Goli Ameri
Goli Ameri is an Iranian-American diplomat, politician and businesswoman from the U.S. state of Oregon. She is the current Under Secretary General for Humanitarian Values and Diplomacy for the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies. She is also the former U.S. Assistant Secretary of State for Educational and Cultural Affairs. She ran for the U.S. House of Representatives as a Republican in 2004, and is a former delegate to the United Nations. She was born in Tehran, Iran.
Goli was born on September 26, 1956 in Tehran, Iran, and came to the United States when she was 17 in 1974 to attend Stanford University. Ameri completed her Bachelor of Arts in Communications and French Literature and her Master's degree in Communications at Stanford University. She also studied at the Sorbonne in Paris, France. She is fluent in French and Persian and conversant in Spanish. She is fluent in English, French and Persian, as well as conversant in Spanish.
Goli Ameri was the founder and president of eTinium, a consulting and market research firm specializing in the telecommunications industry. She is the author of over fifty market studies and wrote a bi-monthly industry analysis column for Telephony magazine. Prior to founding eTinium, Ameri was a director at U.S. Leasing, a former division of Ford Credit and Fleet Bank, in San Francisco.
In 2004, Ameri was appointed by George W. Bush as one of three public members of the United States' delegation to the 61st session of the United Nations Commission on Human Rights. In the summer of 2005, President Bush appointed Ameri as the head of the United States' delegation to the United Nations General Assembly, which is headquartered in New York City. There, she worked on UN Management Reform, the creation of the UN Human Rights Council and, due to her background in the field of high-technology, on the Internet Governance Portfolio. She was sworn in by then-U.N. Ambassador John R. Bolton in September 2005 and served until the end of the session in December. She was confirmed retroactively by the United States Senate for this position on May 26, 2006. On November 15, 2007, Ameri was nominated by President Bush to serve as Assistant Secretary of State for Educational and Cultural Affairs. As part of her duties, Ameri has traveled to different regions of the globe to promote cross-cultural understanding. On July 1, 2010, Ameri was appointed by the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies as Under Secretary General for Humanitarian Values and Diplomacy. In this position, she is tasked with increasing Red Cross and Red Crescent influence with policymakers and governments to better understand the needs of the people the organization serves worldwide.
In 2004, Ameri became the Oregon Republican Party's nominee for Oregon's 1st congressional district, in a challenge to three-term incumbent Democrat David Wu. Ameri's campaign gained a great deal of attention from political insiders in Washington, D.C. because of her fast-paced fundraising skills. She was dubbed one of the National Republican Congressional Committee's "Super Six" candidates. She was also ranked by the Federal Elections Commission as the number-one Congressional challenger candidate in the country in total dollars raised for the 2004 primary and general elections cycles.
In October 2007, Ameri was named as one of the "100 Most Powerful Women in the Northwest" by The NW Women's Journal for her UN service and her position on the Advisory Board of the National Education for Women’s Leadership program at the Hatfield School of Government at Portland State University. She received the Ellis Island Medal of Honor on May 11, 2008. The award is given annually to 100 recipients to pay tribute to the experiences and individual achievements of immigrants to the United States.
Goli Ameri is married to Jamshid Ameri, a graduate of Stanford University and a real estate investor in the Pacific Northwest, and they have two sons, Darius, and Sherwin.
