Hon. Robert Dole

Hon. Robert Dole is special counsel in Alston & Bird LLP’s Washington, DC, office. A renowned statesman, Sen. Dole was elected to Congress from his home state of Kansas in 1960 and to the U.S. Senate in 1968. He gained national prominence as chairman of the Republican National Committee from 1971 to 1972. In 1976, President Gerald Ford tapped him to be his vice presidential running mate. Elected Senate Majority Leader in 1984, Sen. Dole set a record as the nation’s longest serving Republican leader. He resigned from the Senate in 1996 to pursue his campaign for the presidency of the United States.

Dole is national chairman of the World War II Memorial Campaign and the former chairman of the International Commission on Missing Persons in former Yugoslavia. Following Sept. 11, he joined former President Bill Clinton in helping to raise over $100 million as co-chair of the Families of Freedom Scholarship Fund, which enables families of victims to attend a college or trade school of their choice. Dole also serves as president of the influential Federal City Council in Washington, DC, and is honorary co-chair of the President’s Council on Service and Civic Participation, a part of the USA Freedom Corps.

In 1997, Dole received the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the nation’s highest civilian honor, which is awarded by the president to persons deemed to have made especially meritorious contributions to the security or national interest of the United States, to world peace or to cultural or other significant public or private endeavors. His other celebrated honors include the American Legion’s prestigious Distinguished Service Medal; the Horatio Alger Award from Horatio Alger Association of Distinguished Americans, Inc.; the Department of Defense Distinguished Public Service Award; and the National Collegiate Athletic Association’s Theodore Roosevelt Award.

Dole’s record of public service includes numerous distinguished appointments, including advisor, U.S. delegation to the Food and Agricultural Organization of the United Nations, 1965, 1968, 1974, 1975, 1977, 1979; member, Commission on Security and Cooperation in Europe, 1977; member, National Commission on Social Security Reform, 1983; member, U.S. National Commission for the United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization, 1970, 1973; advisor, U.S. Delegation to Study the Arab Refugee Problem, 1967; and advisor, President’s Delegation to Study the Food Crisis in India, 1966.

His personal history of service includes active duty in World War II, during which he was gravely wounded and received for heroic achievement two Purple Hearts and a Bronze Star with one oak leaf cluster.