 Thank you very much for that introduction and we had just had a nice chat about something I'll talk about in particular, the diaspora, but in the larger context of partnerships in the office that I now run in the State Department. And speaking of the diaspora, I had actually, in Dublin, I had a scary experience recently with the Irish-American diaspora in the hotel, and that is talking about waking up this morning, having to be jet lagged and looking in the mirror, that was my, that was my scary experience. But all kidding aside, you know, I am one of those rare people in the U.S. now, I think that I'm actually a true, I guess I'm a true grandson of this country. Three of my grandparents are from, were immigrated from Ireland in the early 20th century. The remaining fourth was, she was first generation herself, so I'm third that way. So the traditions that you have here, the faith, your family, your loyalty, those are things that occurred in my very own home. So I'm very much at home here. I appreciate the warm welcome, Jill. Thank you very much for having me here. So I am the, so to talk about that Irish-American experience, I'm the youngest of six. We have a stockbroker, we have an engineer, we have a nurse, we have two teachers, and we have me. So I might not be the most successful, but the good news is for all of your purposes I am the most handsome, the most charismatic, so here to talk today. We have, my parents have 17 grandchildren, my kids are the youngest of those 17. So that is our, that's the O'Brien family's own contribution to the size and strength of the diaspora, making the next generation bigger. But all kidding aside, when it comes to advancing financial issues, political agendas, and cultural movements, and more, the diaspora, the diaspora broadly is serious business. More than 60 million Americans are first or second generation descendants of immigrants, also known as hyphenated Americans. We talked about that. We used that expression earlier today in the discussion. These Americans identify with a multifaceted heritage that comes from histories and traditions rooted in ancestral ties to countries all around the world. For a serious story about the Irish American diaspora, just a week ago I stood on San Jose Street in Santa Clara, West Santa Clara Street in San Jose, California. I met with a gentleman there that some of you may know that's in the Silicon Valley. A remarkable place. It's like Ireland this week, and last week I'm told it's, the air is clean and cool and the sky is blue. Silicon Valley is an amazing place if you haven't been there, I encourage you to go there. That was the first time I'd actually been there in sort of an official capacity. On West Santa Clara Street is the home of Silicon Valley Gateway partners. It's also known as the Irish Innovation Center, and there's a gentleman who goes to work there every day. He's from Limerick. His name's John Hartnett. I don't know if some of you know John. He goes back and forth between the Silicon Valley and Ireland. He's connecting people all over the world through innovation, entrepreneurship and venture capital. He's building businesses here in Ireland. He's building them in the U.S. He's helping our economically challenged areas in California and in the West Coast find their way back to solid financial ground. So John in many ways, I think he represents the best of today's diaspora. So I was privileged to meet him and to see the good work that he and his team are doing. Incidentally, one thing he told me as we wrapped up our meeting is that Erlingus, after significant pressure from him, Erlingus is going to begin a direct flight from Dublin to San Francisco, which is a pretty remarkable thing, I think, for the things I just talked about for the work he wants to do and for a lot of the work that we're going to try and do with the tech sector here in Ireland. Ireland's history of emigration, our collective history, has built a rich global diaspora legacy. Although Ireland's population home stands at 4.4 million, there are an estimated 70 million people of Irish descent living abroad. More than 36 million Americans claim linkages to Ireland as their primary ethnicity. That is a powerful network that gives Ireland advantages in today's globalized world and serves as the basis for a special U.S.-Irish relationship. Under former Secretary Clinton's leadership, the U.S. State Department began formalized outreach to diaspora communities within the United States through the office I now run, and Secretary Kerry has asked me to continue this important work. As you can well imagine, foreign policy begins at home with private businesses, religious and community organizations, and private citizens. It should be no surprise that diaspora communities throughout America are one of our most important resources. There are people-to-people ambassadors, there are natural conduits to help bridge cultural and geographic divides. There are also innovators that assist government and non-governmental organizations to approach global challenges that affect us all. I have spent most of my life living, studying, working in Boston. In fact, this whole thing that I'm doing now, I had never really been more than 40 miles from the place I grew up. So now I get on a plane every Monday, I go to Washington, D.C., I go home every Friday, every once in a while they send me to Ireland. I went to Brazil a few weeks ago, I'm