To mark the global celebrations of St. Patrick's Day please join us for a special conversation with Trina Vargo, President of the US-Ireland Alliance, an organization she founded in 1998. The conversation will be led by Harvard Club of Boston Member and Past President of the Harvard Club of Ireland Bob Manson.

As Senator Ted Kennedy’s foreign policy adviser, Trina Vargo was instrumental in the controversial effort to convince President Clinton to grant a travel visa to Sinn Fein leader Gerry Adams—a crucial step in the Northern Ireland peace process. Vargo served as the Irish-issues adviser to every Democratic presidential campaign from Dukakis through Obama. She founded the US-Ireland Alliance and the prestigious George J. Mitchell Scholarship program, which introduces future American leaders to the island of Ireland. Of the approximately 240 Mitchell Scholars about one quarter of that number are members of our Harvard alumni community including three new Mitchell Scholars about which recent announcement you can read more in the following Harvard Gazette Article. And she created the annual Oscar Wilde Awards to bring together creatives in the field of entertainment. Vargo has navigated the corridors of power in Ireland and the United States, experiencing first-hand the deep affection each country holds for the other. She has also seen valuable opportunities squandered—and sabotaged—by those on both sides of the Atlantic who jealously defend their turf against imaginative ideas. Vargo became part of the Clintons’ “enemies list” as a result of her work on Barack Obama’s presidential campaign in 2008. She has been attacked by a vocal, but determined, few as a result of a truth-to-power opinion piece on immigration, and a member of the Irish parliament demanded she be hauled before the body’s Foreign Affairs Committee. She even had to battle the Irish Film Board in her efforts that resulted in J.J. Abrams filming "Star Wars: The Force Awakens" in Ireland. Vargo passionately believes the US-Ireland relationship needs to evolve and to survive.

With the achievement of the Northern Ireland peace agreement and the massive economic advancement of Ireland in the 1990s, Vargo recognized how the relationship between the United States and the island of Ireland would naturally change, something she first wrote about in the Washington Post on the launch of the US-Ireland Alliance in 1998.

To learn more about the US-Ireland Relationship in Uncertain Times you can purchase Vargo's book, Shenanigans Here.

To register, click here.