On May 19th, the Cordova Community Council hosted Eleni Tskapoulous Kounalakis as the guest speaker at their monthly Rancho Cordova Luncheon at City Hall.

Kounalakis is the daughter of a prominent Sacramento developer, and she helped create the Anatolia neighborhood of Rancho Cordova. In 2010, she was nominated by President Barack Obama to serve as the U.S. Ambassador to Hungary under Secretary of State Hillary Clinton. In April 2017, Kounalakis officially announced her bid for Lieutenant Governor of California.

At the luncheon, Kounalakis focused her discussion on her years as the U.S. Ambassador to Hungary and her democratic theories, derived from her father’s teachings on Hellenistic history and early Greek values. She shared that her most meaningful experiences were meeting everyday people on the streets, as well as her interactions with American service people headed to or from Afghanistan, versus meeting other ambassadors and foreign ministers.

Connecting everything back to her experiences in Rancho Cordova, Kounalaki drew back the curtain on her experience and role as an American diplomat, and gave 100 guests signed copies of her book Madam Ambassador.