifuges at Iran’s Natanz nuclear plant -but neither country has ever admitted it. Two years later, Iran was suspected of having shut down 30,000 computers at Saudi Arabia’s state-owned oil company using a virus nicknamed Shamoon, but that has never been proven either. Specialists also talk of a new “strategic timidity,” a term reflecting widespread reluctance, especially in Europe, to start a major war of World War II proportions. Even the Russians and the Chinese are careful not to cross some undefined threshold that would trigger a mounting reaction. Hesitation is not President Trump’s strongest suit, and he has ordered a study by the inter-agency community on cyber deterrence and retaliation. Even so, predicted James Lewis of CSIS, what the study will produce is “suggestions for retaliatory actions that will be painful, damaging, but not permanent – and reversible.”

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HURRICANES, CLIMATE CHANGE & DIPLOMACY The U.N. Secretary -General grapples with how to tackle global warming in the wake of the devastating 2017 Atlantic hurricane season and as the U.S. confirms it will back out of the Paris Agreement.

s the United Nations General Assembly convened in New York the week of September 18, Hurricane Maria, a massive, category 5 storm, was hurtling towards the islands of Dominica and Puerto Rico. It would cut a destructive path through an already storm-ravaged and weary Caribbean. Hurricane Irma had only a few days earlier brought utter devastation to Barbuda, St. Martin, the Turks and Caicos and the Virgin Islands. In August, Hurricane Harvey caused record flooding in Houston, Tex. All this only midway through the 2017 Atlantic Hurricane season, the most active and powerful in seven years. “Our world is in trouble,” United Nations Secretary General Antonio Guterres said in his opening speech. “People are hurting and angry. They see insecurity rising, inequality growing, conflict spreading and climate changing.” Gutteres also called two high level meetings on climate change, one of which included former Vice President Al Gore, California Governor Gary Brown and Michael Bloomberg, former New York Mayor and current U.N. special envoy for cities and

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climate change, to discuss the role of climate in weather events, and the implementation of the Paris agreement, under which close to 200 nations have pledged to work together to reduce greenhouse gases to keep a global temperature rise this century well below two degrees.“Hurricanes Harvey, Irma and Maria and the massive floods in South Asia are just the most recent demonstration of the urgency of tackling climate change,” Guterres said in his remarks to the Leaders’ Dialogue on Climate Change. “Such events will only become more frequent and more savage, with more dramatic humanitarian and economic consequences.” Just the day before, as rumors of a reversal swirled, President Donald Trump’s chief economic advisor, Gary Cohn, confirmed to foreign ministers that the United States would indeed pull out of the Paris Agreement as Trump had stated in June. But Cohn did leave open the possibility of working with other countries on climate change. Still, the process to withdraw from the agreement takes four years, meaning the United States will remain a part of it until after the end of the President’s first term.

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MEDIA SILENCE Number of climate change mentions in Hurricane Harvey coverage ABC NEWS: 0 NBC NEWS: 0 CBS NEWS: 2 NEWSWEEK: 2 USA TODAY: 3 FOX NEWS: 4 WALL STREET JOURNAL: 5 NEW YORK TIMES: 18 WASHINGTON POST; 20 HOUSTON CHRONICLE: 22 CNN: 30 *Data compiled by Public Citizen, which in a new report found early news coverage of Hurricane Harvey rarely mentioned climate change as a contributing factor, even as scientists were ringing the alarm.

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ambassadors

NUMBER TWO ... FOR NOW Female deputy chiefs of mission discuss their work and aspirations.

Deputy Chiefs of Mission Veronique Dockendorf, Heleen Bakker, Marki Tihhonova-Kreek, Nathalie Broadhurst, at the National Gallery of Art catch the eye of Vincent van Gogh. (Photo by Tony Powell)

hen Karen Olofsdotter presented her credentials to President Trump as the new Swedish ambassador in September, she was making diplomatic history. For one thing, she is Sweden’s first woman ambassador to the United States. More important to the female deputy chiefs of mission currently serving in Washington, it’s not too long ago that Olofsdotter herself was one of them – a DCM in the nation’s capital. She has achieved what every female DCM (and male, for that matter), can reasonably aspire to as a next step up the diplomatic career ladder – an ambassadorship. At last count, there were 47 females in the number two post in Washington embassies, the highest ever, and a sure sign of the increase in the number of women in diplomatic careers

(in the last decade in the Netherlands, for example, more women than men were trained as diplomats). Thirteen of the DCMs are in European embassies; the others are serving in embassies from across the entire world, including Panama, Jordan, China, New Zealand and Botswana. According to an old joke, you can always tell the difference between an ambassador and a DCM because the DCM is the one with the permanent frown. That’s because the DCM is responsible for the smooth running of the embassy. Much more so in the U.S. system, where 30 percent of ambassadorships are handed out to big campaign contributors with zero diplomatic experience, but just as true of most foreign diplomatic corps where the ambassador is almost invariably a career

diplomat himself. And the bigger the embassy, the deeper the frown. “I do everything the ambassador doesn’t have time to do – coordination of the political team, coordination of the services in an embassy of 300 people,” is how Nathalie Broadhurst, DCM at the French Embassy defined her role in a recent interview as part of a number of conversations with what statisticians would call a sample of female deputy chiefs of mission in Washington. Some of them, perhaps even all, are likely to be among the next generation of ambassadors to the United States. A graduate of the prestigious National School of Administration (ENA), alma mater of French presidents and cabinet ministers, Broadhurst’s previous post was Beijing and she is something of a China specialist. As an

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intern in France’s embassy in Beijing at the ambassador to the U.S. is a female, as was the start of her career she met a young American ambassador’s predecessor. And until recently, doing business in China. Their friendship was the Jordanian defense attache was a sister of an incentive to ask for two further tours in Jordan’s King Abdullah II. Veronique Dockendorf of the Luxembourg the Chinese capital, and they are now husband Embassy, who joined her country’s foreign and wife. Sheryl Shum, Broadhurst’s counterpart at service as an intern and stayed “to see what the Embassy of Singapore and a University diplomacy looked like,” said Luxembourg had of Chicago political science graduate, says, so few diplomats that sooner or later almost “Basically, my role is to oversee the running everyone made it to ambassador. of the embassy, which is an overarching Gender bias seemed not to be a major management role rather than a policy role.” concern – “I never felt any difficulty to be But because she is in touch with every branch of the embassy, as well as with outside contacts, she also “makes sure that we’re all plugged in.” Heleen Bakker, a former local employee of the Netherlands embassy in Kenya who later transferred to a diplomatic career, said “you have to make sure we work as a team – that there’s cohesion and a very close working relationship.” Estonian Embassy DCM Marki Tihhonova-Kreek ’s introduction to diplomacy was when, as a young lawyer fresh out of Oxford University, she helped draft her country’s accession treaty to the European Union at the ministry of foreign affairs – “and I never left it,” she said. An ambassadorship “would happen logically, but it’s never been a fixed idea that I think about every day. Eventually I’ll get there, and I would like to get there,” she said. Other female DCMs were more, Sheryl Shum at the Singapore embassy with then Singapore Economic well – diplomatic – about any Secretary Nydia Ngiow (Courtesy Photo) ambition to step up to ambassador. “I would like to climb the ladder, but my accepted in a multi-national environment, ambition is to have jobs where I can make not even in China,” said Broadhurst. a difference,” Bakker said, typically. “I would However, the impact on family life on what always put substance over ambition or rank.” is essentially a nomadic existence was the And Broadhurst said “my objective is to look subject of much discussion. “In the diplomatic world, the entire for overseas jobs, but I always think in terms of family undertakes to support the career of how interesting is the post itself.” Asal Al-Tal, of the Jordanian Embassy, shrugs one person,” said Shum, who is single. “You off the question, saying, “I’m enjoying the uproot yourself every three to five years.” journey, the destination comes later.” Even so, Bakker added, “The package has to be right she knows she has a good chance of reaching for everyone.You see so many young couples that destination. The current Jordanian now, each with a career, and it’s not always

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easy to find a solution.” And Dockendorf advises newcomers, “choose your partner wisely. I’ve seen colleagues struggling with going abroad because it wasn’t possible (because of family issues).” But other advice given to young women entering the diplomatic profession included Broadhurst’s “Be completely open and adaptable to any opportunity, and don’t hold yourself back.” Al-Tal said, “I tell them, work very hard, read a lot, and be socially active.” Tihhonova-Kreek said that if her daughter showed any interest in following in her mother’s footsteps, “I would be supportive, but I would explain that [the foreign service] is different from what people assume. It’s not glamorous. You don’t get to wear nice dresses and high heels. Yet if I look back at my years in the foreign service I’ve never really lost excitement during the journey.” One question is whether, ultimately, gender makes a difference when it comes to running an embassy. Broadhurst believes women are “well organized” because of the logistical demands of balancing a family and work. “It’s more the personality of the DCM rather than gender that makes the difference.” Al-Tal said. “It’s a matter of personal style.” A significant change in how diplomats do business has been the rapid advance of technology. Virtually every foreign diplomat in Washington has a Twitter account and is often on Facebook. Technology “has changed the very texture of our job,” Broadhurst says. “The decision making process has accelerated, and you have to be ready.” The enormous flow of news and the speed of communications means, said TihhonovaKreek, that “basically, we’re on the run.” Summing up, Bakker observed that, “we can use optimized technology, and it has brought a lot of advantages. But in the end diplomacy is about personal relationships. You have to look your interlocutors in the eye, shake their hands, and I don’t think that will ever be replaced by technology.”

