(Posted March 20, 2006)

HUNTINGDON, Pa. -- Gillian Martin Sorensen, senior adviser at the United Nations Foundation will lecture at Juniata College on the "The Role of the U.N. in the Global Fight on Poverty" at 3 p.m., Wednesday, March 22 in Neff Lecture Hall in the von Liebig Center for Science on the Juniata campus.

The lecture is free and open to the public.

Sorensen served as assistant to secretary-general Kofi Annan for external relations at the U.N. from 1997 to 2003, where she concentrated on outreach programs to various constituencies across the world. Prior to that assignment, she served as special adviser for public policy to Secretary-General Boutros Boutros-Ghali from 1993 to 1996.

Currently she is on leave from the United Nations and is a Fellow at the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University. From 1978 to 1990, she served as New York City's Commissioner for the United Nations and Consular Corps.

She earned a bachelor's degree from Smith College in Northampton, Mass. and has taken graduate courses at the Sorbonne in Paris, France. She is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations, the Women's Forum and the Women's Foreign Policy Group.

Contact April Feagley at feaglea@juniata.edu or (814) 641-3131 for more information.