Mohammad Javad Zarif (Persian: محمد جواد ظریف‎), (b. 8 January 1960) is a former Permanent Representative of the Islamic Republic of Iran to the United Nations. He presented his credentials to the United Nations Secretary-General on August 5, 2002. From 1992 until his appointment to the U.N., he had worked as the Deputy Foreign Minister for Legal and International Affairs. Between 1989 and 1992, he had been the Deputy Permanent Representative to the United Nations.

Javad Zarif attended the Graduate School of International Studies at the University of Denver and obtained a Ph.D. in International Law and Policy. He also attended San Francisco State University as a graduate student in the Department of International Relations.

In 2000, Zarif served as chairman of the Asian Preparatory Meeting of the World Conference on Racism and as the chairman of the United Nations Disarmament Commission.

Zarif was also a Professor of International Law at the Tehran University. He has served on the board of editors of a number of scholarly journals, including the Iranian Journal of International Affairs and Iranian Foreign Policy and has written extensively on disarmament, human rights, international law, and regional conflicts.

Zarif Davidson, known professionally as Zarif, is a British singer-songwriter of Anglo-Scottish-Iranian descent whose music ranges from soul to funk to pop. She performs with a nine piece band and sometimes plays keyboard and guitar.

Zarif grew up in Harrow, London with her Scottish father and her Iranian Jewish mother. As a child, Zarif loved listening to music and some of her favourite artists are Michael Jackson, Stevie Wonder, Prince, and Aretha Franklin. She wrote her first song as an entry to a Blue Peter Competition and formed a girl band with her friends called Girls of Tomorrow. Zarif was educated at North London Collegiate and then went on to University College London where she graduated with a Human Sciences degree.

Before starting her solo career, Zarif was a backing singer in the funk and soul band Retrogression as well as working as a nanny, secretary, shop assistant and an occasional member of Scarlet's Well. As a solo artist, she performed in a series of venues in London in the city's soul singer-songwriter open mic circuit. The Nextmen saw her at one of these gigs and asked her to perform on three tracks on their critically acclaimed album, This Was Supposed To Be The Future as well as tour with them over the summer of 2007.

Thomas Woodrow Wilson (December 28, 1856 – February 3, 1924) was the 28th President of the United States, from 1913 to 1921. A leader of the Progressive Movement, he served as President of Princeton University from 1902 to 1910, and then as the Governor of New Jersey from 1911 to 1913. Running against Progressive ("Bull Moose") Party candidate Theodore Roosevelt and Republican candidate William Howard Taft, Wilson was elected President as a Democrat in 1912.

In his first term as President, Wilson persuaded a Democratic Congress to pass major progressive reforms. Historian John M. Cooper argues that, in his first term, Wilson successfully pushed a legislative agenda that few presidents have equaled, and remained unmatched up until the New Deal. This agenda included the Federal Reserve Act, Federal Trade Commission Act, the Clayton Antitrust Act, the Federal Farm Loan Act and an income tax. Child labor was curtailed by the Keating–Owen Act of 1916, but the U.S. Supreme Court declared it unconstitutional in 1918. He also had Congress pass the Adamson Act, which imposed an 8-hour workday for railroads. Wilson, after first sidestepping the issue, became a major advocate for the women's suffrage.

Joseph Robinette "Joe" Biden, Jr. (pronunciation: /ˈdʒoʊsɨf rɒbɨˈnɛt ˈbaɪdən/; born November 20, 1942) is the 47th and current Vice President of the United States, serving under President Barack Obama. A Democrat, he was a United States Senator from Delaware from January 3, 1973 until his resignation on January 15, 2009, following his election to the Vice Presidency.

Biden was born in Scranton, Pennsylvania and lived there for ten years before moving to Delaware. He became an attorney in 1969, and was elected to a county council in 1970. Biden was first elected to the Senate in 1972 and became the sixth-youngest senator in U.S. history. He was re-elected to the Senate six times, was the fourth most senior senator at the time of his resignation, and is the 15th-longest serving Senator in history. Biden was a long-time member and former chairman of the Foreign Relations Committee. His strong advocacy helped bring about U.S. military assistance and intervention during the Bosnian War. He opposed the Gulf War in 1991. He voted in favor of the Iraq War Resolution in 2002, but later proposed resolutions to alter U.S. strategy there. He has also served as chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, dealing with issues related to drug policy, crime prevention, and civil liberties, and led creation of the Violent Crime Control and Law Enforcement Act and Violence Against Women Act. He chaired the Judiciary Committee during the contentious U.S. Supreme Court nominations of Robert Bork and Clarence Thomas.