Joelle Millar
Joelle was born and raised in the Elmwood Park neighborhood of Columbia, South Carolina. Her mother is a homemaker and her father is a professor of International Business at the Moore School of Business at the University of South Carolina. Despite the school's high ranking, her intest in the field and her faculty connection, Joelle attended Brown University, where she took a concentration in American History. (In playfully poking fun at her southern roots, Brian's often chided Joelle that she had to come to New England to get a decent education.) A chance summer internship in New York with Amnesty International tuned her in to work in the non-profit sector and she went on from Brown to get a joint Masters' degree in Public Administration and International Affairs from the Maxwell School at Syracuse University.
Joelle joined the staff of the Brookings Institution right out of graduate school, in the foreign policy studies program. Within a year, and due to hard work and a lucky break, she had been promoted to director of the program. She had also met Brian. The two hit it off right away, but things were rocky from the start. Joelle repeatedly tried to get Brian to leave his job with Chafee and come work for Brookings. In part she disagreed with Republican politics and wanted Brian out of it, in part she thought that them being closer during the work day might help their relationship; they were each just too married to their jobs to make their relationship work. In the end, though they stayed in close contact, things petered out just three months before 9/11.
- In the four years since 9/11, Joelle has been promoted and is now the Director of Humanitarian Issues and Human Rights for the Brookings Institution. She has a special interest for Internally Displaced Persons and is currently involved in the Survivor case of 17 year old Zaida binte Shouk.
- She is also dating the Sudanese Ambassador to the United States, Khidir Haroun Ahmed. Brian has protested this relationship, claiming that Ahmed is dating Joelle for political reasons. Joelle has laughed off the accusation, claiming that Brian's only jealous.
- Joelle has recently accepted Brian's offer of a job as Executive Director of The Hopewell Foundation although, due to her continuing work at Brookings, she will be unable to start that job until the beginning of 2006. In the meanwhile, though, she was able to use her position to convince the U.S. Government to allow a representative of the Hopewell Foundation (Brian) to speak with Zaida.
Job Description[edit]
The Executive Director
The Executive Director is in charge of the large-scale operations of the Hopewell Foundation. While ultimately answerable only to the Foundation's Board of Directors, the ED's responsibilities usually manifest in two key action areas. First, she directly oversees the Foundation's Operations staff. This includes ensuring that the Foundation has the funding it needs to function through development, that its budgets are on-target, that the staff remains highly skilled and motivated, and that its program activities are in keeping with its mission statement. Second, she is the key liason between the Foundation's office and the non-media world. In this capacity she attends all Development-related functions, meets with potential high-powered donors and takes meetings with high-ranking members of government as-needed.
