Lloyd Axworthy currently serves as the President and Vice-Chancellor of the University of Winnipeg, working to renew the campus and its downtown community with the view to making post-secondary education more accessible to inner-city, Aboriginal, new immigrant and refugee students.

Dr. Axworthy’s political career spanned 27 years, 21 of which he served in the federal Parliament. He held several Cabinet positions, notably Minister of Human Resources Development and Minister of Foreign Affairs. In the Foreign Affairs portfolio, Dr. Axworthy became internationally known for his advancement of the human security concept, in particular, the Ottawa Treaty – a landmark global treaty banning anti-personnel landmines. For his leadership on landmines, he was nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize. For his efforts in establishing the International Criminal Court and the Protocol on child soldiers, he received the North-South Prize of the Council of Europe.

Dr. Axworthy currently serves as a commissioner on the Aspen Institute’s Dialogue and Commission on Arctic Climate Change. He is a board member of the MacArthur Foundation, Human Rights Watch, the Educational Policy Institute, and the University of the Arctic, a 110-member international cooperative network of education and research institutions and indigenous organizations based in circumpolar regions of the world.