Participants List 2006

Shlomo Avineri is Professor of Political Science at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, and a former Director of the University’s Institute for European Studies. He served as Director-General of Israel’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs in the first government of Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin.

Dr. Avineri has held visiting appointments at Yale, Cornell, the University of California, Oxford, and Northwestern, and has been a Fellow at the Brookings Institution and the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. Since 2002, has been Recurring Visiting Professor at the Central European University in Budapest. His books include studies on Marx, Hegel, socialist thought, nationalism, and Zionism.
 

Mr. Egemen Bagis was elected to the Turkish Parliament, representing Istanbul, in November 2002 as a member of the Justice and Development Party, also known as the AK Party. He also is the Turkish Prime Minister’s Foreign Policy Advisor and is the Chairman of the Turkey-USA Inter-Parliamentary Friendship Caucus at the Turkish Parliament. In addition, Mr. Bagis is Deputy Chairman of the Turkish delegation to the NATO Parliamentary Assembly and serves as the Chairman of the Assembly’s Subcommittee on Transatlantic Relations. He is the Chairman of the Advisory Board of the “Istanbul, 2010 European Capital of Culture” initiative. He is also among the founders of two museums — Istanbul Modern and the Santral Museum of Art & Industry. An active member of the Turkish-American community within the U.S., Mr. Bagis was the President of the Federation of Turkish American Associations, the New York-based umbrella organization of Turkish-Americans.
 

José Manuel Barroso is the 12th President of the European Commission. He served as Prime Minister of Portugal from April 6, 2002, until June 29, 2004, when he resigned to become President-designate of the European Commission. The appointment was formally endorsed by the European Parliament on July 22.

In 1985, President Barroso joined the Portuguese Social Democratic Party (PSD) government of Prime Minister Aníbal Cavaco Silva as Assistant Secretary of State at the Ministry of Internal Affairs. In 1987, he became Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs and Cooperation, a post he held for five years. In this capacity, he was the main force behind the Bicesse Agreement of 1990, which led to a temporary armistice in Angola’s civil war between the ruling MPLA and the opposition UNITA guerrillas of Jonas Savimbi. In 1992, President Barroso was promoted to Minister of Foreign Affairs, and he served in this capacity until the defeat of the PSD in the 1995 general election.

President Barroso was elected in 1995 as a representative for Lisbon in the Assembly of the Republic, where he became Chairman of the Foreign Affairs Committee. In 1999, he was elected President of the PSD, becoming the opposition leader. Parliamentary elections in 2002 gave the PSD enough seats to form a coalition government with the Portuguese People’s Party, and President Barroso became Prime Minister of Portugal in April 2002.

Traian Băsescu was elected President of Romania in December 2004. Prior to that, he had been Mayor of Bucharest from 2000 to 2004. President Băsescu has twice been Minister of Transportation, from 1991 to 1992 and from 1996 to 2000. He was also a deputy in the Romanian Parliament between 1992 and 1996, and he was re-elected for a four-year term in 1996.

A former commercial ship captain, President Băsescu entered politics as a member of the National Salvation Front party, which split. He then joined the offshoot Democrat Party, from which he was elected to his first term in the Parliament.

President Băsescu later became the leader of the Democrat Party, a position he earned as a result of the 2001 elections and which he held until his election as President in 2004.

Re-elected to a third term in the United States Senate in 2004, U.S. Senator Bob Bennett, a Republican, continues to serve the citizens of Utah with distinction. In his position as Chief Deputy Majority Whip, and as a member of the Senate Republican leadership team, Senator Bennett joins Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist and Majority Whip Mitch McConnell in managing strategy and schedule in the Republican-led Senate. As Vice Chairman of the distinguished Joint Economic Committee and a senior member of the Senate Banking Committee, the Utah senator is at the center of national economic policy discussions.

Senator Bennett chairs the Subcommittee on Agriculture on the Senate Appropriations Committee. The Utah Republican also serves on the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee, and the Senate Rules Committee. Named an “Emerging Leader in a Post–September 11 Senate” by Congressional Quarterly magazine, Mr. Bennett has received numerous awards for his contributions in the U.S. Senate.

A past chairman and current member of the Senate Republican High-Tech Task Force, Mr. Bennett is now working to ensure that the nation’s critical infrastructure, 90 percent of which is privately owned, can be protected and U.S. national security bolstered. Prior to his election to the Senate in 1992, Mr. Bennett earned recognition for his entrepreneurial and government activities. For his success as Chief Executive Officer of the Franklin International Institute, Mr. Bennett was named Inc. magazine’s “Entrepreneur of the Year” for the Rocky Mountain region.

Elmar Brok has been a German member of the European Parliament since 1980. He currently serves as Chairman of the Committee on Foreign Affairs and as a member of the delegation for relations with the United States. He is also member of the Bureau, or Board of Directors, of the Group of the European People’s Party and European Democrats in the European Parliament.

Mr. Brok was the European Parliament’s representative in the EU Council’s Reflection Group, which was preparing the reform of the Maastricht Treaty, and he was its representative at the intergovernmental conference for the EU Constitutional Treaty in 2003–2004. He was voted “MEP of the Year” in 2003 in a Europe-wide vote organized by the weekly newspaper European Voice. Mr. Brok holds leadership positions in the Christian Democratic Party in Germany, including Member of the CDU Federal Board and Chairman of the CDU district Ostwestfalen-Lippe.

Joyce Chang is Managing Director and Global Head of the Currency, Emerging Markets and Commodities groups at JP Morgan. She also manages the Emerging Asia Credit and Rates research teams. The team includes nearly 100 researchers based in 16 countries.

Prior to joining JPMorgan Chase, Ms. Chang was a Managing Director at Merrill Lynch and Salomon Brothers. Ms. Chang has also worked as a consultant for the United States Agency for International Development in Manila, Philippines; Amman, Jordan; and New Delhi, India.

