Ivo Daalder
Ivo Daalder, a former U.S. ambassador to NATO and national security expert, took office Monday as president of The Chicago Council on Global Affairs, an organization that has played a lead role in food aid and foreign agricultural development policy in recent years.

Daalder succeeds Marshall Bouton, who stepped down on June 30 after leading the council for 12 years. Under Bouton's leadership, the council became much more active in agricultural affairs, received major grants from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and brought in Catherine Bertini, a former executive director of the World Food Program, and former Agriculture Secretary Dan Glickman as co-chairs of its agriculture program.

Daalder, 53, was appointed U.S. ambassador to NATO by President Barack Obama in May 2009. Daalder served as director for European affairs on President Bill Clinton’s National Security Council staff from 1995 to 1997, where he was responsible for coordinating U.S. policy toward Bosnia.

Daalder was also a senior fellow in foreign policy studies at the Brookings Institution, specializing in American foreign policy, European security and transatlantic relations and national security affairs.

He has a long scholarly career, authoring 12 books, including most recently, “In the Shadow of the Oval Office: Profiles of the National Security Advisers and the Presidents they Served – From JFK to George W. Bush,” with I.M. Destler, and “America Unbound: The Bush Revolution in Foreign Policy,” with James M. Lindsay.

Daalder was educated at Oxford and Georgetown universities, and received a doctoral degree in political science from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.