WASHINGTON (March 16, 2010) – The German Marshall Fund of the United States (GMF) announces today that former U.S. Rep. Glenn Nye has become a senior fellow in the organization’s Washington, DC, office.

Nye, a Democrat, served one term (Jan. 2009-Jan. 2011) as the Congressman from Virginia’s second district, an area that includes Virginia Beach and the Eastern Shore, as well as parts of Norfolk and Hampton. He served on the House Armed Services Committee and the House Veterans Affairs Committee in addition to serving as the Chairman of the House Small Business Subcommittee on Contracting and Technology. At the German Marshall Fund, Nye will work with the Economic Policy Program on development issues and with the Foreign Policy & Civil Society Program on matters related to the Balkans and post-conflict issues.

“Glenn is a terrific addition to GMF,” said GMF President Craig Kennedy. “His combination of having worked both in conflict zones and as a legislator on Capitol Hill brings a rare experience to GMF’s work on both foreign policy and economic policy.”

Before running for Congress, Nye served as a foreign service officer in the U.S. State Department in Kosovo, Macedonia, Iraq, and Afghanistan. He speaks both German and Albanian. While in Macedonia and Kosovo, he organized the rescue of 26 Americans who were being held behind insurgent lines and negotiated the release of an American hostage. He was honored with the State Department’s Superior Honor Award in 2001 for that effort.

While in the foreign service, Nye also served in the U.S. Embassy in Singapore, where he helped to negotiate intellectual property agreements that protected American businesses and entrepreneurs in support of the U.S.-Singapore Free Trade Agreement. In 2003, Nye signed up to go to Afghanistan with the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID), where he spent more than a year as part of an international team responsible for managing the Afghan Constitutional Convention and assisting with the presidential election.

After returning home, Nye continued his work supporting democracy in the Middle East, working to organize absentee balloting for Iraqis living in the United States, and later, managing a USAID community development program in the West Bank and Gaza. In 2007, Nye again volunteered to return to a war zone, this time in Iraq. He spent nearly a year working as an advisor for a USAID program tasked with combating the insurgency by creating jobs and stabilizing neighborhoods. In the end, the effort created employment for more than 70,000 Iraqis.

Nye began his international career assisting the U.S. director at the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development in London after graduating from Georgetown University’s Edmund A. Walsh School of Foreign Service.

The German Marshall Fund of the United States (GMF) is a non-partisan American public policy and grantmaking institution dedicated to promoting better understanding and cooperation between North America and Europe on transatlantic and global issues.

GMF does this by supporting individuals and institutions working in the transatlantic sphere, by convening leaders and members of the policy and business communities, by contributing research and analysis on transatlantic topics, and by providing exchange opportunities to foster renewed commitment to the transatlantic relationship. In addition, GMF supports a number of initiatives to strengthen democracies.

Founded in 1972 through a gift from Germany as a permanent memorial to Marshall Plan assistance, GMF maintains a strong presence on both sides of the Atlantic. In addition to its headquarters in Washington, DC, GMF has six offices in Europe: Berlin, Paris, Brussels, Belgrade, Ankara, and Bucharest. GMF also has smaller representations in Bratislava, Turin, and Stockholm.