Dr. Patrick Mendis presented with Albert Nelson Marquis Lifetime Achievement Award by Marquis Who’s Who in America

Dr. Patrick Mendis 

Marquis Who’s Who, the world’s premier publisher of biographical profiles, is proud to present Dr. Patrick Mendis with the Albert Nelson Marquis Lifetime Achievement Award. An accomplished listee, Dr. Mendis celebrates many years of experience in his professional networks around the world, and has been noted for the achievements, leadership qualities, credentials, and successes he has accrued in the fields of education and diplomacy. As in all Marquis Who’s Who biographical volumes, individuals profiled are selected on the basis of current reference value. Factors such as position, noteworthy accomplishments, visibility and prominence in the fields are all taken into account during the selection process.

Leading a long and successful academic and diplomatic career, Dr. Mendis has been a distinguished visiting professor of transatlantic relations at the University of Warsaw in Poland since 2022. While teaching at the University of Minnesota, his lengthy tenure in international education began in the former Soviet Union as a visiting lecturer of Economics and Management at Leningrad State University in 1991. Dr. Mendis has since taught courses in economics, geography, international political economy, Sino-American relations, international politics, United Nations affairs, and more.

Throughout his profession in higher education, Dr. Mendis held a multitude of faculty appointments. Among them, he was a distinguished visiting professor of Global Affairs at the National Chengchi University in Taiwan and a distinguished visiting professor of Sino-American relations at the Yenching Academy of Peking University in China. He also held appointments at Harvard University’s Fairbanks Center for Chinese Studies as an associate researcher, the Harvard Kennedy School of Government as a Rajawali senior fellow, and the Pangoal Institution in Beijing as a senior fellow and academic advisor. Among many other roles, Dr. Mendis held faculty, research and leadership positions at the University of Minnesota, the Johns Hopkins University, Columbia University, Yale University and George Mason University in the United States, as well as Nanjing University, Shandong University, Tongji University, Wuhan University and Zhejiang University in China.

Besides his full-time commitments to higher education, Dr. Mendis served in a wide range of leadership roles on behalf of the US government at the Department of State, the Department of Energy, the Department of Agriculture, and the Department of Defense. For his leadership in the federal government and United Nations affairs, Dr. Mendis received the US Department of State’s Meritorious Honours Award, the Benjamin Franklin Award, and the Certificate of United Nations Negotiations as well as the USDA Outstanding Leadership and Service Award. For his teaching and contribution to the US Armed Forces in the NATO and the Indo-Pacific Commands of the Pentagon, he received the Stanley Drazek Teaching Excellence Award from the University of Maryland. He was also affiliated with the US Senate Foreign Relations Committee, the World Bank and served as a budget analyst in the Minnesota Department of Finance and as a staff member of the Minnesota House of Representatives in Saint Paul.

Dr. Mendis has authored more than 150 books, book chapters and other professional publications and presentations as a notable scholar. More recently, he authored an acclaimed book “Peaceful War: How the Chinese Dream and American Destiny Create a New Pacific World Order” (translated into Mandarin Chinese) and contributed a book chapter to “Middle-Power Responses to China’s BRI and America’s Indo-Pacific Strategy” in 2022.

Dr. Mendis also received several fellowships and awards throughout his academic career – including the Hubert Humphrey Alumni Award for Outstanding Leadership in 1986, the Harold Stassen Award for UN Affairs in 1997, the 21st Century Trust Fellow from Oxford University in 2000, the International Confucius Award from the People’s Republic of China in 2018, the Taiwan Fellowship from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Republic of China in 2020, and the Lifetime Achievement Award from the Sri Lanka Foundation in 2022.

Civically invested, Dr. Mendis served his native country of Sri Lanka as its youth ambassador to the United Nations in 1985 and a sergeant of the Army Cadets Corps beginning in 1974, eventually becoming the Best Commander of Sri Lanka in 1976; he later served as a sergeant of the Police Cadet Corps between 1976 and 1978 before winning an American Field Service (AFS) Scholarship to attend high school in the United States. He was also active in philanthropy as the Founding Director for the Asia-Pacific Endowment of the Saint Paul Foundation in Minnesota, the Founding Chairman for the Educate Lanka Foundation in Maryland, and the Founder of the Tsunami Leaders Caring Trust of the Calvert Foundation in Maryland. Additionally, Dr. Mendis established several scholarships at the University of Minnesota, the University of Sri Jayewardenepura, Minnesota State Community and Technical College, and Harvard University.

Dr. Mendis graduated with a Bachelor of Science in Business Administration and Economics (summa cum laude) from the University of Sri Jayewardenepura in Sri Lanka in 1983. He received a Master of Arts in International Development and Foreign Policy from the Hubert Humphrey School of Public Affairs at the University of Minnesota in 1986 and a Doctor of Philosophy in Geography and Applied Economics from the University of Minnesota in Twin Cities in 1989. Moreover, Dr. Mendis completed the Harvard Executive Leadership Program at the Kennedy School of Government in 1996.

As a testament to his personal integrity and international expertise, Dr. Mendis was elected a fellow of the World Academy of Art and Science (WAAS), a senior fellow of the Synergia Foundation in India, and a senior fellow of the Taiwan Center for Security Studies in the Republic of China. President Harlan Cleveland of WAAS and US ambassador to NATO, who nominated Dr. Mendis for Who’s Who, presciently characterised him as “a budding leader if I ever saw one” in a correspondence to the President of the UN General Assembly in 1985.