In April, and usually after the regular lecture series has closed, the annual dinner is held.  It is a jacket-and-tie sitdown dinner with a speaker and often a foreign affairs quiz in which tables compete against each other.

Over the past few years the venue considered the most popular for this event has been the Port Royal Club.  The 2010 dinner will be held there on Thursday, April 15th, with a Wine Reception at 6:00 p.m., and Dinner at 6:45 p.m. The price per person is $75, and includes valet parking. 

Seating is always limited.  Only 222 seats are available at the Port Royal Club, on a first come, first served basis. 
 

Please CLICK HERE to download and print the Response Form PDF, for the 2010 Annual Dinner.  

The after-dinner speaker will be United States Ambassador William Bodde (retired), speaking about "The Lighter Side of Diplomacy, My Tales of the South Pacific". 
 

A career United States Foreign Service Officer for over thirty years, Bill Bodde served as Ambassador under Presidents Jimmy Carter George H. W. Bush, and Bill Clinton. In the Reagan Administration he was appointed Deputy Assistant Secretary for European and Canadian affairs in the State Department

In 1978, after assignments as a political officer in Vienna, Stockholm and Bonn, Bodde was named the Director of Pacific Islands Affairs in the State Department.  While formulating U.S. policy towards the emerging Pacific Island nations, he was the State Department’s senior representative to the Micronesian Political Status Negotiations.  In 1980 President Carter named him Ambassador to Fiji, Tonga, and Tuvalu and Minister Extraordinary and Plenipotentiary to Kiribati as well as the United States Representative to the South Pacific Commission.
 

He left Fiji in 1982 for Honolulu, Hawaii, to be the first Diplomat in Residence at The East-West Center. He then returned to Germany as Consul General in Frankfurt for three years followed by three years in the State Department in a senior policy position. In 1990, Bodde returned to the South Pacific when President Bush chose him to be the first Ambassador to the Republic of The Marshall Islands. In 1993, as  his last assignment, Bodde was sent to Singapore to establish the international Secretariat for the Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC)  forum.

Since leaving the Foreign Service in 1994, he has been an advisor to Fortune 500 companies and The Pacific Basin Economic Council. Ambassador Bodde has lectured widely in Europe, Asia and the United States. He is the author of the book The View From The 19th Floor: Reflections of the First APEC Executive Director and numerous articles on politics, foreign policy and international trade in the US and abroad.

He was a visiting professor at the University of Hawaii MBA program for ten years and continues to lecture in continuing education programs at Johns Hopkins University, The University of Hawaii and American University. 
 

Born in Brooklyn, New York, Bodde is a graduate of Hofstra College and has a Masters in Public Policy from The Johns Hopkins School for Advanced International Studies.  Ambassador Bodde is the recipient of a Presidential Award for performance and two State Department Superior Honor Awards as well as two distinguished alumni awards from the Hofstra Alumni Association.