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AMBASSADORS

HOUSING EMBASSIES< DIFFERENT COUNTRIES= SIMILAR PROBLEMS

y Tony

n the winter of 2000, the State Department listed 166 foreign embassies in Washington. Today it’s 192, and still mounting as the world continues to fragment into more independent states. Add to that at least 50 embassies to the Organization of American States and you have a major space squeeze. All these establishments are crammed into one of the smallest national capitals, with pricey office space and an incredibly crowded real estate market. For ambassadorial residences, foreign missions tend to acquire prestigious Washington houses, often the former homes of American captains of industry; but for chanceries — the embassy’s actual offices — purpose built is preferred. Hence such downtown landmarks as the embassies of Australia and Canada respectively, and the distinctive Finnish embassy on Massachusetts Avenue. To provide more space, the State Department created the International Chancery Center in the ConnecticutVan Ness area of Northwest Washington, now home of – among others – the Austrian, Jordanian and Egyptian embassies. But all the lots there have since been assigned, so work has begun on a new Foreign Missions Center on the site of what until 2011 was the Walter Reed Army Medical Center. When the U.S. Army decided to close its sprawling medical facility near Old Georgetown Road bordering on Rock Creek Park, a 33acre parcel was given to the State Department -– over the objections of then-Mayor Vincent Gray who wanted the whole area for a new city center: The District of Columbia ended up paying $22.5 million for the remaining 67 acres. The State Department expects to accommodate between 10 and 15 chanceries on the site, supplying the infrastructure while the foreign missions are responsible for design and construction. But the U.S. has another motive besides

providing adequate space for foreign missions, and that is “to enhance the Department of State’s efforts to gain new sites to construct safe, modern, and secure [U.S.] embassies and consulates overseas,” according to a recent statement. Meaning what exactly? In 1998, the United States began a massive global program to build more secure diplomatic missions. Around the world, new buildings quickly went into construction based on a Standard Embassy Design (SED), a boilerplate model that had

large, medium and small options, like a t-shirt, and incorporating Congress-mandated security requirements that included 100-foot set-backs from roadways and nine-foot-high walls. In its quest for new sites all over the world, the U.S. promised foreign governments that it would make reciprocal facilities available in Washington for missions in need of new, perhaps larger, or more secure, offices. Hence the International Chancery Center. Now that’s filled, a second chancery campus is being prepared for sale or lease to new tenants. Predictably perhaps, the DOS’s Walter Reed project has run into criticism from environmentalists, and historical preservationists. The current plan to demolish all but two of the 16 mostly Colonial Revival buildings on the site (one of them the site chapel) has drawn

fire from the Committee of 100 in the Federal City, an old-established preservation group.The Committee accuses the State Department of having “a low bar in the proposed re-use of the site even though so much is available.” To the DOS, said the Committee, the site is “largely a piece of dirt.” The State Department’s response is that the buildings in question are too large, too run down or otherwise unsuitable for conversion to use by foreign missions. And anyway, most foreign missions will want to design buildings that reflect their respective country’s culture, prosperity and the importance of its relationship with the United States. But some critics point out that the D.C. Comprehensive Plan, the city’s long-term framework for land-use, has specific regulations directed at the construction of foreign missions. Such new structures, the plan states, need to take account of “the city’s open space and historic resources” and to “enhance Washington’s international image as a city of great architecture and urban design.” Meanwhile overseas, the State Department shifted from SEDs – or so-called “concrete bunker embassies” – to a scaled-up program called Excellence in Diplomatic Facilities, and hired some of the country’s most celebrated architects to design and build them. Some of the results are strikingly innovative – perhaps so much so that, had they been in Washington, they would they had problems with the D.C. Comprehensive Plan? A frequent complaint about the new U.S. embassies is that they are hard to reach. But the same complaint is already being voiced that future embassies in the former Walter Reed complex would be difficult to reach. But the reciprocity commitment by which most of diplomacy functions would have been fulfilled.

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ATLAS CORPS

THE NEXT GLOBAL LEADERS Atlas Corps, an overseas fellowship for nonprofit talent, helps mentor tomorrow’s changemakers. BY ERICA MOODY

Founder Scott Beale with Atlas Corps fellows (Courtesy Photo)

he Brooking Institution referred to the Atlas Corps as a “reverse Peace Corps.” A former fellow described it as a “real-life Real World.” And if you listen to the words of founder Scott Beale, the nonprofit group does sound like an idyllic place where strangers from different backgrounds come together and live in harmony. ‘The Pakistani youth leader whose Muslim faith is important to her meets the Nigerian health doctor who’s passionate about her Christian faith,” Beale says. “They live together in the same group house in Southwest D.C. One works on health, the other on human development, and they learn and feel

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supported by each other.” Some fellows return home with Atlas Corps tattoos, and “they wear the pins for the rest of their lives.” Beale came up with the idea when working as a diplomat for the U.S. Embassy in India. He thought it would be amazing if nonprofit leaders could come to the U.S., learn from U.S. organizations and also teach their perspectives and experiences. “It would be a new way of promoting global collaboration,” he explains. “We had 45 years of Americans serving overseas in the Peace Corps without much thought of people coming to volunteer here.” Atlas Corps, established in 2006, aims to be less like an internship and more like a

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prestigious fellowship. Organizations pay to bring in accomplished individuals for 12month residencies. “The average fellow is a 29-year-old woman with a Master’s degree who kicks ass,” Beale says. Nonprofits like the Malala Fund and Habitat for Humanity, and even some forprofits like the Nike Foundation and the American Express Foundation – cover half the cost of each fellowship. The remaining funds are obtained from donors. Once they arrive in the U.S., fellows are set up with training, housing and guidance, and they spend the rest of the time working with the organizations where they get placed. Applications have been increasing rapidly, and there’s now a 1 percent acceptance rate; of the 10,000 people who begin the application, 90 are selected each year. Fellows are encouraged to work on social issues in the U.S. and then return home to continue that work. As an example, Katia Dantas worked with the International Centre for Missing & Exploited Children during her fellowship. When she returned to Brazil, she continued that work by opening up a chapter of the organization and working as its Latin American & Caribbean Policy director; eight years later, she’s still leading efforts to fight the exploitation of children. Over the next decade, Beale hopes to open Atlas Corps offices throughout the world. He envisions a global community of former fellows working together to address the world’s most critical social issues. “If we have 1,000 people a year or 5,000 people a year, over a decade you have 50,000 global social change leaders. That is what you need to address the challenges of the world,” Beale enthuses. “Five hundred is just enough for a news article. 50,000 is enough to actually change the world.”

SPECIAL FEATURE

BREXIT

EUROPE AFTER BREXIT< STILL IN ONE PIECE= AFTER ALL

ontrary to dire predictions, Brexit doesn’t seem to be leading to the disintegration of the European Union. Early talk about the end of Europe has evolved into a revived debate about the future of the continent, helped by recent election victories of pro-European parties over the populist, anti-Europe threat in Austria, France and the Netherlands. So, while the British agonize and argue over a negotiating position in the ongoing Brexit talks, the remaining 27 countries are moving on. “As much as some countries regret to see the U.K. go, they have turned the page faster than the U.K. itself,” comments Caroline de Gruyter, of the European Council on Foreign Relations, headquartered in London. If anything, witnessing the uncertainty in the U.K. over its own future, has introduced a dollop of sobriety into the behavior of the member states, even drawing them closer together. David O’Sullivan, the E.U.’s permanent representative in Washington, said the Union will “essentially airbrush the United Kingdom out of the European treaties, then we will continue to develop and grow,” The so-called Visegrad 4 (V4) – Poland, Hungary, the Czech Republic and Slovakia – are in varying degrees opposed to closer E.U. integration and what they perceive as dominance by the big Western countries (read Germany and France). They resent the “elitist” Brussels-knows-best attitude, and feel patronized by the Western governments. Even so, judging by comments from their respective ambassadors in Washington, these Central European countries have been careful to distance themselves from the British divorce. The other day, Polish Ambassador Piotr Wilczek assured a group of journalists that Poles were “devout” members of the European Union, with surveys showing more than 80 percent support. For all Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban’s open hostility towards Brussels, his new envoy in Waashington, Laszo

The EU’s chief Brexit negotiator, Michael Barnier (Courtesy Photo)

Szabo, said Hungary had no desire to leave the European Union either, but was opposed to sacrificing the sovereignty of the member states in the interests of further integration. “We believe the European Union should be made up of strong countries,” he said. And the Czech Ambassador Hynek Kmonicek said he was sure that a referendum on the European Union in his country “would not lead to a Czechxit.” It helps that the 19 long-troubled eurozone economies are showing significant improvement across the board, in the context of a global economic upturn as reported by the OECD (Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development). Even Greece is showing signs of turning the corner, the OECD reported, with 2.5 percent growth expected this year. Eurozone economic growth was higher than in the U.S. in the first quarter of 2017, and was the same level in the second quarter. Unemployment overall is at an eight-year low of 9.1 percent. Brexit does raise some hard questions about security, particularly at a time when Europe

is becoming increasingly uncertain of the firmness of Washington’s continued security commitment to its oldest allies. With Britain’s departure the E.U. will lose its largest military power, and one of its two nuclear-armed members (and one of the two countries with right of veto in the U.N. Security Council). When it comes to trade, 44 percent of British exports go to E.U. countries. Against that, only eight percent of E.U. exports go to the United Kingdom. Shut off from the E.U. single market, the British are confident that they can build up a healthy bi-lateral trade, but future trade and investment deals will take time and will be made at less favorable terms. Agreement on the future of E.U. citizens living in the U.K. and of British citizens in the 27 member states is a high priority for Brussels. O’Sullivan stresses that there is “nothing punitive” in the E.U.’s approach, but leaving the club has to have consequences. It would be naïve to imagine “that you can be a member of the biggest single market in the world … one of the richest and most successful peace projects in the history of mankind, and that you walk out the door and carry on as though you were still a member,” O’Sullivan said. With the U.K. gone, more power shifts to France and Germany, reshaping the E.U.’s political alignment. Symbolic of this shift will be the decline of the English language as the dominant E.U. tongue, some believe – among them Jean Claude Junker, the president of the European Commission, who recently predicted that, “Slowly but surely, English will lose its importance in Europe.” But will it? At the insistence of Malta and Ireland, English will remain an official E.U. language. And besides, English is likely to remain the default language of communication between a Dutch E.U. official and a Bulgarian, both of whom will continue to have problems with the other main language, which is French.

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MY WASHINGTON SIR KIM DARROCH British Ambassador to the United States BY KEVIN CHAFFEE

P O RT RA I T BY W I L L I A M B O D E N SC H ATZ ; P H OTO CO U RT E SY O F CA P I TO L H I L L B O O KS ; TO P O F T H E GAT E P H OTO BY R O N B LU N T; P H OTO BY ; R O C K C R E E K C E M E T E RY V I A F L I C K R ; P H OTO CO U RT E SY O F L A C H AU M I E R E

MY TOP SPOTS

For a walk, I love to stroll around the back streets of Georgetown or through Rock Creek Park (pictured), at any time of year.

For a drink, the rooftop bar at the Watergate Hotel can’t be beat.

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I also enjoy driving out to Annapolis for a walk by

the harbor and lunch.

