Victoria Nuland (born 1961) is the spokesperson for the United States Department of State.

In summer 2011, Nuland became the State Department Spokesperson. She was declared a "consummate professional who proved that Foreign Service officers could be trusted to put professionalism over politics."

She was Ambassador of the United States to the North Atlantic Treaty Organization from 2005 to 2008. As NATO Ambassador, she focused heavily on strengthening Allied support for the Afghanistan war, on NATO-Russia issues, and on the Alliance’s global partnerships and continued enlargement.

A career Foreign Service officer, she was Principal Deputy National Security Advisor to Vice President Cheney from July 2003 until May 2005, where she worked on the full range of global issues, including those relating to Iraq, Afghanistan, Lebanon and the broader Middle East.

Nuland was the Deputy Permanent Representative to NATO from July 2000 to July 2003. There she was instrumental in NATO's invocation of Article 5 of its charter – "an attack on one ally is an attack on all" – in support of the United States after September 11, 2001. She also worked intensively on the enlargement of the Alliance to include seven new members, the creation of the NATO-Russia Council, NATO's first deployment "out of area" to Afghanistan and its defense of Turkey during the 2003 invasion of Iraq.

Nuland is a village in the Dutch province of North Brabant. It is located in the municipality of Maasdonk, about 8 km (5 mi) east of 's-Hertogenbosch.

Nuland was a separate municipality until 1993, when merged with Geffen and Vinkel to create the new municipality of Maasdonk.

Coordinates: 51°44′N 5°26′E / 51.733°N 5.433°E / 51.733; 5.433

Matthew Lee is a public interest lawyer, author, and founder of two non-profit organizations, Inner City Press and Fair Finance Watch.

Both are known for their investigations of the banking industry's treatment of low-income communities of color around the world. Lee produces weekly reports on, and advocates concerning, such global banks as HSBC, Citigroup, Royal Bank of Scotland, Mizuho, and others. In 2005-2006, Lee was engaged in litigation to deem the "citizens-only" provision of the Freedom of Information Act of Delaware (and ten other states) to be unconstitutional.

Lee is the author of the non-fiction book Predatory Lending: Toxic Credit in the Global Inner City and the novel Predatory Bender. Lee is also an accredited journalist at the United Nations.

In mid-2006, Lee's investigative journalism at the UN, published online in Inner City Press uncovered and led to the United Nations Development Programme halting its disarmament programs in the Karamoja region of Uganda in response to human rights abuses exposed in the parallel forcible disarmament programs carried out by the Uganda People's Defense Force. For another view, see the Ugandan newspaper The New Vision, which was critical of UNDP's halt of funding.

Susan Elizabeth Rice (born November 17, 1964) is an American diplomat, former think tank fellow, and civil servant. She is an American foreign policy advisor and United States Ambassador to the United Nations. Rice served on the staff of the National Security Council and as Assistant Secretary of State for African Affairs during President Bill Clinton's second term. Rice was confirmed as UN Ambassador by the U.S. Senate by unanimous consent on January 22, 2009.

Rice was born in Washington, D.C. Her father, Emmett J. Rice (1919–2011), was a Cornell University economics professor and governor of the Federal Reserve System. Her mother is education policy scholar Lois Dickson Fitt, currently at the Brookings Institution. Her brother, John Rice, received an M.B.A. from Harvard Business School and is the founder of Management Leadership for Tomorrow (an organization committed to developing top minority talent for leadership roles in the business and non-profit sector). She is not related to Condoleezza Rice.