She has been the top-ranked emerging markets sovereign debt strategist in Institutional Investorfor the past eight consecutive years. The emerging markets team also holds top rankings from Global Investor, Euromoney and Latin Finance surveys. She was named one of the top 50 women to watch by the Wall Street Journal in 2005.

In February 2006, Roger Cohen was named the first Editor-at-LargeEditor-at-Large for The International Herald Tribune, for which he has also written “The Globalist” since 2004. In addition, he has been the international writer-at-large for The New York Times.

Mr. Cohen had been Foreign Editor for the Times since March 2002. He became Deputy Foreign Editor in August 2001 and Acting Foreign Editor in September 2001.

Previously, Mr. Cohen had been chief of the newspaper’s Berlin bureau, its Paris correspondent, its Balkans bureau chief, and its European economic correspondent. Mr. Cohen joined the Times in January 1990 as a media reporter.

Prior to working at the Times, Mr. Cohen was a foreign correspondent for The Wall Street Journal. In 1983, he opened the Journal‘s office in Rome as Chief Correspondent, covering Italy and the eastern Mediterranean, reporting from Cyprus, Greece, Turkey, and Lebanon. From 1979 to 1983, Mr. Cohen was a foreign correspondent for Reuters. During that time he was based in London, Brussels, and Rome, reporting on the European Community, NATO, Belgium, Italy, and the Vatican.

Daniel Cohn-Bendit has been a member of the European Parliament since 1994. He currently represents Germany but has also represented France in the past. He is the Co-president of the European Greens–European Free Alliance in the European Parliament.

A former student activist, he became Deputy Mayor of Frankfurt in 1989. His election to the European Parliament in 1994 was for the German Green Party, and in 1999, he remained in the Parliament, this time for the French Green Party. In 2002, he became the head of the German Green parliamentary group. In 2004, he led the formation of the European Green Party. He is the author and co-author of many books.

Robert Cooper is Director-General for External and Politico-Military Affairs at the General Secretariat of the Council of the European Union. Mr. Cooper joined the British Diplomatic Service in 1970. Mr. Cooper’s diplomatic career spanned the globe, with posts in New York, Tokyo, Brussels, and Bonn.

From 1989 to 1993, Mr. Cooper was head of the Policy Planning Staff at the Foreign Office, where he later became Director for Asia. He also spent time in the Cabinet office as Deputy Secretary for Defense and Overseas Affairs before moving to Brussels in 2002. Mr. Cooper has published a number of essays and articles on international affairs and, more recently, a book of essays, The Breaking of Nations.

Karel De Gucht has been the Belgian Minister of Foreign Affairs since 2004 and is the sitting Chairman-in-Office of the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe.

Mr. De Gucht was elected to the Belgian Federal Parliament in 2003 following an eight-year term as a member of the Flemish Parliament. Mr. De Gucht was a Belgian senator from 1994 to 1995, and was national President of the VLD, the Flemish Liberals and Democrats, between 1999 and 2004. He also served as a member of the European Parliament for 14 years until 1994.

Mr. De Gucht got his start in politics as national president of both the Liberal Student Union and Liberal Youth organizations. He has served as both a local alderman and local councilor.

Jakob Gijsbert (Jaap) de Hoop Scheffer became the 11th NATO Secretary General on January 5, 2004. Prior to that, he was Minister of Foreign Affairs for the Netherlands and Chairman-in-Office of the Organization for Cooperation and Security in Europe (OSCE) during the Netherlands’ OSCE presidency.

Mr. de Hoop Scheffer was elected to the Dutch House of Representatives of the States General for the Christian Democratic Alliance (CDA) in June 1986, and he became the party’s spokesperson on foreign policy in the House. From 1986 to 1994, he was also a member of the Parliamentary Assemblies of the Council of Europe and the Western European Union (WEU). In 1990, during the Gulf crisis, he served as WEU rapporteur on the consequences of the invasion of Kuwait and continuing operations in the Gulf region. From 1994 to1997, he was a member of the North Atlantic Assembly.

After serving as deputy leader of the CDA parliamentary party in the House of Representatives from December 1995 to March 1997, he was elected leader. In October 2001, Mr. de Hoop Scheffer resigned as leader of the parliamentary party and as the political leader of the CDA. From November 2001 to May 15, 2002, he chaired the House Permanent Committee on Foreign Affairs. On July 22, 2002, he was appointed Minister of Foreign Affairs.

Sir Richard Dearlove was head of the British Secret Intelligence Service, more commonly known as MI6, from 1999 to 2004. His appointment under Prime Minister Tony Blair was seen as a reflection of the agency’s new post-Cold War priorities —fighting terrorism, the proliferation of weapons technologies, and serious organized crime, rather than spying on the Soviet Union.

Sir Richard began his MI6 career in 1966, and two years later received his first overseas posting to the Kenyan capital, Nairobi. After postings in Prague, Paris, and Geneva, Sir Richard became head of MI6’s Washington station in 1991. He returned to the U.K. in 1993 as Director of Personnel and Administration, and he became Director of Operations the following year.

Sir Richard was elected Master of Pembroke College, Cambridge, in August 2004.

John Edwards is the Director of the Center on Poverty, Work, and Opportunity at the University of North Carolina. The former U.S. Senator was the Democratic candidate for Vice President in the 2004 U.S. election.

In 1998, Senator Edwards was elected to the Senate, where he focused on health care, civil liberties, Social Security and Medicare, and campaign finance. As a member of the Select Committee on Intelligence, Senator Edwards worked on national defense and homeland security.

Senator Edwards ran in the 2004 Democratic presidential primary and was later picked by Senator John Kerry to serve as his running mate in the general election.

Prior to his Senate service, Senator Edwards was a lawyer representing families and children against powerful special interests for nearly 20 years.

