Harvey Brownstone conducts an in-depth interview with Ambassador Suzan Johnson Cook, Presidential Advisor, Religious Leader, Author
About Harvey's guest:
Suzan Johnson Cook is a U.S. Presidential advisor, pastor, theologian, author, activist, and academic who served as the United States Ambassador-at-Large for International Religious Freedom from April 2011 to October 2013. She has served as a policy advisor to President Bill Clinton and later to the Secretary of Housing and Urban Development Henry Cisneros, a dean and professor of communications at Harvard University, a professor of theology at New York Theological Seminary, a pastor at a number of churches, a television producer, and the author of nearly a dozen books. She was the first female senior pastor in the 200-year history of the Mariners Temple Baptist Church in NYC part of the American Baptist Churches USA and a close friend of Coretta Scott King. She is an honorary member of Delta Sigma Theta sorority.
She later earned another master's degree from Union Theological Seminary in 1983 and a Doctor of Ministry from United Theological Seminary in 1990. She is a graduate of the Minority Business Executive Program at the Tuck School of Business at Dartmouth College.
She became the first female senior pastor in the 200-year history of the American Baptist Churches USA. In 2002, she became the first woman elected president of the Hampton University Ministers' Conference, a conference which represents all of the historically African-American denominations. Johnson became the official chaplain of the New York City Police Department, a position which she held for twenty-one years, becoming the first and only woman to hold the position.
Johnson Cook founded the Bronx Christian Fellowship Baptist Church in 1996, which she pastored until 2010. She also founded several non-profit and advocacy organization, such as the Multi-Ethnic Center Inc. She founded Moving Up Productions, a communications, leadership, and consulting firm. She taught at New York Theological Seminary from 1996-98. She spent time on the faculty at Harvard University, serving as a dean and a professor teaching in the areas of speech and communications.
Johnson Cook was the goddaughter of Coretta Scott King, wife of Martin Luther King Jr. She became a close friend of Scott King, officiating her funeral.
In 1993 Johnson Cook was selected to become a White House Fellow. She then became an advisor to President Bill Clinton, serving as a domestic policy advisor on several issues as a member of the Domestic Policy Council. She was on the advisory team for President Clinton's One America Initiative. Following her service as a policy advisor to the president she became a consultant to Secretary of Housing and Urban Development Henry Cisneros from 1994-97.
On June 15, 2010 she was nominated by President Barack Obama for the post of United States Ambassador-at-Large for International Religious Freedom in the State Department. She was renominated and confirmed on April 14, 2011. She was sworn in and began work on May 16, 2011. She is the first woman and first African-American to hold the post.
She resigned in October 2013 in order to return to the private sector so she could give her sons the gift of a "debt-free college education.”
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