The College of Business Administration welcomes Gene Bigler, Ph.D., U.S. State Department Office Director for Strategic and External Affairs (DRL/SEA) Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights and Labor, who will discuss “Fostering Democracy in Trouble Spots and America's Role” on Thursday, April 28 at 12:30 p.m. Miller 208.

A career foreign service officer since 1989, Bigler is a public diplomacy specialist. He assumed his current duties in the state department in August 2004, immediately after returning to Washington, D.C. from Iraq. From January to August 2004 in Baghdad, Bigler served as counselor for public opinion and polling for the Coalition Provisional Authority. From July 2003 to January 2004, he was on detail as special assistant to the director of international affairs in the Office of the Commandant of the United States Coast Guard.

Prior to entering government service, Bigler earned doctorate and a master of arts degree from the Johns Hopkins University School of Advanced International Studies (SAIS) and a bachelor of arts degree from the University of the Pacific in Stockton, California. He was a Fulbright Scholar at the University of Ecuador in Guayaquil in 1967-68. He is the author or co-author of four books and more than 40 other professional papers and publications and has been a lecturer and visiting professor many times in the United States, Europe, and Latin America.