David Ensor is CNN’s national security correspondent. Based in Washington, DC, he reports on the U.S. intelligence community and on national security issues such as terrorism, the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction, and strategic foreign policy debates. He was among the recipients of the 2002 National Headliner Award presented to CNN for investigative reporting on the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks and their aftermath. In 2005, for the “CNN Presents” program, “Winning the War on Terror,” Mr. Ensor reported on the tactics and strategies of Britain, France, Israel, and Spain in battling terrorism.

Before joining CNN in August 1998, Mr. Ensor served as diplomatic correspondent for ABC News, based at the U.S. State Department, where he covered Middle East diplomacy, U.S. troops in Bosnia, and other major international news. From 1992 to 1995, he reported from Moscow for ABC News, covering two coup attempts, the collapse of communism, and the first war in Chechnya. He was based in Rome from 1985 to 1990, reporting on terrorism and the travels of Pope John Paul II.

In the early 1980s, Mr. Ensor was Warsaw bureau chief for ABC News and reported on martial law, the re-emergence of the Solidarity movement, and the eventual collapse of communism in Poland. Before this, while based in Washington, DC, he reported from Argentina during the Falklands War, and on Cuba, El Salvador, Nicaragua, and the Soviet Union. From 1975 to 1980, he was a reporter in Washington, DC, for National Public Radio.

Ambassador Daniel Fried became Assistant Secretary of State for the Bureau of European and Eurasian Affairs on May 5, 2005. Previously, Ambassador Fried served as Special Assistant to the President and Senior Director for European and Eurasian Affairs from January 2001 until April 2005. He had been Principal Deputy Special Advisor to the Secretary of State for the New Independent States. He was Ambassador to Poland from November 1997 until May 2000.

Ambassador Fried began his career with the Foreign Service in 1977. He served in the Economic Bureau of the State Department from 1977 to 1979, at the U.S. Consulate General in then-Leningrad from 1980 to 1981, as political officer in the U.S. Embassy in Belgrade from 1982 to 1985, and in the Office of Soviet Affairs at the State Department from 1985 to 1987. Ambassador Fried was Polish Desk Officer at the State Department from 1987 to 1989 and served as Political Counselor in the U.S. Embassy in Warsaw from 1990 to 1993.

Ambassador Fried served on the staff of the National Security Council from 1993 until 1997, first as a Director and then as Special Assistant to the President and Senior Director for Central and Eastern Europe. At the White House, he was active in designing U.S. policy on Euroatlantic security, including NATO enlargement and the Russia-NATO relationship.

Mark Fuller is Chairman of the Monitor Group, which he co-founded in 1982. The group currently competes in three different business areas: general management consulting, principal investing, and intelligent products, such as software. As Chief Executive officer, Mr. Fuller is responsible for oversight of overall group strategy, human resource development, and knowledge and product innovation. He plays an active role in the development and management of a select number of client relationships and has participated in many of Monitor’s projects dealing with the enhancement of national or regional competitiveness.

Formerly, Mr. Fuller served as an assistant professor of business administration at the Harvard Business School, where he taught courses in strategy formulation and implementation, as well as industry and competitive analysis. While a professor, Mr. Fuller was co-director of Harvard’s Project on the Auto Industry and the American Economy. He has written or co-authored more than 50 articles and teaching cases, and, with John C. Beck, wrote the book Japan’s Business Renaissance: How the World’s Greatest Economy Revived, Renewed, and Reinvented Itself.

Michael Glos has been Germany’s Minister for Economics and Technology since November 2005.

A member of the German Bundestag since 1976, Mr. Glos had been the chairman of the CSU Bavaria and assistant chairman of the CDU/CSU parliamentary group in the Bundestag since 1993. From 1990 to 1992, he was Vice Chairman of the CDU/CSU parliamentary group in the German Bundestag for economics, agriculture, transport, and tourism, and for the parliamentary group SMEs (Mittelstand). In 1987, he chaired the Working Group on Finance and was spokesperson on finance policy for the CDU/CSU parliamentary group in the German Bundestag.

From 1972 to 1978, Mr. Glos was a member of the district council of Prichsenstadt and, from 1975 to 1993, a member of the council of the district (Kreistag) of Kitzingen.

Prof. François Godement is founder and President of the Asia Centre in Paris, after directing the Asia programs of the French Institute for International Relations (IFRI) until April 2005. He is also a professor at the National Institute for Oriental Languages and Civilizations (INALCO) in Paris and a consultant to the policy planning staff at the French Foreign Ministry. Dr. Godement has also worked as a consultant with several international organizations, including the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, the European Union, and the World Bank.

He is Co-chair of the European Committee of the Council for Security Cooperation in the Asia-Pacific, currently based at Asia Centre, and is a founding member of the Council for Asia-Europe Cooperation. He has written extensively on Chinese reforms and transitions, as well as on East Asian regional and international relations.

In February 1996, Nik Gowing became a main program anchor for the BBC’s international television news channel, BBC World. From 1996 to March 2000, he was the principal anchor for the 90-minute weekday news program “The World Today” and its predecessor, “NewsDesk.” He has been a founding presenter of BBC’s “Europe Direct” and has been a guest anchor on both the BBC’s “HARDtalk” and its “Simpson’s World.” Mr. Gowing is now a main presenter on the news programs, which were re-launched in April 2000, and he is a regular presenter for the BBC’s “Dateline London.”

Mr. Gowing’s appointment draws both on his extensive reporting experience over two decades in diplomacy, defense, and international security, and on his presentation and chairing skills. His invaluable experience was called on throughout the Kosovo crisis in 1999. He also regularly anchors BBC World’s live coverage from major international events, including the UN World Sustainability Summit in Johannesburg; the German, Dutch, and Russian elections; and the India-Pakistan summit in Agra, India.

Before joining the BBC, Mr. Gowing was a foreign affairs specialist and presenter at ITN for 18 years. During the 1980s, first as foreign affairs correspondent, then as diplomatic correspondent, Mr. Gowing reported extensively from Central and Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union. In 1989, he reported the revolutions marking the end of communist rule, as well as unrest in China.

