By , Special to JTNews
B’nai B’rith International has given Dina Siegel Vann, Latin American affairs director in its Center for Public Policy, a second assignment — heading its activities at the United Nations.
“Dina Siegel Vann possesses the necessary professional experience, education and personal background to carry out this important task,” B’nai B’rith International President Richard D. Heideman and Executive Vice President Daniel S. Mariaschin said. “Dina has been B’nai B’rith’s leading staff person on our numerous U.N.-related initiatives for some time, and we wanted to recognize her additional responsibilities publicly as well as formally.”
Siegel Vann directs B’nai B’rith’s U.N. office in New York as well as coordinates organizational activity related to other United Nations venues, including Geneva. B’nai B’rith participated in the United Nations’ founding at the end of World War II, and has been an official NGO (non-governmental organization) at the world body for decades.
Siegel Vann joined the Washington, D.C.—based CPP staff as Latin American affairs director in 1999. B’nai B’rith is active in more than a dozen Latin American countries, and Siegel Vann has worked with Jewish leaders, ambassadors, foreign ministers and heads of government throughout the region.
From 1997 to 1999 she served as director of B’nai B’rith’s Evergreen Region, headquartered in Seattle. Previously, she worked as executive director of Tribuna Israelita, the political affairs agency of the Mexican Jewish community.
A Mexico City native, Siegel Vann received a bachelor of arts degree from Tel Aviv University and a master of arts from Syracuse University. “My work at Tribuna Israelita and for B’nai B’rith has focused on bridge-building between different religious and ethnic groups, fighting anti-Semitism and promoting democracy and pluralism. I’ve already been working on similar issues — including helping defend Israel and Zionism from the renewed attacks against them — at the U.N.,” she said.
She was one of B’nai B’rith’s leading staffers at the U.N. World Conference Against Racism in Durban, South Africa, last summer and on the preparatory conferences leading up to it.
“She fought hard in difficult circumstances and showed the insight and tenacity her additional U.N. responsibilities require,” Heideman and Mariaschin said.