MIRO KOLETIĆ, Encino, Ca.
Born and raised in Zagreb, Croatia, pursued engineering degree at the School of Electrical Engineering at the University of Zagreb, graduating in 1978 with a Graduated Electrical Engineer Degree, which corresponds to Master of Science Degree in Electrical Engineering.
In 1981 moved to Phoenix Arizona, with wife Stella where he continued with graduate education at Arizona State University and later at Pepperdine University in Los Angeles. Focus of his studies was energy business, marketing, management and financing. This enabled Mr. Koletic to move from the engineering to the management positions with several Fortune 500 companies (Johnson Controls, Fairchild Industries, Carrier Corporation, York International).
During his tenancy with large US corporations Mr. Koletic developed strategies for security and card access controls, in the development stages of the card access industry, by implementing standards for technical documentation and marketing through effective document presentations, enhancing project financial justifications (feasibility studies, payback calculations and cash flow analyses).
Since 1992 Mr. Koletic is running a private consulting firm that deals with development of international security, energy, and high technology products and services, with focus on secured and sustainable environment, infrastructure for economic change including intermodal transportation and ports systems.
Mr. Koletic has more than 30 years of project development and management experience in industrial, commercial and institutional projects and programs. Starting with the Cardkey Systems a Fairchild Company, that was started and still today serves the Agencies like FBI, DHS and other Law Enforcement and the private security industries, in capacity of the project manager since 1983 providing facilities technical security and perimeter protection, and with the other automation companies developing a simple security strategies into the sustainable and environmentally responsible distributed power generation systems. After years of professional and social activities in the US, taking advantage of the NATO expansion to Croatia, Mr. Koletic was involved with the unmanned ground vehicles from Croatia to USA to help in demining efforts for the US Military in Iraq and Afghanistan. Mr. Koletic is still involved with state of the art technology used to detect or identify possible identity and security problems and neutralize them in a timely manner, before they become too large to handle.
SOCIAL AND POLITICAL ACTIVITIES AND APPOINTMENTS
Apart of professional achievements, Mr. Koletic was engaged both Socially and Politically in several lobbying and non-profit organizations, both locally in Southern California and Nationally in Washington DC as representative of Croatian Community from Southern California to the National organization NFCA National Federation of Croatian Americans.
Tenure with NFCA: As a Board Member and local representative of CNA – Croatian American Association from Los Angeles, in the 1996 Pittsburgh General Assembly of delegates from all over USA, Mr. Koletic was elected to the Board of NFCA as the Vice President of NFCA. At that time, NFCA was attending to the problems of the Croatian Americans and their relatives with reminences of war in Croatia and Bosnia and Herzegovina.
Along side of the new Croatian Embassy and the official representation of the Republic of Croatia to US in Washington DC, there were a lot of needs of Croatian Americans and Croatians both in Croatia and Bosnia and Herzegovina, that were addressed by NFCA. Shoring up the support of the Croatian Community, NFCA was organized to lend the support and voice the Croatian American opinions and position to the official Croatian representation in Washington DC. NFCA was active with the US legislative and executive branch of government both in the US Senate and Congress as well as in the US Department of State and White House.
Offering clarifications and providing unique historic and populous perspective NFCA was able to offer both guidance and advice to both US and Croatian Government officials. Very often that ended up to be a thankless job that, and was frequently in collision with the official opinions of both governments the US and Croatia, since very often, the government officials (on both sides) represented the interests of the smaller groups and not of the wide populous.
During Mr. Koletic’s tenure with NFCA, there were several noted accomplishments that we will list here. In cooperation with US Senate Foreign Relations Committee NFCA was instructed to provide help with Dayton peace accord implementation. Working with US Department of State, Mr. Koletic brought the representatives from local Croatian political and business leadership from Brcko, to the meetings at Department of State in Washington DC. The suggestions that the delegation made, resulted in peaceful resolution of the Arbitrage, which was a set aside item that Dayton Peace Accord did not resolve. Today, according to those suggestions of NFCA that area is called Brcko District, and is an autonomous territory between Croatia, Serbia and Bosnia and Herzegovina, with everybody’s access and nobody’s claim to the sovereignty. That project scored real high marks at the US Department of Sate, that resulted later with invitation by the Secretary of State Mrs. Albright, to join her delegation to attend the Croatian presidential inaugurals, following the elections in Croatia. NFCA was the only organization representing Croatian community from USA, that was invited and went along with the Department of State in the Air Force 3.
On the legislative side, NFCA was able to create a wide support group in the US Senate and Congress, calling it Croatian Caucus. The group numbers over 50 US Senators and US Congressmen who have the interests of Croatian Americans in their minds, and very often in their heart, because some of them are Croatian Americans and also members of NFCA… This enabled NFCA to present and support several important resolutions and some laws through the US Senate and Congress. One of the last projects that NFCA championed while Mr. Koletic was the Vice President, was the Croatian invitation to join PfP Partnership for Peace and subsequently to join NATO. The initial hearing that was organized by NFCA in the US Senate Langworth Office Building, we invited several US and foreign government officials to testify and following those testimonies the Foreign Relations Committee proposed the legislative acts that were adopted by both Senate and the House, inviting the Republic of Croatia to join the PfP on May 1st 2000 and later to join NATO.
Following the tenure as a lobbyist for Croatian community in Washington DC, at the local level in Los Angeles County Mr. Koletic was invited to serve as Advisor to LA County Sheriff’s Department.
The Department of Homeland Security, put LA County Sheriff Lee Baca in charge of the US Region 7 as the commanding officer. In accordance to his beliefs and practices, he went first to organize the local community support for his Homeland Security Detail. Multiplying the number of Boards for the community support groups, he installed the European American Sheriff’s Advisory Council.
Mr. Koletic was delegated by Croatian National Association to represent the Croatian community at that Council.
Presently, Mr. Koletic is a member of several different organizations that support knowledge and information exchange for security protection of the infrastructure and traffic protection of the Croatian and US assets.