Africare's President

  Coles
   

Julius E. Coles

Julius E. Coles has been Africare's president since mid-June 2002. An Africare supporter since the organization's beginning, Coles served as a Board member from 1997 until assuming the presidency (at which time, his Board status changed to "ex-officio": non-voting).

From 1997 to 2002, he was the director of Morehouse College's Andrew Young Center for International Affairs. He served as the director of Howard University's Ralph J. Bunche International Affairs Center from 1994 to 1997.

Most of Coles's previous career, spanning some 28 years, was as a senior official with the United States Agency for International Development. He was mission director in Swaziland and Senegal and served in Vietnam, Morocco, Liberia, Nepal and Washington, D.C. Coles retired from the U.S. government's foreign service in 1994 with the rank of career minister. His foreign service-related awards include the Distinguished Career Service Award (1995) and the Presidential Meritorious Service Award (annually, 1983-1986).

Coles's numerous other awards have included Princeton University's James Madison Medal (2007), Morehouse College's National Alumnus of the Year (2006) and the Amistad Achievement Award (2003). He was decorated by then President Abdou Diouf of Senegal as Commander in the Order of Lion (1994).

Coles is a member of the Boards of InterAction, the Alliance Française (Washington, D.C.), the Andrew Young Center for International Affairs at Morehouse College, Princeton University's Woodrow Wilson School and the Society for International Development. In addition, he is a member of the Sigma Pi Phi Fraternity, the Rotary Club of Atlanta, the Council on Foreign Relations, the Bretton Woods Committee and the UNESCO International Commission on the Gorée (Senegal) Memorial.

He received his B.A. from Morehouse College (1964) and his master's degree in public affairs from Princeton University's Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs (1966). He also has studied at the University of Geneva in Switzerland, the U.S. Department of State Foreign Institute's Senior Seminar, the Federal Executive Institute and Institut de Français in Paris.

Born in Atlanta, Ga., Coles is the father of two grown daughters and lives with his wife, Jean Coles, in Vienna, Va.

 

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(Updated, Dec. 17, 2007)