Edward P. Joseph is a foreign policy specialist, writer/lecturer and field practitioner who has served in some of the toughest locations in the world.  Currently, he serves as the Executive Director of the National Council on US-Libya relations.  Edward spent over a dozen years in the Balkans, including the war years in Bosnia, Croatia, Kosovo and Macedonia, as well as shorter stints in Afghanistan, Pakistan, Iraq, and Haiti.In April 2012, as Deputy Head of the OSCE Mission in Kosovo, he negotiated an eleventh hour breakthrough on Serbian elections that averted a brewing crisis between Serbia and Kosovo.  Secretary of State Hillary Clinton issued written acknowledgement of Edward’s standout contribution.

During the war in Bosnia-Herzegovina, Edward served in a number of isolated, besieged locations including the Zepa ‘safe area’ near Srebrenica where, in July 1995, Edward and a UN colleague coordinated the evacuation of thousands of Bosnian Muslim women, children and wounded men.  His work required face-to-face dealings with indicted war criminal General Ratko Mladic.  Edward has twice testified before the Hague Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia.  Edward’s reports for the International Crisis Group in Macedonia broke new ground on the link between corruption and conflict, as well as on the name issue with Greece.

Edward brought his extensive field experience to Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies in Washington where he teaches conflict management, and writes and speaks extensively on foreign policy issues.  He has been published in most major media outlets including The New York Times, Foreign Affairs, and Foreign Policy, as well as in academic journals.  Edward appears frequently on television and radio as a commentator on major international events.  Edward also served as Director of Communications for the Council on Foreign Relations.

In addition to the Balkans, Edward has served in Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan and Haiti, where he was Chief Election Observer for the USAID-funded observation mission in 2006.  While In Peshawar, Pakistan in 2007, Edward held on 26 December what may have been the final international meeting with Benazir Bhutto.  In late 2008-early 2009, Edward was a member of the three-person expert team that evaluated USAID’s largest local stability program in Afghanistan, visiting more than a dozen sites ‘outside the  wire’, including Kandahar.

Relief work, in particular humanitarian emergencies, is another specialty of Edward’s.  Following the devastating 2010 earthquake in Haiti, Edward led InterAction’s effort to coordinate the NGO response.  During the NATO air campaign in 1999, Edward co-managed the famed Stenkovec-I refugee camp that housed over 30,000 Kosovar refugees and was the site of high profile visits from President Clinton, Hillary Clinton, Kofi Annan and others.

Edward holds a J.D. from the University of Virginia, and a B.A. and M.A. from Johns Hopkins University and the School of Advanced International Studies, respectively.  He was a helicopter pilot in the US Army Reserve.  He speaks and has worked professionally in Bosnian/Croatian/Serbian and French, Italian and Spanish.