George Lerner is an independent journalist based in New York City. He produced the documentary “Congo: Hope on the Ballot” (for the PBS program Frontline World) on the landmark 2006 elections in the Democratic Republic of Congo that brought an end to decades of dictatorship and war . This project served as the fieldwork for The Ambassadors, which is set ten years earlier in what was then Zaire. For seven years, George worked for CNN as producer, writer and photojournalist, and spearheaded investigative series on Al Qaeda in Canada, Saddam Hussein’s money trail, and abuses by U.S. contractors in Iraq. As a reporter for Reuters in the 1990s, he covered global poverty issues, reporting on Mexico’s economic crisis and Asia’s financial meltdown.