Vicki Huddleston is U.S. deputy assistant secretary of defense for Africa. Before taking this post, she was codirector of the Brookings Project on U.S. Policy toward Cuba in Transition, 2007?. A veteran diplomat, she was head of the U.S. mission in Cuba from 1999 to 2002.Carlos Pascual, now U.S. ambassador to Mexico, was vice president and director of foreign policy at Brookings Institution, 2006?. He also has served as U.S. ambassador to Ukraine and is coauthor of Power and Responsibility: Building International Order in an Era of Transnational Threat (Brookings, 2009).