Speakers
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John R Byerly
Deputy Assistant Secretary for Transportation Affairs
U.S. Department of State
John Byerly has served as Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for Transportation Affairs since 2001, overseeing the State Department's active engagement on a broad range of international transportation issues, including the negotiation of air services agreements; the development of aviation and maritime economic, security, safety, and environmental policy; and the resolution of "doing business" problems encountered by U.S. airlines abroad. Among other accomplishments, John led the United States in negotiating pathbreaking bilateral Open Skies agreements with Germany, France, and Japan as well as the comprehensive U.S.-EU Air Transport Agreement signed in 2007 and the "second-stage" agreement signed in June 2010. Under John's leadership, the United States has attained Open Skies accords with over ninety countries on every continent.
A graduate of the University of North Carolina and Yale Law School and a past Fulbright Scholar at the Free University of Berlin, John joined the State Department in 1979. He has held positions covering a spectrum of duties in American foreign policy, national security, and international economic relations, including as Legal Adviser to the US Mission Berlin in the early 1980s, as Deputy Assistant Secretary for African Affairs, on detail to the central Intelligence Agency as Principal Deputy General Counsel, and as General Counsel of the Multinational Force and Observers, the independent international organization responsible for peacekeeping in the Sinai.