Ambassador Richard C. Holbrooke is Vice Chairman of Perseus LLC, a leading private equity firm. His most recent government role was as U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations, a capacity in which he was also a member of President Clinton’s Cabinet, from 1999 to 2001. As Assistant Secretary of State for Europe from 1994 to 1996, he was the chief architect of the Dayton peace agreement, which ended the war in Bosnia. Later, as a private citizen, he served as President Clinton’s Special Envoy to Bosnia and Kosovo and Special Envoy to Cyprus on a pro-bono basis. From 1993 to 1994, he was U.S. Ambassador to Germany.

During the Carter administration, Ambassador Holbrooke served as Assistant Secretary of State for East Asian and Pacific Affairs and was in charge of U.S. relations with China when Sino-American relations were normalized in December 1978. He worked on Vietnam at the Johnson White House and was a member of the American delegation to the Vietnam Peace Talks in Paris.

Ambassador Holbrooke has also served as Vice Chairman of Credit Suisse First Boston, Managing Director of Lehman Brothers, Managing Editor of Foreign Policy, and Director of the Peace Corps in Morocco. He has written numerous articles and two best-selling books: To End a War, a memoir of the Dayton negotiations; and, as co-author, Counsel to the President, Clark Clifford’s memoir. He is Chairman of the American Academy in Berlin, Chairman of the Asia Society, and President and CEO of the Global Business Coalition on HIV/AIDS.

David Ignatius’ twice-weekly column on global politics, economics, and international affairs began appearing on the op-ed page of The Washington Post in January 1999. He continued to write weekly after becoming Executive Editor of the Paris-based International Herald Tribune in September 2000. When the Post sold its interest in the IHT in January 2003, Mr. Ignatius resumed writing twice a week for the op-ed page and was syndicated worldwide by The Washington Post Writers Group.

Prior to becoming a columnist, Mr. Ignatius was the Post’s assistant managing editor in charge of business news, a position he assumed in 1993. He served as the Post’s Foreign Editor from 1990 to 1992, supervising the paper’s Pulitzer Prize–winning coverage of the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait. From 1986 to 1990, he was editor of Sunday “Outlook” section.

Before joining the Post in 1986, Mr. Ignatius spent 10 years as a reporter for The Wall Street Journal. He covered the steel industry in Pittsburgh, the Justice Department, the CIA, and the U.S. Senate in Washington, and was the Middle East correspondent and chief diplomatic correspondent. He has published five novels and is finishing a sixth.

First elected to Congress in 2000, Darrell Issa, Republican of California, currently serves on the House Government Reform Committee, where he is Chairman of the Subcommittee on Energy and Resources. Representative Issa is also a member of the House International Relations Committee, House Judiciary Committee and is on a temporary leave of absence from the House Energy & Commerce Committee.

Representative Issa founded Directed Electronics, the Vista, California-based and industry-leading manufacturer of automobile security and convenience products. Representative Issa has served as Chairman of the Consumer Electronics Association, served as a member of the Board of Governors of the Electronics Industry Association, and as Director of the San Diego Economic Development Association and the Greater San Diego County Chamber of Commerce.

Representative Issa, a former U.S. Army Captain, is perhaps best known as the leader of the successful effort to recall former California Governor Gray Davis in 2003. In 1996, he also co-chaired the campaign to pass the California Civil Rights Initiative that ended racial and gender preferences and quotas in state contracting and college admissions.

General James L. Jones is Supreme Allied Commander, Europe (SACEUR) and the Commander of the United States European Command (COMUSEUCOM). From the Supreme Headquarters Allied Powers Europe near Mons, Belgium, General Jones leads Allied Command Operations (ACO). The mission of ACO is to preserve the peace, security, and territorial integrity of the NATO member nations.

As COMUSEUCOM, General Jones commands five U.S. components: U.S. Army, Europe; U.S. Navy, Europe; U.S. Air Forces in Europe; U.S. Marine Forces, Europe; and Special Operations Command, Europe. The European Command’s mission is to support and achieve U.S. interests and objectives throughout 93 countries in Central and Eastern Europe, Africa, and portions of the Middle East.

During a distinguished career in the United States Marine Corps, General Jones has spent significant time in Europe and the Middle East. He participated in Operation Provide Comfort in Northern Iraq and Turkey, and was assigned to duties as Deputy Director, J-3, U.S. European Command, Stuttgart, Germany, on July 15, 1992. During this tour of duty, he was reassigned as Chief of Staff, Joint Task Force Provide Promise, for operations in Bosnia-Herzegovina and Macedonia.

Dr. Robert Kagan is a Transatlantic Fellow of the German Marshall Fund of the United States and a Senior Associate at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. His most recent book, Of Paradise and Power, was on The New York Times bestseller list for ten weeks andThe Washington Post bestseller list for 14 weeks. It also was a bestseller in the United Kingdom, France, Germany, Spain, Italy, the Netherlands, and Canada, and has been translated into more than 25 languages.

Dr. Kagan writes a monthly column on world affairs for the Post and is a contributing editor at both The Weekly Standard and The New Republic. He served in the U.S. State Department from 1984 to 1988 as a member of the Policy Planning Staff, as principal speechwriter for Secretary of State George P. Shultz, and as Deputy for Policy in the Bureau of Inter-American Affairs.

Frederick Kempe is Assistant Managing Editor and columnist at The Wall Street Journal in New York. Mr. Kempe moved back to the United States following seven years as editor and associate publisher of The Wall Street Journal Europe, a period during which the paper won several awards for excellence and Mr. Kempe was recognized by the European Voice as one of the 50 most influential Europeans. He was also European Editor for the global Wall Street Journal from August 2002, with overall responsibility for European and Middle East coverage for all editions of the newspaper.