going to Ethiopia in a few more weeks. It's very interesting, I'm not complaining. But you know, I bring up Boston because the natural linkage of kinship and friendship between our people is seen in many cities, and Boston is no exception, and I work with the diaspora when I was in the senator's office. So today it's having had that experience there to be able to come and speak to you with some authority and with this platform, it's a true privilege. So our office is called the Office of Global Partnership, GPI. Since 2009, we've worked with over 1,100 partners and mobilized more than $670 million of public and private sector resources to enhance diplomacy and development outcomes around the globe. The office has developed a new model of global partnership that brings together multi-sectoral actors to address targeted diplomacy and development challenges with localized replicable solutions, from clean water initiatives to anti-human trafficking programs to projects to spur economic growth and improve education. The U.S. State Department is now leading the way in developing innovative alliances to promote inclusive growth and development while resolving difficult global challenges. So in these past few weeks, I've gotten a crash course in public-private partnerships with the remarkable initiatives that have been underway for several years in our office. Let me talk very briefly about a few of them. There's the Partners for a New Beginning, which seeks to engage majority Muslim countries in a new dialogue. This came out of the President's speech in Cairo in 2009. It's a very broad and ambitious program where it has, I want to say, I don't like to be pejorative, but it stalled out a little bit in the transition between secretaries. And we've had a number of conversations with the people involved in it directly and with some outside actors about how to re-energize it. It works on education, STEM education, entrepreneurship, high technology, economic opportunities broadly. The Global Alliance for Clean Cook Stoves. Many of you have heard about that, that is sort of seen as the signature initiative in the office, is making cooking in many rural parts of the globe a cleaner, safer, and healthier enterprise for women and families and children. In May, I took a trip to Sao Paulo, Brazil on behalf of the Accelerating Market Driven Partnerships Initiative, which we call AMP. AMP is a collaborative-based platform to encourage impact investing in Brazil, in the business and innovation sector there. Very interesting thing, very interesting trip. Those are just a few of the things we're doing at GPIs. The Secretary has asked us to find ways to help with issues of water supply and security around the world, health, safety, and security issues for women and children, broader global climate change concerns, and veterans issues on the international level to name just a few. We had a pretty distinguished and hard, you know, we worked very hard on our veterans issues in the U.S. Senate. So it's actually, it's a bit of a square peg in a round hole, but we're actually going to look for ways maybe to work with NATO troops and some of the more countries and forces that don't necessarily have VA type services. Say what you will about our VA. They've been under a lot of scrutiny, but they actually provide remarkable services, and they've done a great job of adapting to our new veterans that have traumatic brain injury with our new post-traumatic stress disorder changes that we've seen between Vietnam now. So there are some things that I think we can probably help with, maybe not through our office, but some things we can export. But getting back to Ireland, I want to thank all those involved in organizing the European strand of this year's global diaspora forum, including the Irish International Diaspora Center. I was pleased to see that the Taoiseach and Tunishtha supported the global diaspora forum here in Ireland on behalf of the European Union just a few months ago in May. This marked yet another success for Ireland during your EU presidency. The event featured influential speakers such as the economist, business editor, Robert Guest, co-founder of the U.S.-based Migration Policy Institute, Kathleen Newland, and director of Global Alumni Relations, Sean Brown. Our event in Washington, D.C., under the theme, Where Ideas Meet Action, featured inspiring stories from prominent, hyphenated Americans such as the CEO of Chobani, Hondi Uliukawa, Supermodel and Maternal Health Advocate, Leah Kabeade, U.S. Marathonna, Meg, excuse me, Meb Keflazigi, and U.S. skater and diplomat, Michelle Kwan, who I met with last week. And Connie, my colleague sitting here in the front row, was responsible for a big chunk of that organizing for that. So, and Connie is the practitioner office for the diaspora effort. As part of these U.S.