Founder and CEO
Firefly Global Group
Ambassador Josette Sheeran is a decorated diplomat, humanitarian, entrepreneur and technology leader recognized by Forbes as the 30th most powerful woman in the world in 2011.
She serves as founder and CEO of Firefly Global Group, a geopolitical and business consulting firm, supporting founders and accelerating new technologies which enhance national and human security. She serves on the boards of Capital Group funds, which manages more than $2.5 trillion in global investments; Vestergaard International, which has delivered 1 billion high-tech nets to prevent deaths from malaria; Lifestraw, a pioneer in access to safe water; and Sceye, the world’s first stationary stratospheric vessel. She is an advisor to numerous technology companies and has served as President and Director of Canoo Technologies working with NASA and the U.S. Army.
She has been twice unanimously confirmed as a U.S. Ambassador, including leading economic, energy, technology, agriculture and transportation negotiations for US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice. She headed the World Food Program, which was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 2020, leading the world's biggest humanitarian supply chains, with more than 18,000 staff delivering more than 20 billion meals a year to war and disaster zones. She led on the frontlines of wars, disasters and terror attacks, including negotiations with Somali pirates and North Korea and raised financial support for public and private partnerships worth more than $10 billion. In 2012 she pioneered public blockchain to provide refugee support in war zones. Her TED Talk on End Hunger Now has been viewed by more than 1 million. (https://go.ted.com/6wHe)
She serves on the boards of the Business Council for International Understanding and the McCain Institute for International Leadership. Previously, Josette served as a founding board member of AGRA, launched with $10b in investment from Bill Gates and Warren Buffett; Vice Chair of the World Economic Forum; UN Special Envoy, leading a successful effort to end a cholera epidemic in Haiti; Executive Director of the United Nations World Food Program; United States Undersecretary of State; Deputy U.S. Trade Representative and Ambassador covering 86 nations in Asia and Africa, and led U.S. global negotiations on finance, manufacturing, labor, environment, intellectual property, and trade capacity building. She has served on the boards of the US Overseas Investment Corporation (OPIC); as US alternative delegate to the World Bank and IMF; UN AIDS; the Mars Family Advisory Council and Royal DSM Sustainability Council.
She also served as the President and CEO of the Asia Society, a Rockefeller institution founded during WWII to prevent war through negotiation, policy, conflict resolution, culture, and education. She served as a Harvard University’s Kennedy School fellow and taught a graduate program on negotiating the global commons - food, energy and water. She has served as Professor of Practice at Arizona State University. She has been recognized in the world’s Top 100 Twitterati by Foreign Policy and received the Huffington Post Changemaker Award. She has been awarded 3 honorary PhDs and has been decorated by the governments of France and Brazil.