Washington, DC - The J. William Fulbright Foreign Scholarship Board reelected Jeffrey L. Bleich as chair and elected former Senator Mark Pryor as vice chair for 2018 at its annual election held November 14, 2017. The 12-member Board was established by the U.S. Congress and is appointed by the President of the United States to oversee the worldwide Fulbright Program, for which the Board selects participants and sets policies. Their one-year terms of office begin on January 1, 2018.

Jeffrey L. Bleich is a lawyer, diplomat, and educator. He served as the U.S. Ambassador to Australia from 2009 to 2013. He has been a partner in the San Francisco office of Dentons, the global law firm, leading key international initiatives, since March 2016. Bleich is a former chair of the California State University Board of Trustees. He was appointed to the J. William Fulbright Foreign Scholarship Board in 2014.

Mark Pryor is an attorney who served as a United States Senator from Arkansas from 2003 to 2015. He was Attorney General of Arkansas from 1999 to 2003. Currently, he is a partner at Venable LLP in Washington, D.C., serving as the chair of the Legislative and Government Affairs and State Attorneys General practice group. Pryor was appointed to the J. William Fulbright Foreign Scholarship Board in 2017.

The Fulbright Program, the U.S. government’s flagship international educational exchange program, is sponsored by the U.S. Department of State. Since 1946, the Program has provided more than 370,000 participants from more than 180 countries with the opportunity to study, teach and conduct research, exchange ideas and contribute to finding solutions to shared international concerns.