To eat out, I recommend BlackSalt, a great fish place or La Piquette, our neighbourhood French bistro;.

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he ambassador of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland is by custom, if not by precedence, generally recognized as the leading diplomat in the nation’s capital and Sir Kim Darroch has all the necessary attributes to play the role with great credibility and élan. Physically imposing,erudite and charming with a great - although not too plummy - accent, he joined his country’s Foreign and Commonwealth Office and then its Diplomatic Service just out of university and has served in numerous senior government posts, including principal advisor to the prime minister on European affairs, permanent reepresentative to the European Union and national security advisor. Out and about on the political and social scene since taking up his post in January 2016, Sir Kim and his wife Vanessa (Lady Darroch) are active participants in the political, social and philanthropic life of the city and known as gracious hosts in their own veddy grand, sprawling pile of an embassy. Have you been invited?

HAS YOUR JOB CHANGED VERY MUCH SINCE INAUGURATION DAY? IF SO, HOW? There are some new faces across the table, but the essentials haven’t changed: engaging with the Administration and Congress, projecting the U.K. as the partner of choice, supporting U.K. trade and inward investment, all while staying connected and building relationships with Americans both inside and outside Washington. WHAT IS THE MOST IMPORTANT BI-LATERAL ISSUE PREOCCUPYING YOUR TIME RIGHT NOW? There is exceptional breadth and depth to the relationship, so there’s always a lot going on. Issues at the moment include our national security cooperation on North Korea, Iran and Syria, and the future of our bilateral U.K.-U.S. trade relationship, in particular, post-Brexit, a U.K.-U.S. free trade deal. WHAT HAS SURPRISED YOU THE MOST ABOUT SERVING HERE? Many things, but if I can

venture into culture, it’s the number of British actors and actresses getting lead parts in U.S. productions, whether on the silver or the small screen. Examples include Damian Lewis (“Homeland” and “Billions”, Ruth Wilson and Dominic West (“The Affair”), and pretty much the whole cast of “Game of Thrones.“ Brits even get to play iconic Americans: Daniel Day Lewis as Abraham Lincoln and David Oyelowo as Martin Luther King. It’s a great compliment to our acting profession. HOW DO YOU REPLY TO YOUR COUNTRYMEN WHEN THEY ASK YOU “WHAT’S IT LIKE, LIVING IN WASHINGTON?” I tell them that Washington is an absolutely beautiful city, especially in spring and fall, though a bit steamy for a couple of months in the summer; that it’s an extraordinarily friendly and open place, at least to a new British ambassador. DO YOU HAVE ANY ADVICE FOR DIPLOMATS STARTING THEIR CAREERS? Learn to listen and understand nuance: one of the basic starting points for successful diplomacy is understanding what the other side thinks and needs. HAS TECHNOLOGY IMPROVED YOUR WORKING LIFE OR MADE IT WORSE? It’s improved it immeasurably.Yes, there are hundreds of emails and an overload of information. But communicating is so much more efficient, and can be on the move, so you are no longer tied to your desk and the office. YOU RECENTLY TOOK PART IN A LIGHT HEARTED PERFORMANCE AT THE SHAKESPEARE THEATER. ARE YOU SOMEONE WHO WAS LOST TO THE LEGITIMATE STAGE WHEN YOU OPTED TO BECOME A DIPLOMAT AND DO YOUR DRAMATIC SKILLS AID IN DIPLOMACY? Anyone who has suffered through my brief performances in both this and last year’s “Will on the Hill” productions will certainly be grateful that I was never under the illusion that I could have made a career on the stage.

LIFESTYLES

HOBBS Jasmine trench coat ($540); HOBBS Odella Jacket ($375); HOBBS Odella Trouser ($230); HOBBS Beatrice blouse ($298); ELIE TAHARI Izarra blouse ($298) Bloomingdales, 5300 Western Ave, Chevy Chase, Md. (240) 744-3700.

SUIT

YOURSELF COLOR AND TEXTURE PLAY WITH FALL SEASON WORK STAPLES

PHOTOGRAPHY TONY POWELL | WWW TONY-POWELL COM STYLIST BRIAN ROBINSON | T H E ARTIST AGENCY ASSISTED BY< JEREMY WARNER MAKEUP ANNETTE QUEEN GLAMSQUAD HAIR CARMEN OLIVA GLAMSQUAD MODELS OLIVIA Z | T H E ARTIST AGENCY EDITORIAL DIRECTION CATHERINE TRIFILETTI

PHOTOGRAPHED AT THE DARCY | RHODE ISLAND AVE NW WWW THEDARCYHOTEL COM

ARGENT Grid vest ($298) ARGENT Grid staple trouser ($248) Argent 1921 8th St., NW, (415) 294-1991. LAFAYETTE 148 white dress shirt ($378) Bloomingdales, 5300 Western Ave, Chevy Chase, Md. (240) 7443700. H&M black suede heel ($29); H&M, 3222 M St NW (855) 466-7467.

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ARGENT Basketweave Tie Blazer ($358); ARGENT striped track-pant trouser ($198); ARGENT Coolmax blouse ($118) Argent 1921 61 8th St., NW, (415) 294-1991.

HUGO BOSS Diganira dress and Cipeila jacket; Hugo Boss CityCenterDC 1054 Palmer Alley NWWashington, D.C 20001 (202) 408-9845; STUART WEITZMAN nudist song patent heels ($398) Bloomingdales 5300 Western Ave, Chevy Chase, MD 20815, (240) 744-3700. TIFFANY & CO. Schlumberger multiplication earrings in 18k yellow gold with diamonds ($17,500) . Tiffany & Co, 5481 Wisconsin Ave, Chevy Chase, MD 20815 (301) 657-8777.

ELIE TAHARI Tori jacket ($448); ELIE TAHARI Alanis pant ($268) BURBERRY canvas plaid shirt ($295) Bloomingdales, 5300 Western Ave, Chevy Chase, Md. (240) 744-3700. H&M silver sneakers ($39) H&M 3222 M St NW (855) 466-7467.

N / NICHOLAS dress ($529), Saks Jandel, 5510 Wisconsin Avenue, Chevy Chase, MD 20815, (301) 6522250; HALSTON HERITAGE clutch ($345) and SJP Sarah Jessica Parker pumps ($560), Bloomingdales, 5300 Western Ave, Chevy Chase, MD 20815; TIFFANY & CO. Enchant scroll earrings platinum withHOFFMAN diamonds patterned ($11,000), ON in EMMA: MARA Tiffany & Co., Tiffany & Co., 5481 Wismonokini ($253) and KATE SPADE Cameron consin Ave,bag Chevy Chase, MD 20815, Street Blakely ($378) Bloomingdaleâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s (301) 657-8777; CARTIER ParisCorner NouTysons Corner Center, 8100 Tysons velleMcLean, Vague Va., Delicate white gold and Center, 703-556-4600. diamond necklace ($16,300) and LOVE in white gold, pave diamonds ON bracelet ERIC: MORGENTHAL FREDERICS and ceranic ($43,700), Cartier, 5471B Hustler titanium ARGENT hand-crafted elbow sleeve tipped Japanese sweater ($198); ARGENT track Wisconsin Avenue, Chevy294-1991. Chase, MD sunglasses ($495), Citypant ($198) Argent 1921 Morgenthal 8th St., NW, (415)Fredrics, H&M sneak654-5858 ers 20815, ($29) H&M(301) 3222H M St NW (855)202-204-3393. 466-7467. CenterDC, 941 St. NW,

LIFESTYLES | TREND REPORT

GUCCI Hand-painted leather skirt ($9,800); Gucci, CityCenterDC, 202-795-7950

CITIZENS OF HUMANITY Crista studded denim jacket ($998); Saks Fifth Avenue, Chevy Chase, 301-657-9000

ALICE + OLIVIA Britney studded bodysuit ($330); Alice + Olivia, Georgetown, 202-602-0445

8)00 1) %&398 -8 789( Metal accents add a punk edge to basic black. BY ERICA MOODY

KATE SPADE Stewart Street studded Byrdie ($428); Kate Spade, CityCenterDC, 202.408.7598

SERGIO ROSSI Godiva studded pointed toe pumps ($850); Bloomingdales, Chevy Chase, 240-744-3700

BALMAIN Studded velvet mini dress ($2,445); Saks Fifth Avenue, Chevy Chase, 301-657-9000

JIMMY CHOO Black leather biker boots with graphic star studded embellishment ($1,795); The Collection at Chevy Chase, 240-223-1102

HERMÃ¨S Nomad earrings ($1,025); Hermes, CityCenterDC, 202-789-4341

ISABEL MARANT Zikka studded leather belt ($575), netaporter.com

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MONICA RICH KOSANN “Dream” moon necklace with sapphires ($495); Liljenquist & Beckstead, Fairfax Square, 703.749.1200

CHRISTOPHER KANE UFO printed silk top ($995); christopherkane.com VEDA Silver metallic leather miniskirt ($575); Intermix, Georgetown, 202.298.8080

DOLCE & GABBANA Galaxy dress ($2,995); Neiman Marcus, Mazza Gallerie, 202.966.9700

')0)78-%0 ',-' Space-Age silver and planetary prints take fall fashion to a new galaxy. BY ERICA MOODY

LOEWE Lurex dress ($2,450); Nordstrom Tysons Corner Center, 703.761.1121 ZADIG & VOLTAIRE Pharel silver deluxe leggings ($948); Zadig & Voltaire, CityCenterDC, 202.789.8700

PROENZA SCHOULER Medium metallic leather hobo ($1,490); Saks Fifth Avenue, Chevy Chase, 301.657.9000

BALENCIAGA Slash heel over-theknee boots ($1,995); balenciaga.com WA S H I N G T O N L I F E

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CHANEL 2.55 handbag (Price on request); Saks Fifth Avenue, Chevy Chase, 301.657.9000

LIFESTYLES | BOOK TALK

ORIGINS OF A ZOO

From capture to conservation, “Raising America’s Zoo” tells the history of the National Zoo, beginning with its first gorillas. BY ERICA MOODY

Arthur “Nick” Arundel holding Moka, age 20 months, in the Belgian Congo in 1955. Nikumba, age 14 months, plays nearby on the grass.

