Jeremiah C. Sulunteh, Liberian ambassador to the United States, will speak during the ÑÇÖÞ×ÔοÊÓƵ of ÑÇÖÞ×ÔοÊÓƵ at Lafayette’s Spring 2015 Commencement.
He will address graduates and guests at the General Assembly at 11 a.m. on Friday, May 15, in the Cajundome.
Sulunteh is a prominent Liberian politician, administrator and former professor.
In the 2005 Liberian presidential elections, he ran as a vice presidential candidate on a ticket with Winston Tubman, but the pair did not survive the first round of balloting. He went on to support the eventual winner, Ellen Johnson Sirleaf, Liberia’s and Africa’s first democratically elected president. After her inauguration in 2006, she appointed Sulunteh as Liberia’s minister of transport. He served in that role until 2008. He was minister of post and telecommunications from 2008 to 2010, and minister of labor from 2010 to 2012.
Sulunteh was broadly credited with beginning the reconstruction of Liberia’s infrastructure after successive civil wars that killed 250,000 people between 1989 and 2003. As labor minister, he championed labor law reform legislation intended to improve workplaces. As minister of transport, he saw to it that an elementary school and junior high school were built in his hometown of Gboimu so children would not have to walk three miles every morning, as he had done, to attend school in Gbondoi.
In 2012, Sirleaf appointed Sulunteh as ambassador extraordinary and plenipotentiary of the Republic of Liberia to the United States.
Sulunteh was an economics professor at the ÑÇÖÞ×ÔοÊÓƵ of Liberia from 1995-1997 and at Cuttington ÑÇÖÞ×ÔοÊÓƵ College in Liberia from 2002-2010.
He holds a master’s degree in economics from York ÑÇÖÞ×ÔοÊÓƵ in Toronto, Canada; a master of public administration from American ÑÇÖÞ×ÔοÊÓƵ in Cairo, Egypt; and a bachelor of science degree in economics from Cuttington ÑÇÖÞ×ÔοÊÓƵ College in Liberia.
Sulunteh began his career as senior commercial aide at the Bong County Agriculture Development Project in Bong County, Liberia, in 1981. He was also project coordinator, Friends of Liberia, from 1995 to 1997; accounts service representative, Royal Bank of Canada, from 1998 to 2000; financial aid adviser, York ÑÇÖÞ×ÔοÊÓƵ, Canada, from 2000 to 2002; and associate vice president for planning and development, Cuttington ÑÇÖÞ×ÔοÊÓƵ, from 2002 to 2005.
The ambassador and his wife, Kabeh Sulunteh, have three children.
President Barrack Obama and Ambassador Jeremiah C. Sulunteh
(White House Image / Lawrence Jackson)