Mr. Kempe was named Managing Editor of The Wall Street Journal Europe in 1992. In that position, he founded the Central European Economic Review (CEER), a supplement that covered the countries of the former Soviet bloc. He first joined the Journal in 1981 in London before opening the Journal’s Vienna bureau in 1984. He transferred to Washington, DC, in 1986 as Chief Diplomatic Correspondent, and in 1990 he opened the Journal’s Berlin bureau.

As a reporter, he covered a number of significant stories, including the rise of Solidarity in Poland and the growing resistance to Soviet rule, the coming to power of Mikhail Gorbachev in Russia and all his summit meetings with Ronald Reagan, war reporting in Afghanistan, Iraq and Lebanon in the 1980s and the American invasion of Panama. He also covered the unification of Germany and the collapse of Soviet Communism.

Craig Kennedy has been president of the German Marshall Fund of the United States (GMF) since 1995. Under Mr. Kennedy’s leadership, GMF has focused its activities on bridging U.S.–European differences on foreign policy, economics, immigration and integration, and domestic policy. Toward this effort, he has provided GMF with a strong infrastructure throughout Europe, opening new offices in Paris, Bratislava, Brussels, Belgrade, and Ankara to complement the work being done in Washington and Berlin. He has also supported several substantial new projects that strengthen the organization’s public policy efforts, including Transatlantic Trends, an annual survey of American and European public opinion.

Mr. Kennedy began his career in 1980 as a program officer at the Joyce Foundation in Chicago. He became Vice President of Programs in 1983 and, as President from 1986 to 1992, he built the foundation’s environmental activities and launched a program on U.S. immigration policy. Mr. Kennedy left the Joyce Foundation to work for Richard J. Dennis, a Chicago investor and philanthropist. During this same period, he created a consulting firm working with nonprofit and public sector clients.

Jules Kroll is the founder of Kroll Inc., the world’s leading risk consulting company, and Vice Chairman of Marsh Inc., the world’s leading risk and insurance services firm. He also serves on the International Advisory Board of Marsh & McLennan Companies, Inc.

Mr. Kroll is the acknowledged founder of the modern investigations, intelligence, and security industry. He gained worldwide renown in the early 1990s for his firm’s success in searching for assets hidden by Jean-Claude Duvalier, Ferdinand and Imelda Marcos, and Saddam Hussein. Since 1997, his vision of providing clients with a full spectrum of risk consulting services propelled the firm’s growth as a public company, in particular, its acquisition of employee screening, forensic accounting, data recovery, and corporate advisory and restructuring firms. In July 2004, Kroll was acquired by Marsh & McLennan Companies, the global professional services firm.

The recipient of numerous awards throughout his career, Mr. Kroll was named “Entrepreneur of the Year” by Cornell University in 2003 and was honored in 2002 with the U.S. Entrepreneurial Award by BritishAmerican Business Inc. Mr. Kroll was admitted to the New York Bar in 1967 and began his career as an assistant district attorney in Manhattan.

Pierre Lévy is Director of the Policy Planning Staff at the French Ministry of Foreign Affairs. Until February 2005, he was head of the Service for Common Foreign and Security Policy (CFSP). He was previously deputy director of the cabinet of Pierre Moscovici, Minister for European Affairs, between 1997 and 2002.

Mr. Lévy has held various positions at the Quai d’Orsay, as assistant director at the Department of Economic and Financial Affairs, and at the Department for European Cooperation. He has been posted in Germany and Singapore. He had held previously several positions at the Ministry of Economy and Finance (Directorate for Economic External Relations), dealing with trade policy and relations with Asia. Mr. Lévy is a lecturer in international relations at the Ecole Nationale d’Administration (ENA) and at the Institut d’études politiques de Paris (Sciences Po).

Peter MacKay is the Canadian Minister of Foreign Affairs and Minister of the Atlantic Canada Opportunities Agency. He was first elected as Member of Parliament in 1997 and was re-elected in 2000, 2004, and in 2006.

Most recently, Mr. MacKay served as Critic for Public Safety and Emergency Preparedness. Prior to this, he was Critic for the Prime Minister, for the Solicitor General, for Public Security, for the Leader of the Government in the House of Commons and for Justice.

He has served as Progressive Conservative Party Leader and House Leader and has been a member of the Standing Committee on Justice, Human Rights, Public Safety and Emergency Preparedness and its related subcommittees, including the subcommittees on Public Safety and National Security, on Agenda and Procedure, and on Corrections and the Conditional Release Act.

Erika Mann has been a German member of the European Parliament since 1994. She currently chairs the Delegation to the EU–Mexico Joint Parliamentary Committee and is a member of the Committee on International Trade, where she coordinates the position of the European Socialists group.

Ms. Mann concentrates on trade and World Trade Organization (WTO) policy, transatlantic economic relations, digital economy, telecommunications policy, and research policy. She is a leading member of the International Steering Committee for the common initiative of the European Parliament and the Inter-Parliamentary Union (IPU) to create a parliamentary dimension of the WTO. She also chairs the EU steering committee of the Transatlantic Policy Network. Ms. Mann is the author of articles and publications on the WTO, transatlantic relations, electronic commerce, and copyright in the information society.

U.S. Senator John McCain, a Republican from Arizona, has a long career of public service.

After graduating from the Naval Academy in 1958, John McCain began his career as a naval aviator. In 1982, he was elected to Congress, representing what was then the first congressional district of Arizona. In 1986, he was elected to the United States Senate to take the place of Arizona Senator Barry Goldwater. Senator McCain is currently the senior senator from Arizona.

In 2000, McCain ran unsuccessfully for the Republican nomination for President of the United States. He is currently Chairman of the Senate Committee on Indian Affairs, and he serves on the Armed Services, and Commerce, Science, and Transportation Committees. He has become one of Congress’ most respected voices for a strong national defense, as well as for sound foreign policy.