ew people know it, but in 1955 the National Zoo was changed forever with the arrival of its first gorillas. After serving in combat in Korea for the Marine Corps, native Washingtonian and newspaperman Nick Arundel went on safari to the Belgian Congo and returned a month later carrying Moka and Nikumba in his arms. The young apes were flown from Leopoldville to New York on Pan Am, where they sat on his lap and were upgraded to first class. Passengers took turns feeding the adorable apes from bottles. Arundel later referred to Moka and Nikumba as his “first children” when he met his bride-to-be Peggy McElroy. After settling them in at the zoo, he would often stop by after work to play with the young apes; that is, until one day one of them shredded his dress shirt and tie with one affectionate paw swipe. Arundel’s daughter-in-law Kara had heard bits and pieces of the story over the years, but after Nick died, she found additional details in the boxes of meticulously kept diaries, reports and letters he’d left behind. She then spent five years researching at the Smithsonian Archives while interviewing zoo staffers to get a full

Kara Arundel

history of the transformation of the National Zoo from “a menagerie type park to an internationally respected center focused on conservation of both captive and wild species,” as her book describes it. “Raising America’s Zoo” (Mascot Books) is Kara Arundel’s first book and, as with most first endeavors, proved more challenging than anticipated.While “there are probably 30 panda books,” she is certain this is the first to focus on the gorillas. “It’s an under-told story and a great local story, because I write about the role that the city and the federal government had in supporting the zoo,” she says. Her personal connection to Nick Arundel makes the book more captivating than a typical history, as stories of his colorful youth and philanthropic endeavors are intermixed with statistics and factual insights on the zoo’s evolution from its founding in 1889 to the present day. Her fatherin-law helped establish Friends of the National Zoo (FONZ) in 1962, a nonprofit organization that helps to save species and raise funds for the zoo, which doesn’t charge admission fees. The book doesn’t gloss over the barbaric

methods once taken to obtain wild animals. Whether the attainment of the zoo’s first gorillas were the result of a bloody safari or a generous gift from an international government is a question that remains unanswered. “I almost quit writing because I didn’t definitely have that story,” the author admits, “but then [I realized] ... it is really a parallel story of Nick and the zoo, moving away from the time when animals were captured through very violent methods and brought back.” Now, she says, zoos are working together to focus on conservation. They’re very organized in how they manage and breed species like gorillas. Nick, she says, was one of the staunchest advocates for change. He was close to the gorillas until they died and when he passed away peacefully at home in 2011, a photograph of himself proudly holding Moka and Nikumba hung outside his bedroom. Arundel hopes readers will go away with a newfound appreciation for the National Zoo, thanks to the perseverance of its dogged employees to create an atmosphere more humane for animals.

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| O C T O B E R | washingtonlife.com

BOOK TALK

EVOLUTION OF AN AUTHOR Karin Tanabe on research, writing and swear words BY VIRGINIA COYNE | PORTRAIT BY TONY POWELL

he path from chick lit to historical fiction was a natural one says Karin Tanabe, author of “The Diplomat’s Daughter” (Atria Books, 2017), set at a Texas internment camp and in the Pacific theater during World War II. “I missed research,” explains the formal journalist, and writing the book provided her the opportunity to do a lot of it. Her debut novel, “The List,” a self-admitted roman à clef about her time as a young reporter at Politico, required no studying of history and little imagination. “I knew it, I lived it,” she says of the story, published in 2013, which People Magazine called, “A biting, hilarious send-up of the Washington elite.” Tanabe, a former managing editor of Washington Life, subsequently wrote “The Price of Inheritance” (2014), a suspenseful take on the New York art world, in which she had never worked, and in 2016 released “The Gilded Years,” a critically acclaimed historical novel about the first African-American woman to attend Vassar College. The writing was

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research-heavy, but as she had attended the same school, and a fellow alumna assisted in the fact-finding, there was a certain comfort that she was getting it right.The book went on to become her best selling work and Tanabe’s publisher suggested she stick with the genre. The idea for her newest tome came after seeing the Broadway musical “Allegiance,” which was inspired by star George Takei’s own experience at an internment camp as a young child. Following the show, a conversation with her husband Craig Fischer, who is of German descent, led Tanabe to discover Germans had also been interned during the war. An idea for a mixed-race love story centered around the daughter of a Japanese diplomat and the son of a German-American steel baron, both sent to the same relocation facility in Texas, started to percolate. The author began her research, which she did entirely on her own, by talking to her Japanese-born father, Francis Tanabe, a former editor and art director at the Washington Post,

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whose earliest memory was living through the United States’ firebombing of Tokyo. She also interviewed people who had been interned, or whose family members were, and read “pretty much every contemporary historical fiction book about the war that did well.” “The terrifying thing is everyone knows a lot about World War II,” says Tanabe on the pressure of writing about a topic that has been so widely explored. “Even though it’s historical fiction, people want accuracy. They really do.” Aside from ensuring historical events were characterized correctly, how did she put herself in the mind of three young adults, two of them boys? (The story is ultimately a love triangle.) “I definitely ran it by men,” she admits. Her husband’s critique: too much talking in the foxhole during a battle scene. Tanabe took the criticism to heart and fixed the dialogue. Her father’s advice didn’t fare nearly as well. “He always wants me to take out the sex and swear words,” she says with a laugh.

WASHINGTON S O C I A L D I A R Y over the moon﹐ book talk﹐ t﹒h﹒e﹒ artist agency network launch and more!

Adrienne Arsht and Tony Podesta at the Thomas LeBlanc Welcome Brunch (Photo by Tony Powell)

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| O C T O B E R | washingtonlife.com

| BUNNY MELLON

AN UNERRING EYE FOR BEAUTY AND THE MEANS TO INDULGE IT BY KEVIN CHAFFEE

uthor Meryl Gordon been a witness to history, has the stories and she was considering calling style of American heirthe book “Encounters,” in esses pretty much down recognition of the talented pat. With biographies of and famous people that Brooke Astor (“Mrs. Astor she had known well. She Regrets”) and reclusive never wrote her book but copper scion Huguette I was lucky to be allowed Clark (“The Phantom to read and quote from of Fifth Avenue’) to her her essays and notes. credit, her latest effort, “Bunny Mellon: The Life What did you come of an Amer ican Style to admire about her Legend,” is an equally and what didn’t you entrancing read. The tale admire? What stayed with me was her resilience of a woman who supin tough times, and her posedly had it all — vast abiding love of nature. It wealth, legendary style was sad to hear about how and taste, fr iendships she often dropped friends with many of the world’s and that she was not kind most celebrated people to some family members – — but who nonetheless Paul and Bunny Mellon head for Antigua on their private plane. The couple even now, you could hear had to cope with family owned multiple homes, including Paris, the Virginia hunt country, New York, the pain in their voices. tragedy, ebbing friendNantucket and Martha’s Vineyard (Photo by Joshua Greene/archiveimages.com) ships and political misWhat surprised you most about doing this book? It’s a cliché but chief throughout an astonishing long 103-year life. >> you often think that people with stupendous fortunes are protected Kevin Chaffee: Bunny Mellon was one of the world’s wealthi- from life’s calamities, but Bunny experienced a lot of tragedy. est and yet totally private individuals. What explains her aura of near mystery and why did you wish to penetrate it? Bunny and Paul Mellon acquired one of the world’s greatest Meryl Gordon: Bunny was essentially shy. She was from a gen- private art collections and employed 300 in staff at as many as eration that disliked publicity and believed it was more dignified seven homes. She had spectacular jewels and spent millions on to maintain one’s privacy. Yet she was in the public eye for half a couture clothing from Balenciaga and Givenchy, including even century - as a style trendsetter, the designer of the White House her undergarments. Nonetheless she was happiest outdoors in Rose Garden, an art collector and as Jackie Kennedy’s best friend her garden. Bunny fell in love with nature as a young girl thanks – so I was eager to get to know more about her. When I spoke to to her maternal grandfather Arthur Lowe, who took her hiking at her on the phone in 2011, she was charming and funny on the eve his New Hampshire farm and encouraged her to plant a garden. of her 101st birthday. She was enraptured with trees and plants and flowers and birds. She could not control many elements of her life, but in her gardens, she Why might she have agreed to cooperate at the end of her very was in control, reshaping the landscape to her whim. long life?After her husband Paul Mellon published his autobiography in 1992, Bunny began to consider writing her own book, and Share a few observations about her long, intimate friendship she wrote a few essays and sketched out notes. Aware that she had with Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis. Reading Jackie’s letters to

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| O C T O B E R | washingtonlife.com

REMEMBERING BUNNY MELLON

Bunny made me choke up at times – they were so close and Jackie relied on Bunny during some of the more difficult periods of her life. Caroline Kennedy, in a remembrance that she wrote for Bunny’s funeral, said of her mother and Bunny, “They were like a pair of twins with their own special language, their own love of mischief …” Paul Mellon had a longtime mistress and was said to indulge in other liaisons. Her emotional relationships were often with gay men who shared her aesthetic. Did the Mellons amicably settle into a marriage typified by “adjoining rooms and adjoining lives”? Sometimes their relationship was amicable, sometimes not. Bunny accepted that Paul had affairs, but she occasionally went through periods of feeling quite lonely and depressed. At the end of Paul’s life, he was very attached to Bunny and glad that they had stayed together. The one exception was her bizarre attachment to Sen. John Edwards when she was in her late 90s. Was she aware she was being exploited or was this a strange final caprice? This was Bunny’s last hurrah, and she had a marvelous time – she wanted to be relevant and she was thr illed when Edwards called her from the campaign trail. She gave more than $3 million to his legal political entities, and another $725,000 to him that authorities charged was not within permitted campaign limits. She had no regrets, and stayed in touch with Edwards until her death. She left most her estimated $760 million estate to a foundation. What will its work and her legacy be? Her legacy will always be the White House Rose Garden. Her design for it is still in place today, and every president since John Kennedy has used the space for important occasions. Her foundation encourages scholarly work about art, culture and plants and makes philanthropic donations, such as underwriting the First Ladies Garden at Children’s Hospital in Washington.

