John Naland retired from the Foreign Service in 2015 after a 29-year career that included service in Colombia, Costa Rica, Nicaragua, Mexico (as Principal Officer at U.S. Consulate Matamoros), and Iraq (leading the Provincial Reconstruction Team in Basra). Washington assignments included the Secretary’s Policy Planning Staff, the State Department Operations Center, and the White House Situation Room. He currently is the Retiree Vice President of the American Foreign Service Association – the union representing career diplomats that he twice headed as president. He also is President of the Foreign Service Youth Foundation. He has had over 100 articles and essays published in the Foreign Service Journal. A former U.S. Army cavalry officer, he is a graduate of the Army War College. Born in Wichita, Kansas, he grew up in New Orleans, Louisiana where he graduated from Tulane University.

Harry W. Kopp, a former Foreign Service officer, is the author of three books on diplomacy: Career Diplomacy (with John K. Naland, Georgetown University Press, 2017); Commercial Diplomacy and the National Interest (American Academy of Diplomacy, 2004); and Voice of the Foreign Service: A History of the American Foreign Service Association (Foreign Service Books, 2015). Former Secretary of State Lawrence S. Eagleburger, a career foreign service officer, called Career Diplomacy "the best description of life in the foreign service -- its challenges, dangers, satisfactions, and fun -- I have ever seen."

Kopp joined the Foreign Service as an entry-level officer in 1967 and rose to the Senior Foreign Service in eleven years. He served as deputy assistant secretary of state for international trade policy in the Carter and Reagan administrations. His overseas assignments included Warsaw, where he directed the United States-Poland Trade Development Center, and Brasilia, Brazil, where he was deputy chief of mission. He received superior and meritorious honor awards from the Department of State and a presidential award for public service from President Ronald Reagan.

Kopp left government to set up the consulting firm of L. A. Motley and Company. His clients included Anheuser-Busch International, the National Cotton Council, the Association of Brazilian Poultry Exporters, and the Sugar Alliance of the Philippines.

Kopp writes often for the Foreign Service Journal (www.afsa.org/publications), where he is also a member of the editorial board. His articles and commentary have appeared in The New York Times and other publications. His short story "Trotsky in the Bronx" won the 2012 Goldenberg Fiction Prize from the Bellevue Literary Review.

Kopp holds degrees from Hamilton College and Yale University. He lives with his wife Jane in Baltimore, Maryland. His websites are harrykopp.com and careerdiplomacy.com.