Liz Mohn is Vice Chairwoman of the Executive Board of the Bertelsmann Stiftung. Together with her husband Reinhard Mohn, Liz Mohn represents the fifth generation of the Bertelsmann media company. She sees it as her particular mandate to safeguard the long-term continuance and evolution of Bertelsmann’s corporate culture.

As early as 1999, Mrs. Mohn was appointed a member of the Bertelsmann Verwaltungsgesellschaft mbH (BVG). BVG’s mandate is to ensure continuity in Bertelsmann AG’s development and to manage the shareholder interest of the non-profit Bertelsmann Stiftung and of the Mohn family. Mrs. Mohn has been Chairwoman of the Board of BVG since 2002, and as a family spokeswoman she represents the interests of the Mohn family amongst the Bertelsmann AG’s Shareholders. She is also a member of the Bertelsmann AG Supervisory Board.

Mrs. Mohn played an active and responsible role in developing the Bertelsmann Stiftung founded by her husband in 1977. She heads the Center of Execellence for Corporate Culture and Management, and the cultural projects carried out by the Stiftung.
The International Cultural Dialogs initiated by Mrs. Mohn and the Bertelsmann Stiftung aim to promote open dialog about cultural topics, tolerance, and understanding.

Mrs. Mohn has been president of the international “Neue Stimmen” (“New Voices”) singing competition since 1987. In 1993, she set up the German Stroke Foundation, which is dedicated to educating people about the early warning symptoms and risk factors associated with strokes.

As Vice Chairwoman of the Bertelsmann Stiftung, Mrs. Mohn shapes the international reputation of the Bertelsmann Stiftung as a leading institution for reform. Liz (Elizabeth) Mohn was born in 1941 in Wiedenbrück, Germany.

Ambassador Marwan al-Muasher is a member of the Jordanian Senate. He was Deputy Prime Minister of Jordan in Adnan Badran’s Cabinet from October 25, 2004, to November 28, 2005, and before that was Foreign Minister from 2002 to 2004.

Ambassador al-Muasher served as Jordan’s ambassador to the United States and Mexico from 1997 to 2002, and to Israel in 1995. In between those two posts, he was Jordan’s Minister of Information. He has also served as spokesperson during the Middle East peace talks in the early 1990s, and as press advisor to the Prime Minister in 1989.

From 1985 to 1990, Ambassador al-Muasher directed the Socio-Economic Information Center at the Ministry of Planning.

Ana Palacio is currently a member of the Spanish Parliament, where she chairs the Joint Committee for European Affairs. She served as Foreign Minister from 2002 to 2004 under Prime Minister José María Aznar. During her tenure as Foreign Minister, Ms. Palacio focused on three priority policy areas: the European Union; strengthening transatlantic relations with the Americas and with the United States in particular; and the fight against terrorism and strengthening EU ties with the Mediterranean and the Middle East. Ms. Palacio also was a member of the European Convention and its Presidium.

As member of the European Parliament from 1994 to 1999, Ms. Palacio chaired the Legal Affairs Committee, the Internal Market Committee, the Justice and Home Affairs Committee, and the Conference of Committee Chairmen, the Parliament’s most senior body for the coordination of its legislative work. A lawyer by profession, she has held the most senior positions in the Council of Bars and Law Societies in Europe (CCBE) and the Academy of European Law (ERA).

Ms. Palacio currently works as a consultant for the World Bank, reporting to the presidency on the High Level Commission for Legal Empowerment of the Poor.

Andris Piebalgs became the European Energy Commissioner in November 2004. Immediately prior, he headed the Cabinet of Latvian Commissioner Sandra Kalniete.

Ambassador Piebalgs started his diplomatic career in 1995, when he became Latvia’s Ambassador to Estonia. In 1998, he became the Latvian Ambassador to the European Union, and the Undersecretary of State for EU affairs at the Latvian Ministry of Foreign Affairs.

From 1990 until 1993, Ambassador Piebalgs was Minister of Education, following which he held the chairmanship of the Budget and Finance Committee of the Parliament of Latvia (Saeima). In 1994, he became Finance Minister of Latvia and he held this post for two years.

Dr. Olli Rehn has been the European Commissioner for Enlargement since November 2004. He is responsible for the relations between the EU and the countries that have a clear European perspective, including acceding countries Bulgaria and Romania; candidate countries Croatia, Turkey, and the Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia; and potential candidate countries of the Western Balkans. Dr. Rehn briefly served as a member of the European Commission responsible for Enterprise and the Information Society prior to his current post.

In 2003, Dr. Rehn became an economic policy advisor to the prime minister of Finland, a position he held until his appointment to the European Commission the following year. He served as Head of Cabinet of the European Commission and was a member of the European Parliament and the Parliament of Finland earlier in his career.

Dr. Rehn is the author of several books and articles, including The Comeback of History: Rebounds of Liberalism in Europe since 1989, inLiberalism in the European Union. The Way Forward, edited by Lex Corijn and Thomas Krings.

Rob Riemen is the Founder, President, and CEO of the Nexus Institute, a leading international center for intellectual reflection to inspire the Western cultural and philosophical debate.

Mr. Riemen is also the editor of the essay journal “Nexus.” In 2004, the Nexus Institute initiated the cultural philosophical debate on European identity during the Dutch presidency of the European Union. Riemen collaborated with the Austrian EU presidency on the conference “The Sound of Europe” in January 2006.

Mr. Riemen has lectured widely, including in the United States. His bookThe Nobility of Spirit. Three Essays on a Forgotten Idea will be published in Spanish in May and will appear in English in 2007.

Mikheil Saakashvili was elected President of Georgia in January 2004, following Georgia’s Rose Revolution. He had previously served as Chairman of the Sakrebulo (City Council) of Tbilisi, the Georgian capital, from 2002 to 2004. President Saakashvili first entered politics in 1995 when he was elected to Parliament, where he became Chairman of the Committee of Legal Issues, Rule of Law and Administrative Reforms.