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Bunny disguised the luxury around her while bringing it to new heights. Her utilitarian gardening clothes were custom made by Givenchy. That little sprig of lily of the valley in a tiny crystal vase was actually a fabulous Schlumberger jewel. She once told me her idea of luxury was leaving a room for five minutes and coming back to find all the pillows fluffed and the empty glasses cleared away. She believed that ostentation was vulgar. She preferred faux marble to real marble and hired trompe l’oeil painters at great expense to lighten her world. But she could also be quite spoiled. Her husband Paul told me she once sent their plane to Palm Beach for a hat she’d forgotten and needed for an outfit. ... Not that anyone would ever know. — Jane Stanton Hitchcock Bunny Mellon was absolutely charming. I remember her asking Charlie Whitehouse and me to tea after fox hunting when Jackie — who by then was married to Aristotle Onassis — was staying with her. She served little sandwiches and cakes after a walk in her lovely garden. It was all very cozy and informal. I remember that her living room was in the English country style with comfy chintz-covered sofas and, of course, really great paintings. — Marie Ridder No gardens have ever been more captivating than Bunny Mellon’s – full of totally individual approaches to herb topiaries, rare boxwood and crab apples pleached into low hedges. One was struck by a certain simplicity, serenity, creativity and understated taste, plus impeccable maintenance. Her garden achievements were legendary: the Potager du Roi at Versailles and the very beautiful, useful and distinguished White House Rose Garden. However her interests ranged far beyond. Among them is a lasting legacy: the creation of a great horticultural library with over 3,500 rare books and manuscripts beginning in the 15th century, together with over 10,000 reference works. It would be impossible to describe the art collections – glorious Rothkos, Diebencorns and a rare Nicholas de Staël – paintings hung in a simple way without frames. An extraordinary National Gallery dinner celebrating Impressionist and post-impressionist paintings lent by Russia remains an indelible memory. It was an explosion of color. “The mixture of flowers was something I never did before,” she said. “I used real ones, including pear blossoms from trees in Virginia, tulips, wheat, and for strength, beautiful artificial poppies and sunflowers made of silk in France.” All in simple baskets on brilliant scarlet tablecloths. Everything in her life was done with knowledge, imagination, commitment and true expertise. — Deeda Blair

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JacquelineKennnedy Onassis with Bunny Mellon at the Mellons’ 5,000-acre Upperville, Va. farm. Caroline Kennedy recalled, “They were like a pair of twins with their own special language, their own love of mischief.” (Photograph by George Schaffer)

Bunny Mellon cultivated miniature topiaries grown from rosemary, myrtle, rhyme and santolina, setting off a national trend. May, 1982 (Fred Conrad/New York Times/Redux)

Bunny Mellon’s private library, which housed rare books on horticulture and children’s fairy tale classics, would eventually hold ten thousand volumes. (Fred Conrad/New York Times/Redux) 71

OVER THE MOON

‘Tally-ho’ and Away We Go Hunting astride a horse from Middleburg to ancient Greece

Jordon Hicks, huntsman for the Piedmont Fox Hounds, at “Old Welbourne” near Upperville. (Middleburg Photo)

n his autobiography, “Reflections in a Silver Spoon,” the late Paul Mellon told a story about the day his wife Bunny was sitting in her car watching the hunt and a man came by and asked what was going on. “A fox hunt,” she replied. “The hounds are looking for a fox.” “Oh,” the man said, “I thought that only happened on lampshades.” Well, it may happen on lampshades in the city and suburbs but to Elizabeth “Troye” Plaskett, it’s pure delight: “clip, clop, clip, clop, the hunt is next door.” Plaskett, a tenth generation Virginian, is related to Col. Richard Henry Dulany, who is acknowledged as the founder of the Piedmont Hunt in 1840 (now known as the Piedmont Fox Hounds). She shares the joy for these wide-open spaces to ride horses, plant flowers and corn and then sit back and sip Virginia wine. The sport of fox hunting first began in this area with Dulany. It oozes tradition and is

laced with risk, exhilaration and gratification — not so much for confronting the prey but for staying on the horse. The terminology includes the phrase “Tally-ho.” And, for the uninitiated, this means a fox has been viewed. There are at least six fox-chasing organizations in Hunt Country. On any given day of the week, one can tack up their horse, load him (or her) on the trailer and arrive at the point of departure known as “the meet.” The names of these destinations seem right out of a British historical novel: “Edgecliff,” “Rock Hedge,” “Clifton Back Gate” and “Old Welbourne.” “Old Welbourne” belonged to generations of descendants of Col. Dulany and, in 1961, was purchased by the late Erskine Bedford and his first wife, Lily. “When they moved in the place, it was a mess. Doorknobs were taken off and there were snakes coming down the stairs,” says their daughter, Cricket Bedford. Her father

later served as a master of fox hounds for the Piedmont Hunt. He died in 1998 while hunting and is the only non-Dulany buried in the cemetery at Old Welbourne. Flash forward to 2017. Tandy and Brad Bondi now own the estate and ride with the Piedmont hounds. And, says Bedford, “he relishes the history.” The 330-acre farm with a 15,000-square-foot, 1878 Georgian Colonial manor, does not include the cemetery, which remains with Dulany family members. Meanwhile, in the village of Middleburg, the National Sporting Library & Museum exhibition, “The Horse in Ancient Greek Art,” is on view through Jan. 14, 2018. The exhibit explores the importance of the horse in ancient Greek culture through its imagery in ancient myth, war, sport and competition. Objects include ancient, stunning black vases of chariot horses being harnessed, jockeys riding and grooms tending to well-bred equines. There are many examples of the care, training, and competition of the horse along with ancient texts on Greek horsemanship. And speaking of Bedford, as a real estate agent with Thomas and Talbot, she’s not only an encyclopedia of local history, she recently listed “Yorkshire House” in Warrenton. Swiss architect Henri de Heller designed the Colonial Revival-style residence with strong influences from the Modernistic Movement in 1939. He was also responsible for “Elway Hall,” currently owned by the wellknown local interior designer Barry Dixon. The extraordinary gardens include more than 200 species of trees centered on a sunken garden with a goldfish pond. The house includes five bedrooms and five and a half baths plus a living room, dining room, library and family room. There’s also a two-story foyer that has a spectacular, sweeping circular staircase with wrap-around circular walls and a sparkling Waterford chandelier. It’s listed at $1.775 million.

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P H OTOS BY VI C KY M O O N

BY VICKY MOON

Debbie Meadows and Rep. Mark Meadows Kuwaiti Amb. Salem Al-Sabah, Bret Baier and Wayne Reynolds

Anne LeBlanc, Adrienne Arsht and Thomas LeBlanc WL EXCLUSIVE

WELCOME BRUNCH FOR THOMAS LEBLANC Adrienne Arsht Residence | PHOTOS BY TONY POWELL

Rima Al-Sabah

Michael Chertoff and Paula Dobriansky

Michelle Kosinski and Barby Allbritton

MIAMI NICE Philanthropist Adrienne Arsht hosted a Sunday brunch to honor incoming George Washington University President Thomas LeBlanc. The “Miami Nice,” theme, featuring a white, purple and teal color scheme, celebrated LeBlanc’s former role as executive vice president and provost of the University of Miami. A jazz trio performed salsa and Caribbean music as guests sampled ceviche and hearts of palm salad from the buffet before heading home with candy-filled goody bags, the hostess’s signature parting gift. VIEW ALL THE PHOTOS AT WWW WASHINGTONLIFE COM

Italy Amb. Armando Varricchio and Micaela Varricchio

Amy Baier and Jane Cafritz

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Deborah Rutter, Wayne Reynolds and Marie Mattsons

Dr. Susan Blumenthal and Katherine Bradley

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Shannon and Don McGahn

Deb, Bo and Ben Johns

GO BO GO! BEACH BALL Johns Residence | PHOTOS BY ERIN SCHAFF EVERYTHING BUT SAND SCOUT bags founders Deb and Ben Johns temporarily transformed the backyard of their Georgetown home into an all-out beach scene complete with strings of beach balls and enough swan floaties to fill their entire pool. No detail was spared to obtain ocean side ambiance — this year’s chosen theme for the annual fundraiser in support of the Go Bo Go! Fund, created by the hosts after their son Bo was diagnosed with Lymphoma at 11. Proceeds from the event support families struggling to cover pediatric cancer medical expenses at Georgetown University Hospital. In between bites of barbecued pulled pork and pineapple kabobs from Rocklands, guests danced to tunes from The Waller Family Band well into the night with their creative beach-themed outfits on full display. APROPOS GOODIE BAG: Each guest received a SCOUT bag to commemorate the evening.

Sofia Royce, Devin Tucker, Annie Perez Chica, Valentina Troisi and Stephanie Colpo

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Henry and Kate Kegan with Ashley and William Akridge

Danielle Kambic and Keri Ann Mesla

Emma Overmyer, Gibson Johns and Margaret Kenworthy

Jordan Haes, Jaci Appel and Brendan Ruan

Alexandra Pena and Casey Garrett

Maggie Gaffney andTucker Johns

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Kathleen Shannon and Ashley Ludlow

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CHARITY SPOTLIGHT

Transforming Lives through Education College Success Foundation-DC celebrates its 10th anniversary B Y PAT R I C I A M C G U I R E , P R E S I D E N T O F T R I N I T Y WA S H I N G T O N U N I V E R S I T Y

n the capital of a nation built on the dream of equal opportunity, the reality is that not all students are offered an equal chance to succeed in Washington. In Wards 7 and 8, one in three students do not graduate from high school on time due to external barriers including poverty, racial discrimination, homelessness and violence. Since 2007, College Success Foundation has empowered thousands of students from both wards with the academic, social, emotional and financial support they need to graduate from college and thrive in life. Ninety-nine percent of College Success Foundation-DC students graduate high school on time. As the president of Trinity Washington University over the last 30 years, I have observed numerous college preparatory programs that focus solely on providing scholarships or mentoring to students.This is simply not enough to get the majority of students to and through

college and College Success Foundation-DC understands the process. The foundation works with students from middle school to high school, through college and into a career. Since there is no “one-size fits all” approach, advisors provide each student with personalized, in-depth support including academic and career advising, mentoring, test prep, summer school, college visits and scholarships.

Take the example of College Success Foundation-DC graduate, Felicia Webb who will be attending our Breakfast Fundraiser on October 18 at the Renaissance Washington DC Downtown Hotel. Felicia started with College Success Foundation-DC while attending Friendship Collegiate Academy in Ward 7. Her hard work earned her our Achievers Scholarship and she went on to Howard University becoming the first in her family to graduate from college. Felicia’s example inspired her two younger brothers and cousin to also apply to the program and go on to college. She currently works as a kindergarten teacher in Southeast D.C. More than 750 College Success Foundation-DC students are currently attending college across the country and hundreds more are preparing to take the leap. Together, we can make their higher education goals a reality.

