Giovanni Snidle, Senior Coordinator for Hemispheric Security Policy at the Department of State, U.S. Mission to the Organization of American States.  Giovanni Snidle, a career civil servant, is responsible for advising on regional security cooperation and hemispheric security issues at the Department of State.  Giovanni has served as a security and defense adviser to the U.S. Permanent Mission since 1992 and is accredited to the OAS as an Alternate Representative of the United States. He is the current dean of the Diplomats at the OAS.  In 1997, he was first elected vice-Chairman of the OAS Committee on Hemispheric Security.  He has been re-elected to that position ten times and has been elected to serve in other leadership capacities for several OAS working groups dealing with gangs and transnational criminal organizations.  In 1997, 2000, and 2003, Giovanni served as the U.S. representative on the United Nations Secretary General’s Group of Governmental Experts on the UN Register of Conventional Arms.

He received the prestigious Arthur S. Flemming Award for excellence in government service in 1994.  Recognized by the President of the United States, agency heads, and the private sector, the winners are selected from all areas of the federal service.

Giovanni has more than 37 years of foreign policy experience with the U.S. Government.  Before joining WHA, he served as the Special Adviser for Regional Security, and Confidence and Security Building Measures in the State Department’s Bureau of Political-Military Affairs, a foreign affairs specialist in the U.S. Arms Control and Disarmament Agency (ACDA), and as a foreign affairs officer or economist in several agencies, including Defense, Labor, and Intelligence.

Giovanni received a B.A. degree in International Studies and Economics from American University in Washington, D.C., and an M.A. degree in Foreign Affairs from the University of Virginia (UVA), Charlottesville, VA.  While enrolled in the graduate program at UVA, Mr. Snidle held positions as a graduate research and teaching assistant at Princeton University’s Woodrow Wilson School of Government and International Affairs.