In 1997, the Georgian mass media and NGOs recognized President Saakashvili as “Man of the Year.” In January 2000, he was elected Vice President of the Council of Europe Parliamentary Assembly, and that same year was head of the Georgian delegation to that body. In October, 2000, he was appointed Minister of Justice of Georgia, but in 2001 he resigned from the post in protest. In 2001, he formed and became leader of Georgia’s biggest opposition political party, “United National Movement.”

President Saakashvili studied in Ukraine and the United States, and at different times worked at the Norwegian Institute of Human Rights, the Human Rights Protection State Committee of Georgia, and a large law firm in New York.

Dr. Ghassan Salamé is Professor of International Relations at the Institut d’Etudes Politiques de Paris, commonly known as Sciences Po, and is an advisor to UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan. Between 2000 and 2003, Dr. Salamé served as Lebanon’s Minister of Culture and chaired the Organizing Committee of the Beirut Arab (March 2002) and Francophone (October 2002) summits. He then spent a few months in Baghdad as an advisor to the UN mission in Iraq.

Dr. Salamé has authored and edited a number of books, including The Foundations of the Arab State, The Politics of Arab Integration, andDemocracies Without Democrats. His latest book, Quand l’Amérique refait le monde, was published last year by Fayard Press.

Loretta Sanchez, of California, is serving her fifth term in the U.S. House of Representatives, representing a diverse district in Orange County outside Los Angeles.

Representative Sanchez, a member of the Hispanic Caucus, is the ranking woman of the House Armed Services Committee. She has served on the Terrorism Panel of this Committee, where she joined other Members to investigate intelligence progress and terrorist threats to the United States. Representative Sanchez is the second-ranking Democrat on the House Committee on Homeland Security, which provides oversight to the Department of Homeland Security to assure it is working effectively and quickly.

While serving on the Homeland Security Committee, Representative Sanchez took a leave of absence from the House Committee on Education and the Workforce, which oversees education and labor issues. During her tenure on the Committee, she has protected parental involvement initiatives and successfully saved national gender equity in education program. She has personally visited every school in her district.

Radosław (Radek) Sikorski is the Polish Defense Minister, a position he has held since 2005.

Mr. Sikorski, a former Solidarity activist who became a British citizen after seeking asylum, served as Poland’s Deputy Defense Minister in 1992 and as Deputy Foreign Minister from 1998 to 2001. He was elected to the Polish Senate in 2005.

A former journalist, Mr. Sikorski, most recently was a resident fellow at the American Enterprise Institute and was Executive Director of the New Atlantic Initiative, an international nonpartisan organization dedicated to revitalizing and expanding the Atlantic community of democracies. Mr. Sikorski has been published widely and has given testimony before the United States House of Representatives.

Dr. Javier Solana is Secretary-General of the Council of the European Union and High Representative for the Common Foreign and Security Policy. Dr. Solana earned a doctorate in physics and taught solid-state physics at Madrid Complutense University before entering politics.

Dr. Solana was elected to the Spanish Parliament in 1977 and, from 1982 onward, held a number of Cabinet posts including Minister of Culture, government spokesperson, and Minister of Education and Science. In July 1992, he became Minister of Foreign Affairs, a post he held until he became NATO Secretary-General in December 1995.

In October 1999, Dr. Solana left NATO to become Secretary-General of the Council of the European Union and its first High Representative for the Common Foreign and Security Policy. His task is to put forth ideas and analyze policy options in an effort to help EU leaders agree on foreign and security policy issues, thereby giving the Union more political weight in international affairs.

Dr. Constanze Stelzenmüller has been the director of GMF’s Berlin office since July 1, 2005.

She was formerly defense and international security editor at the German weekly Die Zeit, where, from 1998 onward, she covered a broad spectrum of issues, including NATO, European defense and security policy, military intervention in Kosovo and Afghanistan, the war on terror, Iraq, international war crimes tribunals, German foreign policy, and U.S.-German relations. Dr. Stelzenmüller joined Die Zeit in 1994 to write about human rights, refugee crises, and the UN, and covered African conflicts like Rwanda, Congo, and Eritrea-Ethiopia.

Bruce Stokes is the international economics columnist for National Journal. He is also a frequent guest on National Public Radio’s “All Things Considered” and “the Diane Rehm Show.” He has won several awards, including the John Hancock Award for excellence in business and economics reporting, Washingtonian magazine’s award for “Best on Business” reporters in Washington, a Japan Society Fellowship, and a German Marshall Fund Fellowship.

Mr. Stokes is a director of the Pew Global Attitudes Project, an assessment of public attitudes toward globalization, democratization, and America based on a survey of 90,000 people in 50 countries. He is also a co-author of the new book America Against the World: How We Are Different and Why We Are Disliked, co-author of the bookDemocratizing U.S. Trade Policy, and author of A New Beginning: Recasting the U.S.–Japan Economic Relationship. Mr. Stokes was recently named by International Economy magazine as one of the “most influential press China watchers.”

Venton Surroi is a member of the Assembly of Kosovo and founding chairman of the reformist party ORA since 2004. He currently sits on the Committee for International Cooperation and European Integration. Mr. Surroi is also the founder and publisher of Koha Ditore, the leading Albanian daily in Kosovo. He served as the newspaper’s editor-in-chief for several years before deciding to enter Kosovar politics.

One of two independent members of the Kosovo Albanian negotiating team at the 1999 Rambouillet talks, Mr. Surroi played a central role in salvaging the process, signing his name alone to the NATO peace agreement that was formally agreed several weeks later in Paris. Mr. Surroi also founded the local chapter of the UJDI (Association of a Yugoslav Democratic Initiative) and the first Independent Trade Unions of Kosovo in 1989.