Sophie LaMontagne, Katherine Berman and Julia Taxin Wish Kid Juhi Chandrarabhatla, in green, with traditional Greek dancers

Sue Palka, Mike Manatos and Shawn Yancy

Thomas Espy and Holly Morris Espy

MAKE-A-WISH ‘EVENING OF WISHES’ Ritz-Carlton, Washington, D.C. | PHOTOS BY TONY BROWN AND PAUL MORSE

Laura Evans and Sarah Simmons

WISH UPON A STAR Long-time Make-A-Wish Mid-Atlantic supporters Mike Manatos and Laura Evans Manatos chaired the group’s fourth annual gala, which raised over $870,000 to support the granting of wishes to children with life-threatening medical conditions. The uplifting event included a send-off party featuring Greek Ambassador Theocharis Lalacos and a group of authentic Greek dancers for wish kid Juhi Chandrarabhatla, who was gifted a dream trip to Greece with her family. A spirited live auction led by broadcasters Sue Palka and Shawn Yancy followed the dinner, during which event chairman Manatos engaged in a bidding war on a trip to Costa Rica. He proved victorious.

Brittany Thomas and Washington Redskin Arie Kouandjio VIEW ALL THE PHOTOS AT WWW WASHINGTONLIFE COM WA S H I N G T O N L I F E

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Susanne Slater and HUD Secretary Ben Carson

Kelsey Wiseman, Lauren Baker and Anna Yanker

WL SPONSORED

Dan Slack, Brad Neilley, Mary Heitman and Andrea Morgan

HABITAT FOR HUMANITY OF D.C. RECEPTION The National Museum of Women in the Arts | PHOTOS BY NAKU MAYO

Debra Alfarone and Deborah Ames Naylor

Andy and Jessica Chod

TRUE CONFESSIONS Secretary of Housing and Urban Development Ben Carson keynoted the “Women Build: She Nailed It” initiative’s “celebration reception,” helping to raise $525,000 for Habitat for Humanity of Washington, D.C., funds earmarked for building homes for low income single mothers in the District. Chaired by Pen Fed Credit Union’s Debbie Ames Naylor — and with all six current and former first ladies as honorary chairwomen - Pen Fed Foundation has generously chipped in $500,000 to the effort in recent years. PERSONAL RELEVATIONS: “My secret is ... I’m a high school dropout,” emcee Debra Alfarone, WUSA-9’s weekend anchor, told the crowd, only to be one-upped by Dr. Carson, a renowned brain surgeon and the author of nine books, who revealed that in grade school his nickname was “dummy” because he was “dead last” in his class. His single mother, he added, “who worked four jobs to get by, would scream at me: ‘Benjamin, you’re far too smart to bring home grades like this.’ So, I started reading, and began to fly in the right direction.” VIEW ALL THE PHOTOS AT WWW WASHINGTONLIFE COM

David Nellis and Amber Pfau

Hell of a Bottom Carter and Karen Gundla

HRC President Chad Griffin and press secretary Sarah McBride

Chefs Robert Wiedmaier and Frank Ruta

CHEFS FOR EQUALITY Union Market Dock 5 | PHOTOS BY ERIN SCHAFF

Amie Woods, Elise Lefkowitz andMaria Trabocchi

EQUALITY FOR ALL The Human Rights Campaign and food critic David Hagedorn hosted the 6th annual Chefs for Equality, which brings together top area chefs and mixologists for an evening of food, cocktails and music to benefit the fight for full LGBTQ equality. Guests sampled various specialties at tasting stations or splurged on dining at “personal chef tables” with celebrity chefs, including Mirabelle’s Frank Ruta, Del Mar’s Fabio Trabocchi and Marcel’s Robert Wiedmaier. The event raised over $350,000 for the cause.

Meredith Murphy, Grace Cutts and Ashley Arias VIEW ALL THE PHOTOS AT WWW WASHINGTONLIFE COM

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Sondra Hoffman, Kaila Casey, Elizabeth Centenari, Lynda Erkiletian and Torey Barth Alexa Johnson, Marianne Hawk and Krista Johnson

Aba Kwawu, Anton Papich and Rhiannon Day

T.H.E. ARTIST AGENCY NETWORK LAUNCH PARTY The Ritz-Carlton, Georgetown | PHOTOS BY JAVIER MARADIAGA LIGHTS CAMERA ACTION A lively fashion crowd jumped at the chance to celebrate T.H.E. Artist Agency’s new blog and YouTube channel, which will feature varied content from the modeling group, including talent spotlights, behind-the-scenes footage and tutorials. Models struck poses alongside the agency’s founder and president Lynda Erkiletian who said she is excited to stay current with digital trends that will dictate the future of the industry “So much has happened over 32 years in the business,” she said, “and we are thrilled to be able to share our insights and perspectives.” The fashionable crowd also included notable stylists and hair and makeup artists of the T.H.E. family.

Diego Gonzalez-Zuniga and Justin McCown

Flavia Dias

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Andrea Reid and Ashok Bajaj

Jeremy Carman and Katsuya Fukushima

RAMMY AWARDS

Charisse Dickens and Mike Isabella

Debbi Jarvis, Paul Wharton and April Byrd Carla Hall and Shirley Gordon

Washington Convention Center | PHOTOS BY TONY POWELL FINE DINING A who’s who of the restaurant industry get together every year to whoop it up at the Restaurant Association Metropolitan Washington’s RAMMY awards, which have been likened to the Oscars for local foodies. This year’s slate of winners reflected the high bar that has been set by the local culinary set, recognizing everyone from outstanding managers and bartenders to veteran restaurateurs. In the new aisle, Rob Rubba’s Hazel was recognized as best new restaurant of the year, while Mike Isabella’s Kapnos took home the award for best new cocktail program. Eager diners will have to drive out of Washington to meet with the new chef of the year: Tarver King of The Restaurant at Patowmack Farm, but from many accounts the trip is well worth the drive.

Jessica Berman, Elizabeth Geny, Margaret Chaffee, Ellen Kaplan and Alexis Spero

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Ed and Chinyere Hubbard

Joel Friedman and Jenny Bilfield

DÎNER EN BLANC Pennsylvania Avenue | PHOTOS BY TONY POWELL SEA OF WHITE Thousands descended on Pennsylvania Avenue to set up shop for Washington’s annual Diner en Blanc celebration. The French tradition requires that attendees provide their own all-white table, chairs, food and beverage to a location disclosed a few hours before the party’s start time. Each year die-hard partygoers outdo themselves with elaborate table décor (cupcake towers and flower arrangements) and incredible white clothing ensembles. There were even a few wedding dresses revived for the occasion!

Shawn and Traquel Moore

Revelers VIEW ALL THE PHOTOS AT WWW WASHINGTONLIFE COM

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PARTIES PARTIES PARTIES

PARTIES APLENTY A sampling of the season’s finest festivities VIEW ALL THE PHOTOS AT WWW WASHINGTONLIFE COM

STRATHMORE GALA [MUSIC CENTER AT

D.C. SWIM WEEK OPENING NIGHT

STRATHMORE ] P H OTO S BY E R I N S C H A F F

[ST. GREGORY HOTEL]

Earl Ing, Sen. Susan Lee, Strathmore CEO Eliot Pfanstiehl

P H O T O S B Y T O N Y P O W E L L

The annual Swim Week event kicked off with a runway show at the St. Gregory Hotel where models sported the season’s hottest swimsuit and beach looks.

Kristen Walters, Courtney Cameron, Amanda Rudnik and Rosannah Petit

Strathmore’s annual spring gala was anything but ordinary thanks to one of America’s favorite crooner’s, Tony Bennett, who serenaded the crowd with a post-cocktails and dinner performance that was open to the public as well as private guests. Proceeds from the evening benefited Strathmore’s extensive education offerings and community outreach projects, including the East County Initiative to make the arts more accessible in areas of acute need.

Bridget and Joe Judge

HIRSHHORN GALA [HIRSHHORN MUSEUM AND SCULPTURE GARDEN] P H OTO S BY TO N Y P OW E L L

Torsten Müller-Ötvös, Beth Erickson and Felix Bighem

Lucky patrons were able to view Yayoi Kusama’s “Infinity Mirrors” without the long lines. In addition to the private viewing, the evening of “Dots, Dinner and Dancing” included a site-specific sound installation by the District-born Holliday Brothers who spun tunes as lamplights flickered on and off and five contemporary artists were honored for their contributions to the field. Guests helped raise an impressive $700,000 for various gallery programs.

Maggie Michael, Aaron and Barbara Levine and Melissa Chiu

ROLLS-ROYCE WELCOME [ROLLS-ROYCE MOTOR

U.S. HOLOCAUST MEMORIAL MUSEUM’S NATIONAL TRIBUTE DINNER

CARS OF STERLING] P H OTO BY J O H N A RU N D E L

The Chairman and CEO of RollsRoyce Motor Cars Global, Torsten Müller-Ötvös, paid his first ever visit to Washington and was greeted by the dealership’s owner Tom Moorehead and general sales manager Felix B. Bighem. Virginia Gov. Terry McAuliffe and Sen. Mark Warner wrote letters welcoming the special guest to Virginia, which were read aloud to the group.

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Andi Bernstein, Winton Holladay and Toni Verstandig

Larry and Melanie Nussdorf, Doris Kearns Goodwin with Nancy and Mark Duber

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Rep. John Delaney and April Delaney

[MARRIOTT MARQUIS] P H OTO S BY TO N Y P OW E L L

The annual event recognized German Chancellor Angela Merkel with the museum’s Elie Wiesel Award for her “unwavering commitment to making the preservation of Holocaust memory a priority for Germany,” said Museum Chairman Tom Bernstein. Merkel accepted the award via video and German Ambassador Peter Wittig offered remarks in her absence.

