Experts

Mitchell Shivers is a former Principal Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for Asian & Pacific Security Affairs in the Office of the Secretary of Defense (Policy). In that capacity, he was one of the Pentagonʼs top policy officials developing, implementing and overseeing policy for the region. Mr. Shivers also served as Acting Assistant Secretary of Defense toward the end of the George W. Bush Administration. Previously, he was Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for Central Asia (with policy responsibility for an area that included Afghanistan, Pakistan and five former Soviet republics). From November 2004 to November 2005, Mr. Shivers was a Senior Advisor and the Economic Sector Chief of the State Departmentʼs Afghanistan Reconstruction Group at the United States Embassy, Kabul, Afghanistan. As such, he was the principal American advisor on economics and finance to several American ambassadors to Afghanistan as well as to the Afghan government.

An international investment banker by profession, Mr. Shivers retired from Merrill Lynch as Managing Director and Head of Global Public Credit Origination in 2002 – then the industryʼs top team in that highly competitive field. Also at Merrill Lynch, Mr. Shivers played a key leadership role earlier in the global initial public offerings of Indonesiaʼs first privatized state-owned enterprises – at the time the largest-ever IPOs to come out of non-Japan Asia. In his almost thirty years in financial services, Mr. Shivers held senior management posts in New York, Chicago, Singapore, Tokyo, London (twice) and Jakarta with Merrill Lynch as well as two British merchant banks, Samuel Montagu and Kleinwort Benson (where he was the first American member of the main board at each bank).

Mr. Shivers is a Distinguished Alumnus, Distinguished Business Alumnus and former trustee of Monmouth University and attended New York Universityʼs Graduate School of Business.