Goran Svilanovic has been a Chairman of the Working Table I of the Stability Pact for South Eastern Europe and a member of the Serbian Parliament since 2004. From 2000 to 2004, he was the Minister for Foreign Affairs of Serbia and Montenegro.

Active in politics for more than a decade, Mr. Svilanovic was a member of the Upper Chamber of the Federal Parliament of Serbia and Montenegro from 2000-2003, President of the Civic Alliance of Serbia from 1999-2004, and before that the party’s Vice President (1998) and Spokesperson (1997). From 1989-1998 he was a Teaching Assistant at the Law School, University of Belgrade.

Mr. Svilanovic also served on the International Commission on the Balkans, and in 2004 was the Laureate of the Sasakawa Foundation Prize for the Young Future Leaders of the World. Mr. Svilanovic has worked with a number of non-governmental organizations, including the Centre for Anti-War Action, the Belgrade Center for Human Rights, and the Center for Advancement of Legal Studies. He has published many articles and books on civil procedure and civil law, as well as on the legal status of refugees and issues relating to citizenship.

Borys Tarasyuk was appointed Foreign Minister of Ukraine in February 2005, a post he also had held from 1998 to 2000. Between 2002 and 2005, Mr. Tarasyuk was a member of Parliament elected on the list of “Our Ukraine,” a political bloc of parties.

Ambassador Tarasyuk also served as the Ukrainian Ambassador to Belgium, the Netherlands, and Luxembourg from 1995 to 1998, and as head of the Ukrainian Mission to NATO from 1997 to 1998. Prior to that, he held various positions at the Foreign Ministry in Kiev, including First Deputy Foreign Minister, director of the private office of the Foreign Minister, and political director.

Dr. Gunter Thielen has been Chairman and CEO of Bertelsmann AG in Guetersloh, Germany, since August 2002. Under his leadership, Bertelsmann has significantly increased its profitability.

Bertelsmann occupies leading positions in all its core markets — television, books, music, magazines, media clubs, and media services. The company has operations in 63 countries and 88,516 employees worldwide. Revenues for 2005 amounted to €18 billion.

Dr. Thielen became member of the Bertelsmann AG Executive Board in 1985 as head of the former “Printing and Manufacturing” division, which in 1999 became Bertelsmann Arvato AG. Before joining Bertelsmann, Dr. Thielen held various executive positions in the BASF group. Prior to that, he was technical director of the Wintershall refinery in Kassel, Germany. Dr. Thielen began his experience in the printing industry and Bertelsmann in 1980, when he became CEO of the Maul-Belser gravure printing company in Nuremberg.

Dr. Thielen has an educational background in mechanical engineering and economics and holds a doctoral degree in engineering. He was born in 1942 in Quierschied, Germany.

Ivan Vejvoda is Executive Director of The Balkan Trust for Democracy, a project of the German Marshall Fund of the United States (GMF) dedicated to strengthening democratic institutions in Southeastern Europe. He joined GMF in 2003 following distinguished service in the Serbian government as senior advisor on foreign policy and European integration to prime ministers Zoran Djindjic and Zoran Zivkovic. Mr. Vejvoda was a key figure in the democratic opposition movement in Yugoslavia through the 1990s, and he is widely published on the subjects of democratic transition, totalitarianism, and postwar reconstruction in the Balkans.

Günter Verheugen is the European Commissioner for Enterprise and Industry and is a Vice President of the European Commission. Mr. Verheugen was previously Commissioner for Enlargement, and in that capacity he presided over the accession of ten new European Union member states in 2004.

Mr. Verheugen was Secretary-General of the FDP (Liberals) from 1978 to 1982. He left the FDP with many left-liberal party members in 1982 when the FDP left the government of federal Chancellor Helmut Schmidt. That same year, he joined the SPD (Social Democrats).

In 1983, Mr. Verheugen became a member of the German Bundestag, and he was a member of the Committee on Foreign Relations from 1983 to 1998. From 1994 to 1997, he was Deputy Chairman of the parliamentary group of the SPD. He served as Minister of State in the Federal Foreign Office from 1998 to 1999. In 1999, he left parliament and became Commissioner for Enlargement of the European Union.

Guy Verhofstadt has been Prime Minister of Belgium since 1999. He began his political career as a Ghent city councilor in 1976. In 1982, at the age of 29, Mr. Verhofstadt became President of the PVV, the Flemish Liberal Party. He was elected to the Chamber of Deputies — the lower house of Belgium’s Federal Parliament — in 1985, and he served as Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Budget and Scientific Research until 1988.

Mr. Verhofstadt led the transformation of the PVV into the VLD, the Flemish Liberals and Democrats, in 1992, and he was elected to the Belgian Senate three years later. In this role, he served as rapporteur for the Senate’s commission on the Rwandan genocide. Mr. Verhofstadt is the author of several books. His most recent, The United States of Europe, was published in Dutch in 2005, and in six other languages in 2006.

U.S. Senator George V. Voinovich has been a Republican Senator from Ohio since 1999. Senator Voinovich is a member of the Senate Committee on Foreign Relations and has become one of the Senate’s leading experts on Southeastern European affairs. His work with the Bush administration and the government of Serbia and Montenegro has been instrumental in helping the country meet requirements for international aid, including cooperating with the UN War Crimes Tribunal and upholding the rule of law and respect for human rights.

Also, as a member of NATO’s inter-parliamentary body and the American delegation to the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe, Senator Voinovich was part of President George W. Bush’s official delegation to the historic 2002 Prague conference in which the seven Eastern European nations were invited to join NATO. Further, in 2003, he helped pass the treaty to expand membership in NATO to include Bulgaria, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Romania, Slovakia, and Slovenia.

Prior to his service in Washington, Senator Voinovich was Governor of Ohio from 1990 to 1998. He was Mayor of Cleveland, Ohio, from 1979 to 1988, and was Lieutenant Governor of Ohio in 1979. He began his career in public service as a member of the Ohio House of Representatives in 1967.