The Honorable Joe Cella
Joseph James Cella served as the United States Ambassador to Fiji, Kiribati, Nauru, Tonga, and Tuvalu from 2019-2021.
Cella remains engaged with the growing threat of China to the Indo-Pacific and the United States, delivering remarks, writing, conducting media interviews, and advising policy makers.
In 2023 he co-founded the citizen-led Michigan China Economic Security and Review Group, that monitors, assesses, counters and reports on the threats of sub-national incursions from the PRC & CCP to protect the security of the State of Michigan, and serves as its Director.
Cella was first to make contact with grassroots leader in Marshall and Big Rapids when help was needed to fight the corrupted “deals” led by Governor Gretchen Whitmer and other government and business elites with China-based battery manufacturing companies Gotion and CATL that are deeply tied to the Chinese Communist Party. He played a lead role in helping them to research, expose, inform, mobilize, fight and win.
He has over thirty five years of experience in public service, the private sector, and non-profit work. He has advised Members of the United States Senate and House of Representatives. Cella has launched, helped to establish, and served on the boards of several non-profit organizations, and operated as a confidential advisor to various public officials, religious leaders, and business leaders.
He is the Founder and Principal of the Pontifex Group, a consulting firm whose practice areas include public policy, public and media relations, marketing, crisis management, and institutional launching and growth. Over the years, Cella has served in managerial, senior leadership, and volunteer positions in several winning political campaign, grassroots battles on the federal, state, and local levels.
His grassroots leadership includes working side by side with Evangelical Christian leaders in the fierce judicial confirmation battles in the early to mid 2000s, including spearheading the drive to have Harriet Miers withdraw her nomination for the Supreme Court who was then replaced by Judge Samuel Alito, who remains on the Supreme Court as a force for the Constitution and the rule of law.
He is the Founder of the National Catholic Prayer Breakfast, which has welcomed presidents, chief justices, prominent religious leaders, and other distinguished speakers and guests from around the World. He is a co-founder of In Defense of Christians and Fidelis (Catholic Vote) and worked with over a dozen other nonprofit organizations, including Hillsdale College, where he earned his B.A. Cella recently received The Hillsdale College Distinguished Alumnus Award in recognition of outstanding professional achievement in the field of American Diplomacy.
Cella served as the Catholic Liaison for the 2016 Donald J. Trump for President
Campaign and managed the campaign’s Catholic Advisory Group. He also served on the Presidential Transition Team
He and his wife, Kristen, have seven children, four boys and three girls, Francesca, John Paul, Dominic, Rita Rose, Mariana, Anthony and Joseph II, who range from 19 years to 5 years old.
Cella and his family were the largest family to serve in an ambassadorial posting overseas in the history of the State Department.
The Cella Family live on a small farm in Michigan.