Lynn Blitzer and Brad Dockser

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HOME LIFE Real Estate News and Open House I Inside Homes and Developer Monty Hoffman

'YPXYVEP (MTPSQEG] Danish Ambassador Lars Gert Lose and his wife Ulla Rønberg bring music, contemporary art and a fresh outlook to Washington’s first modern embassy. BY VIRGINIA COYNE PHOTOGRAPHS BY TONY POWELL

HOME LIFE | INSIDE HOMES

fter World War II, long before the architecturallyforward outposts of Brazil, Italy and Finland were e erected along Embassy Row, Henrik Kauffmann, then ambassador of Denmark to the United States, called on his country to build a new, contemporary embassy in Washington. He believed a modern structure would better reflect the Danish people, their ideas and their values than a turn-of-the-century Washington mansion. Kauffmann also suggested the ambassador’s residence share the same building as the chancery, arguing it would be more cost efficient and that “the love of work will increase and the number of days lost through illness will go down.” In 1960, two years after Kauffmann’s term in Washington ended, his vision became a reality — the new Royal Embassy of Denmark, the city’s first modern embassy, opened its doors. The striking rectangular building, perched atop a hill on Whitehaven Street NW and backing up to Dumbarton Oaks Park, featured large windows, wood paneled ceilings and expanses of white marble from Greenland. Seamlessly combining the chancery and living quarters, the structure was designed by architect Vilhelm Lauritzen, a functionalist who also has the terminal buildings at Copenhagen airport to his credit. Lauritzen worked in tandem with Finn Juhl, a major influencer of mid-century modern Danish design, who appointed the home with many of his own, nowiconic, pieces of furniture. Today, 57 years after the completion of the embassy, Danish Ambassador Lars Gert Lose and his wife Ulla Rønberg, a writer and scholar, along with their three children, ages 17, 14 and 6, are breathing new life and, dare we say, modernity, inside its walls. Lose, who previously served as his country’s undersecretary of state and chief foreign affairs advisor, assumed his post in Washington – his first ambassadorship – in

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OPENING PAGE: Danish Ambassador Lars Gert Lose, wife Ulla Rønberg and their Coton de Tuléar, Sophus, stand in the foyer before a work by Anders Clausen, “I Would Prefer Not To (Server Too Busy),” which is printed on a large vinyl banner. PREVIOUS PAGE: (clockwise from top left): A ceramic sculpture in the dining room, “Reunion,” by Mette Vangsgaard, depicts the artist on a motorcyle back in the fields of her childhood, visiting her horse; “Baker” sofas by designer Finn Juhl face each other in the living room. Three pieces of Camilla Reyman’s “Guilty Pleasures” series, created using multiple layers of pigmented epoxy, hang on the walls. All of the light fixtures in the house were designed by architect Vilhelm Lauritzen; The dinnerware is also part of the Art in Embassy project; the ambassador’s electric guitar hangs in the music room;”Painter’s Denim Jacket,” a clay piece by Rose Eken. is displayed in the parlor. THIS PAGE: (clockwise from top left): The piano in the music room was relocated upstairs from the basement; a red and whitestriped stool and coatrack, limited-edition pieces by artist and carpenter Henrik Frederiksen, sit atop the stairs in the foyer; the modern, functionalist building was completed in 1960.

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September of 2015. Diplomatically, he says he is focused on security in Europe and the threat Russia poses. He also cites the fight against climate change as an important issue on his agenda. “It’s no secret this is one of the areas where we have a different view than the [Trump] administration,” Lose says. But when the ambassador steps out of his office and down the hall into the residence, his focus changes to more cultural matters. Lose and Rønberg welcome up to 7,000 people into their home each year, hosting dinners, receptions, roundtable discussions and musical performances. Their children are frequent guests at the events, coming downstairs to grab a snack from the kitchen or to jump on the trampoline outside, in plain view of their visitors. Lose relishes showing guests how he and his family live. “What I learn from American colleagues is they find it interesting to step into a Danish home ... and this is really a Danish home,” he says. “Everything from the furniture, to the pictures, to the building itself is 100 percent Danish. It’s as Danish as it gets.” Even the dinnerware, sculpture and art on the walls are works by Danish artists, part of a new “Art in Embassy” program spearheaded by Rønberg. Upon moving to Washington, she collaborated with the Danish Ministry of Culture (where she worked in Copenhagen building large scale culture exchange programs) and the Danish Arts Council, to bring the works of contemporary Danish artists into embassies. Her country’s embassy and residence in Washington is the pilot program, currently showcasing 37 works by emerging artists. “We didn’t want to bring the grand old icons of Danish art,” she says. “We wanted something that was up and coming, newer, more innovative.” The pieces were chosen for their unconventionalism, Rønberg says, stressing that one

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of the points of the project was to encourage visitors to engage in dialogue about the art rather than talk about more mundane subjects such as the weather. “This residence is almost like a museum in a way ... a ’60s museum, and that’s why it is so important for us to bring in contemporary art, to show that Danish art, culture and design didn’t stop in 1960.” The couple, who met in high school when Lose had long hair and played guitar in a rock band, have also filled the home with music. She is a classical pianist so they moved a grand piano, which had been relegated to the basement, upstairs into what has become a family music room and library. Hanging on the wall nearby is Lose’s electric guitar, which he plays every night for an hour, often fingering tunes by favorite bands Led Zeppelin and Black Sabbath. “It is the best way to unwind,” he says. Isn’t it loud? “No, it’s quite nice,” Rønberg says with a smile.

HOME LIFE | RESTORE MASS AVE

RESTORING GRANDEUR TO EMBASSY ROW Concerned neighbors and resident embassies are helping to “Restore Mass Ave” by returning Sheridan Circle to its former glory. BY BOBBI BREWSTER

Sheridan Circle and Bobbi Brewster

ashington is a city that delights in monuments and history. Pierre L’Enfant’s plan raised the aesthetic standards of the city by creating a grid with small circles or squares at the nexus points of avenues to serve as formal parks. The stretch of Massachusetts Avenue, west of Dupont Circle, is one of the grandest avenues in the city with Sheridan Circle located just to the north at the breaking point of its northern axis. Many of the urban mansions surrounding Sheridan Circle were built after 1900 by robber barons and designed by the greatest architects of the time. After many were bought by foreign governments during the Depression of the 1930s, the area became known as “Embassy Row.” Turkey now owns a house designed by George Oakley Totten Jr. Korea owns the Harry Wardman house next door by Frank Russell White. Egypt occupies a Renaissance Beaux-Arts masterpiece with the commanding Palladian arch built by Glenn Brown in 1909. Latvia’s embassy was designed by Waddy B. Wood in 1902. These four-story neo-classical or revival styles sprang up around the circle producing a unity of landscape and

design and an impressive public space that is unique in the nation’s capital. The area’s elegant taste and architectural worthiness contributed to its reputation as a fashionable place for diplomats, politicians, newly arriving Cabinet appointees and former presidents, including Woodrow Wilson, William Howard Taft and Herbert Hoover. The tree-lined avenue creates visual excitement for 25,000 daily commuters and provides a good example of the ideal City Beautiful Grand Avenue with long reciprocal vistas north and south. The circle’s awn-covered area and central sculptural feature, General Philip H. Sher idan, commander of the Union Army of the Shenandoah, on his favorite horse, Rienzias, was designed by Gutzon Borglum. On the periphery, encircling rows of gingko trees and tulip poplars form curved allees. It is a quintessential Washington neighborhood with an enviable heritage. Even with the re-planting of 330 trees along Massachusetts Avenue NW by the non-profit organization Restore Mass Ave, Sheridan Circle, the focal point of this beauty, remains largely unnoticed and undervalued. It

is lifeless, unkempt, unsafe and often home to the homeless. Restore Mass Ave’s goal is to document the extent and causes of the deterioration, identify the existing materials that require preservation and propose treatment plans for restoration and long-term use, including general repair or replacement of key components, methods of resurfacing, water flow and drainage, cleaning and stain removal of the statue and enhanced lighting. To restore Sher idan Circle both functionally and aesthetically would involve restoring the statue, activating the water fountain, adding lighting, re-landscaping the park circle with its adjoining triangles and replanting the American linden trees. Our proposal will be submitted to the National Park Service for concept review as part of their Capital Investment Strategy. The NPS will then submit the proposal to the different commissions. The restoration of Sheridan Circle will reawaken respect for one of the most exquisitely designed public spaces in Washington and bring back dignity to an area intended to be grand, elegant and truly presidential.

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HOME LIFE | REAL ESTATE NEWS

Residential ABC’s Three quintessential District streets – N, P and Q – have significant sales over $2 million after three major houses change hands. BY STAC E Y G R A Z I E R P FA R R

Bob and Elena Tompkins bought P STREET NW from Angus and Clare Scrimgeour for $2.375 million. Mr. Tompkins is an attorney and partner at Holland & Knight while Mrs. Tompkins is a lobbyist with Ogilvy Government Relations. The charming, semi-detached residence in the heart of Georgetown’s East Village boasts a lush garden and a large swimming pool. Interior features of the four-bedroom Federal townhouse built in 1900 include original hardwood floors and moldings and a lower level with two additional bedrooms. Washington Fine Properties’ Nancy Taylor Bubes was the listing agent. TTR Sotheby’s International Realty’s Michael Brennan was the buyer’s agent.

THE DISTRICT Among the first structures built outside the old city in 1890, Q STREET NW sold for $2.15 million when Akio Tagawa, chairman of Linea Solutions, purchased it from Matthew Coangelo and Anne Kimball, both attorneys, who are moving to New York City. The fivebedroom Federal townhouse, which sits next

door to the Romanian Embassy, features a new kitchen with a skylight, a private patio and a lower level au pair suite. Washington Fine Properties Bobbie Brewster was the buyer’s agent. Nancy Taylor Bubes of Washington Fine Properties was the listing agent. The brand new stucco French Provincial

residence at GLOVER DRIVE NW fetched $3.5 million when Roberto Gonzalez and Sarah Rapawy bought it from Foxhall Real Estate LLC. The 6,800-square-foot property was designed by Barnes Vanze Architects and landscaped by Lila Fendrick Landscape Architects. Ten-foot ceilings, expansive entertainment spaces, an elevator and a two-

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Nicholas and Susan Farmer sold N STREET NW in Georgetown to a private LLC, Jackson 50, for $2.075 million. The classic Federal row house was built in 1857 and was thoughtfully updated while maintaining its original charm and character. The property has four gas fireplaces, an open living and dining room, a luxurious master suite with a private deck, plus a beautifully landscaped terrace and rear garden. Michael Rankin of TTR Sothebyâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s International Realty was the listing agent; Washington Fine Properties Nancy Taylor Bubes represented the buyer.

