Ambassador Bonnie McElveen-Hunter is a business owner, diplomat and philanthropist. She is the Founder and CEO of Pace, one of the largest independently owned content agencies in the nation. She was appointed as U.S. Ambassador to the Republic of Finland from 2001-2004, where she initiated the Stop Child Trafficking: End Modern-Day Slavery and Children of Karelia program. She also founded the Women Business Leaders Summit®, a model for business entrepreneurship partnering women business leaders around the world. She was awarded one of Finland’s highest honors—The Commander Grand Cross of the Order of the Lion.
In 2004 she was appointed as the first female National Chairman of the Board of Governors of the American Red Cross, serving five terms under four U.S. Presidents. She co-founded the American Red Cross Tiffany Circle Society of Women Leaders in 2007; Tiffany Circle members have now invested over a quarter of a billion dollars in the American Red Cross mission. In July 2024, after twenty years of service to the American Red Cross, Ambassador McElveen-Hunter stepped down as Chairman of the Board of Governors. The Chairman’s Council Plaza at Red Cross Headquarters in Washington, D.C. was dedicated in her honor and renamed “Ambassador Bonnie McElveen-Hunter Plaza.”
As a philanthropist, Ambassador McElveen-Hunter founded the first Billion Dollar National Women’s Leadership Initiative for United Way, which to date has raised over $2 billion dollars. She has also served on the board of Habitat for Humanity, helping to start its first Women’s Build. She currently serves on the boards of the Kennedy Center, Blair House Foundation, National Gallery of Art, White House Historical Association, and the Society of the Four Arts as a Trustee and as Chairman of the Esther B. O’Keeffe Speaker Series.
People who make a difference in our lives are not the ones with the most credentials or the most money or the most awards—they are the ones who care and put their caring into action.