-Ireland diaspora activities, both the Washington and the Dublin events also featured a focus on science diasporas, which are another area of ongoing cooperation. And it's been a big part of the topics I've talked about in the last couple of days. At the 2012 Global Diaspora Forum, Deputy Secretary of State Bill Burns launched the State Department's networks of diasporas in engineering and science, or NODS, for very big on acronyms in the State Department, which fosters collaboration and connectivity between science diasporas. Then at America's largest general science meeting in Boston in February of this year, NODS organized a symposium in partnership with the Embassy of Ireland, Science Foundation Ireland, and the U.S. National Academies of Science and Engineering. The symposium, which signified the value that the United States, Ireland, and the EU place on scientific advancement and cooperation, brought together science diaspora groups from all over the world, including the Wild Geese Network of Irish Scientists. So, even though you've passed the torch of the EU presidency forward, we hope Ireland will remain a strong advocate of diaspora-driven initiatives, knowing they bolster relations among international partners. And I've seen that in the last, in this day and a half that I've been here in Dublin, there is certainly the desire and the wherewithal to continue that, which is good, because we need you. We've had a lot of conversations with other diasporas in the United States, maybe from Haiti or Southeast Asia. The Irish America and the Irish diaspora is the gold standard, and I know it's a resource for the rest of the world, so I hope it continues. Besides your work with the Global Diaspora Foreman, I've been impressed to learn about the various diaspora engagement programs that currently link generations of Irish diaspora communities back home to Ireland. And when pulled in yesterday morning, I saw the big sign for the gathering, which I had read about and heard about, and we've had a few meetings that came up and so I think that's been a great cultural success from my vantage point. I also think it's had some economic success as well, which is good. The Irish International Diaspora Center and Gen Ireland and ConnectIreland.com, all of these initiatives operate a different sector and employ unique strategies for connecting, celebrating, and engaging the Irish diaspora. These can serve as models for other countries, as I said. It was interesting to see, and a lot of people have been talking about this as we got here, Caroline Kennedy was here a few weeks ago, when was it, a few weeks ago? A couple of weeks ago to celebrate the 50th anniversary of her father's visit to Ireland as President in 1963. And JFK, another good Boston Irish guy, was in many ways the father of the modern U.S.-Irish relations. And his own powerful diaspora story set in motion, what I think has been a unique trajectory for U.S.-Irish relations, which we in the United States have never forgotten. And when I came in there was, we saw a museum, right? Just as when we came in, I saw the exhibit, and it's actually from the Kennedy Library. Am I correct you're talking about that? Which, so it was a little slice of home, because it's the same set of ads you see at home. And I think they had that exhibit there at the Kennedy Library in Dorchester. They had that, I think, earlier part of this year. Lastly, I'd like to mention the U.S.-Irland Research and Development Partnership. In November 2012, my predecessor in this position, Special Representative for Global Partnerships, Chris Balderson, along with Assistant Secretary for the Bureau of Oceans and International Environment and Scientific Affairs, Dr. Kerry N. Jones, led a delegation of entrepreneurs to Dublin and Belfast. They encouraged investment in technology-related enterprise and further trilateral cooperation in scientific research and innovation. I spoke with Dr. Jones before I left at the end of the week, and she was very encouraged that I was coming here as a bit of a follow-up to that trip. The U.S.-Irland Research and Development Partnership is a pillar of our scientific research and economic development with Ireland and Northern Ireland. The State Department serves as the U.S. Co-Chair for the Partnership Steering Committee, which seeks to accelerate scientific research and economic development by encouraging collaboration and coordination among scientists from the United States, Ireland and Northern Ireland in five priority areas, health, sensor technology, nanotechnology, telecommunications, and energy and sustainability. The Partnership also encouraged efforts to bring innovations to market by fostering private sector connections. Speaking in Belfast last month, President Obama underscored the importance of partnerships and moving forward the peace process and emphasized that, quote, jobs and opportunity are essential to peace. And the Secretary, Secretary Kerry actually has been doing a lot of work, he's been following the newsman, doing a lot of work in the Middle East, in Israel and Palestine, and he actually has spoken to me about some of these initiatives, some of the things we're doing here, some of the things we're doing in other parts of the world as an integral part of that. So he's taking it very seriously as part of that very important peace process and getting peace there. And I think, you know, he's been under some scrutiny, I think, for that. But getting peace there will enable us to do many, many other things around the globe. So I think that's the hope, I think, of the department and certainly of his, of me and his immediate staff. Part of the work that I do in Washington is to make sure that the State Department engages with Irish American diaspora groups to support your initiatives here. So I look forward to hearing your ideas about how we can further collaborate together for the betterment of both of our countries and for this earth which we all call home. So thank you very much. Thank you.