Suzan Johnson Cook

Who is Suzan Johnson Cook?

Dr. Suzan Denise Johnson Cook is a presidential advisor, pastor, theologian, author, activist, and academic who served as the United States Ambassador-at-Large for International Religious Freedom from April, 2011 to October 2013. Cook has had a wide-ranging career in a number of fields, serving as a policy advisor to President Bill Clinton and later to the Secretary of Housing and Urban Development Henry Cisneros, a dean and professor of communications at Harvard University, a professor of theology at New York Theological Seminary, a pastor at a number of churches, a television producer, a sought-after speaker and the author of nearly a dozen books, before being named Ambassador-at-Large for International Religious Freedom by President Barack Obama. She was also the first female senior pastor in the 200-year history of the American Baptist Churches USA and a close friend of Coretta Scott King.