The home of the late ONE campaign CEO Michael Elliott and his wife, author Emma Oxford at RD STREET NW in Georgetown was sold for $2.175 million to Emmy and Matt Hoffmann with the help of Washington Fine Propertiesâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; Jamie Peva, who represented both sides in the transaction. Mrs. Hoffman is founder of Emmy Hoffmann matchmaking in D.C. Originally dating back to 1890, the sunny West Village four bedroom has been updated from basement to roof to include a new gourmet kitchen, a luxe master bedroom suite with a dressing room and a professionally landscaped private garden.

car garage are but a few of the many amenities featured in this Wesley Heights gem. Capital Residential Propertiesâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; Natalie Hasny was the listing agent while Coldwell Bankerâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s Michael Schaeffer represented the buyer.

MARYLAND Robert Lotstein sold SHADOW ROAD

in Chevy Chase for $3.05 million, which he had previously purchased for $2.2 million in 2010. Mr. Lotstein is the managing Attorney for LotsteinLegal PLLC in the District.The sixbedroom 1962 Federal-style residence sits on a hill in the heart of Kenwood. Features include a limestone foyer, large chef â&#x20AC;&#x2122;s kitchen, maidâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s quarters and a breakfast room with French doors leading to a large glass covered patio. TTR Sothebyâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s Marc Fleisher was the listing agent;Washington Fine Propertiesâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; Lauren Davis was the buyerâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s agent.

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VIRGINIA Radhika Rajagopalan and Raj Ananthanpillai bought

DOLLEY MADISON BOULEVARD in McLeanâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s prestigious Ballantrae Farms for $4.1 million from Asyeh and Allen Kabiri. The six-bedroom villa-style mansion was built in 1985 and has been recently remodeled to include a handsome library with a music alcove, a catering kitchen, his-and-herâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s offices, an elevator, pool and pool house. Long & Foster Real Estate Inc.â&#x20AC;&#x2122;s Fouad Talout was the listing agent; Boban Mathew, also of Long & Foster, represented the buyer.

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HOME LIFE | REAL ESTATE NEWS

PROPERTY LINES

1926: A VERY GOOD YEAR: The Chauvin House Team of Compass has listed two 1926 Beaux Arts mansions in Kalorama. The first, TH STREET NW (Left), previously owned by Hani and Cheryl Davis Masri, was restored and remodeled by the renowned New York City

architecture firm Ferguson & Shamamian to feature grand rooms with high ceilings, ornate woodwork and custom fixtures. The five-bedroom property includes a garage and private terrace. The second house at WYOMING AVENUE NW (Right) is on the market for $9.975 million. The historic six-bedroom stunner was built in 1926 by the Oliphant family, several generations of whom built homes in Kalorama Heights. It has since been meticulously renovated to include four levels of stately charm. The residence boasts a bright and sunny gourmet kitchen, a mahogany library, billiards room, home theater and a dining room that opens to a glass conservatory with five sets of French doors leading to the well manicured rear gardens and pool.

INTERNET EXEC LISTS: In 2015, LOWELL STREET NW sold for $6.3 million to entrepreneur and former Google, DoubleClick and Firefly executive John Barabino. The property is now back on the market for $6.9 million. The seven-bedroom Cleveland Park Beaux Artsstyle estate was built in 1917. The 6,000-square-foot stucco residence boasts Cathedral views, a 40-foot pool and beautiful surrounding gardens. The residence was formerly the childhood home of the late Robert Alvord and had been in his family for three generations. Mr. Alvord, a prominent local attorney, lived there with his wife of 43 years, Jacquelyn, and their children. Washington Fine Propertiesâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; Margot Wilson is the listing agent. MODERN MARVEL: People with glass houses list them for $4.25 million. Fred Bahrami is selling his unique glass-walled residence at

R STREET NW with the help of listing agents Robert Hryniewicki, Adam Rackliffe and Christopher Leary of Washington Fine Properties. Bahrami also designed and built the 28-unit condominium building Q14 in Logan Circle. The R Street property is a 6,100-square-foot Contemporary complete with a 1,300-squarefoot roof deck with panoramic views. The house boasts a two-story living room with floor to ceiling windows, an ownerâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s suite with a double steam shower, jacuzzi, and heated floors. The lower level has a second kitchen and three-car gated parking.

LARGEST LISTING IN THE DISTRICT: At 14,000-plus square feet this behemoth beauty in between the Palisades and Wesley Heights is for sale at $8.1 million. CHAIN BRIDGE ROAD NW is owned by local real estate broker Brian Logan and was listed by TTR Sothebyâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s International Realtyâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s Marc Fleisher. The sensational custom

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2004-built masterpiece features both formal and informal multilevel entertaining spaces, expert workmanship and classic design throughout. The guesthouse and cabana feature rear scenic vistas. Send real estate news to Stacey Grazier Pfarr at editorial@ washingtonlife.com.

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OPEN HOUSE

Open House These primo properties are move-in ready. FOREST HILLS ELLICOTT ST NW ASKING PRICE: Situated on a quiet cul-de-sac in sought-after Forest Hills, this $1,375,000 center-hall colonial overlooks historic Rock Creek Park and LISTING AGENT: offers five graciously-sized bedrooms and three-and-a-half baths Kira Epstein, 240on three levels with hardwood floors, a two-story entrance hall, 899-8577, Washingfirst floor library with cozy fireplace, large living and dining ton Fine Properties rooms both with double glass doors leading out to large rear deck overlooking the park, a two-car garage and separate driveway – all within a short commute to downtown Washington.

GREAT FALLS JEFFEREY RD This award-winning Falls Nest Estate in a lodge style sits on five secluded acres. There are 25-foot ceilings, exposed beams, hardwood floors and large stone fireplaces that accentuate fine quality materials and craftsmanship. A $1 million landscape/hardscape includes a 15-foot drop waterfall. It offers proximity to hiking trails, the Potomac River and Washington. Also featured are an indoor sport court, media room, gym and wine cellar.

ASKING PRICE: $6,750,000 LISTING AGENTS: Debbie Shapiro, 703407-1600 and Elizabeth Cutler, 703-832-2250, TTR Sotheby’s International Realty

CHEVY CHASE WEST KIRKE ST Located on one of the most beautiful streets in Chevy Chase Village, this classic Colonial offers many Arts & Crafts touches. Built circa 1903, this sun-filled five-bedroom, five-anda-half bathroom home offers well-proportioned rooms, nine-foot ceilings, a garage and 4,814 square feet, per Homevist floor plans, of living space plus magnificent gardens and a terrace.

ASKING PRICE: $2,150,000 LISTING AGENT: The Martin and Jeﬀ Group, 202-255-9195 mobile and 202-471-5203 direct, Coldwell Banker Residential Brokerage

POTOMAC

DREWS LANE This spectacular and pristine home in “Merry-Go-Round Farm” showcases attention to every last detail. Indoor and outdoor living at its finest features a swimming pool and separate pool house, an outdoor fireplace, inviting sun room, home theater, gym, gourmet kitchen, wine cellar and office. It is beautifully situated on a private lot surrounded by nature and mature trees. There is also a neighborhood equestrian center with indoor and outdoor rings, plus nine miles of hiking and riding trails.

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ASKING PRICE: $3,650,000 LISTING AGENTS: Adam Gelb, 301-922-2922, Long & Foster | Christie’s

HOME LIFE | REAL ESTATE

The Wharf has Landed How Monty Hoffman is transforming the Southwest waterfront. BY C AT H E R I N E T R I F I L E T T I

WHAT IS YOUR BACKGROUND? WHAT MADE YOU WANT TO BECOME A DEVELOPER? Construction was part of

my upbringing, so it’s something I’ve always known. My dad was a contractor and I grew up learning all the basics from him: plumbing and electric, framing houses and laying brick. I then earned a structural engineering degree and worked for a general contractor. But I got the itch to take what I learned and start developing things. It allowed me to be creative. My first project was a walk-up on 16th Street NW before the area was trendy. Everything took off from there.

HOW DID THE IDEA TO DEVELOP THE SOUTHWEST WATERFRONT SURFACE AND HOW HAS IT EVOLVED? I credit

neighborhood.

then Mayor Tony Williams and his initiative to give D.C. greater accessibility to the water.The Potomac River is our greatest natural resource and the District has 26 miles of waterfront, yet we don’t behave like a waterfront city. D.C. has a reputation for being a buttoned up, federal city, but that’s changing with the evolution of the food and entertainment scene and the renaissance of so many neighborhoods. So, we’re embracing this trend by drawing in the most creative artisans to form a world class waterfront community.

BETWEEN PERMITS, ZONING AND THREE ACTS OF CONGRESS, THERE HAVE BEEN MANY HOOPS TO JUMP THROUGH. WHAT HAS BEEN THE BIGGEST HURDLE IN DELIVERING PHASE ONE? Getting everybody to believe. Southwest

HAS YOUR PAST EXPERIENCE IN THE INDUSTRY INFLUENCED HOW YOU LAID OUT YOUR VISION FOR THE WHARF? Yes, it’s

as if the past 30 years has been preparation for this big event. Over the years, I’ve learned a lot about mixing uses and the way people interact with spaces. There have been lots of lessons learned and new patterns continue evolving. When it came to our vision for The Wharf, we studied waterfront cities all over the world and took inspiration from the very best.We also hired over a dozen independent architects to ensure diverse expression to create an authentic

had been stationary for half-a-century. Status quo was so strong. At first, almost no one took it seriously. Then, little by little people started “coming on board.” It’s exciting to see it come alive. WHAT FEATURE ARE YOU MOST LOOKING FORWARD TO?

Well, I’m living in what we build. So, it has to be good. What I’m looking forward to most is walking out my front door and into some of the best restaurants and live-music venues in the country.Then, strolling down the Wharf and meeting friends along the way. It can’t get much better than that.

MOST ANTICIPATED OPENINGS: MUSIC VENUES: The Anthem | Pearl Street Warehouse RESTAURANTS: Kith/ Kin by Kwame Onwuachi | Requin by Mike Isabella| Del Mar de Fabio Trabocchi

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P H OTOS CO URT E SY O F T H E W H A R F

t’s always a good sign when a real estate developer chooses to live in a community he created from scratch. “As they say, never trust a skinny chef,” jokes Monty Hoffman, president of PN Hoffman, the developer of The Wharf – a mile-long mixed-use development on the Southwest waterfront– who is just that confident in the product he and his company have planned and shaped over the last decade. The project unveils phase one this month, which includes high-end dining, retail, hotels, office space, two concert venues, public piers, a water taxi system and luxury condos.